Lake Erie was not calm on this day. Wind generated one to two foot waves that were sweeping the Hamburg Beach making it look and feel more like an ocean beach than a beach on a lake. But that is not unusual on the Great Lakes. Dark ominous clouds were floating over the lake, mostly on their way out of the area as they have caused quite a bit of rain over the last couple days.
Rough waters land themselves well to experimenting with shutter speed. For this photograph, the long exposure of 10 seconds calmed the waters down and gave the lake a whole different look, the look of a calm lake before a storm. And that would work perfectly for this two picture black and white series.
The two photographs presented here were born backwards as I was working my way from my initial establishing photograph to all the filters I intended to use. I like to start simple with no filters for several reasons. First, I do not want to miss the opportunity. Sometimes, conditions change very quickly and spending several minutes messing with the camera settings, tripod, filters, etc., can mean a missed opportunity. Then, as I keep the initial intent in my mind, I try to build a photograph that would get as close as possible to the idea. In this instance, I added a graduated neutral density filter first to render the clouds as dramatic as they felt on the beach while hearing the water and dealing with the wind. Then, I also added a 6-stop neutral density filter to create the calm look on the surface of the lake. And yes, later on the computer, I converted the whole scene into black and white as I felt that color was adding nothing to the mood and in fact was taking away from the stormy mood on the shoreline.
Weather over the LakeHamburg Beach, Lake Erie
Weather over Lake Erie, Hamburg Beach, NY
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