Okay, here we go. A full walkthrough from dragging myself out of bed at 5.45am through to posting the final shot on Deviant Art. Let's see what happens.



Hello, my name's Michael. I'm here today to teach you the joy of shooting waterscapes. I'm also an idiot - it's quite clear that I forgot to take the ND8 filter off the lens before shooting this photo. Nevermind.

Just to offer some context, I had just shot this photo:



Waves are fickle things, though, and as I was aiming for a similar shot I found myself confronted by a looming rogue wave. If you ever wanted to know what sort of photo you'll get if you have the shutter open as you scramble to avoid getting yourself (and your camera) swept off into the sea, feast your eyes upon this:



Okay. So the whole almost being swept off the rocks thing had convinced me to find somewhere more tranquil to shoot. By this stage, it was about 7.10 am, not long after the sun had peaked its head over the horizon. Nearby there was a convenient rockpool - seemed as good a place for some tranquility as any other.

As you can see, I set up my very old, very average tripod in preparation to shoot:



With this sort of view, I wanted to go wide angle. I attached my Sigma 10-20mm lens and spun it out as wide as I could. I also wanted to get a smooth, glassy feel from the water, which would need the shutter to be open for as long as possible. Ergo, I attached my ever faithful Hoya ND8 filter. If you're not experienced with this sort of filter, it basically works by creating a semi-transparent layer over the lens, which means the shutter needs to remain open longer for the same amount of light to get through. Works a treat.

Okay, shooting into the sun is always a recipe for nightmares. The best way to combat this is to shoot multiple exposures and then combine them later. As such, I fired off a shot in which I had metered for the sky:



Notice, it's not too bad a photo but the foreground is too dark and I don't have the smooth glassy thing going on with the water. As such, it's now time to shoot a shot in which I had exposed for the water and the sand:



Obviously, with the sun being blown out to buggery, this wouldn't work at all as a stand alone photo. Good thing we have the marvels of Photoshop to help work wonders.

With that done, I pack up my tripod and my camera and drive home, taking a minor detour through the McDonalds drive through to pick up a thickshake for breakfast. Mmmm... healthy.

Belly full and back at home, I load up Photoshop. In case you're wondering, I use CS3 (which, as a student, you can get pretty exceptional discounts for.) The first thing I want to do is blend the two exposures. There are all sorts of ways you can do this, and I'm sure that there would be people clamouring for some HDR action right now, but I prefer something a little more traditional and a little more hands on.

I open both shots and proceed to copy and paste the lighter exposure over the darker one. Then, using nothing more than the eraser tool, I set to work getting rid of the blown out sky. You'll want to use brushes that are very, very large and very, very soft - as well as quite low opacity - so that where the sky meets the water you don't have a very obvious join. To give you an idea, here is how I erased my top layer:



So, after a little bit of colour tweaking, that leaves us with this:



And to finish it off, I decide to crop it so that the sun isn't quite as central. The final piece is:



To be perfectly honest, it's not my greatest shot. It's okay, but not particularly exciting. Needs a better composition, and a far more exciting sky. Perhaps next time I'll manage to get all the pieces coming together.

Anyway, I hope that was useful, and if you have any comments or questions please don't hesitate to hit me up.