Following a recent photography tutorial to a friend, at Gibson's Cave, we were out again with the camera's at another location closer to home. This time it was Gateshead's 'Angel Of The North', for some evening shots and another insight into shutter speed. The Gibson's Cave tutorial focused on slow shutter speeds, as we photographed a waterfall and wanted the desired milky effect of the water as it fell. The results of that visit can be viewed here. So it was shutter speed once again, but this time we were heading further up the scale with faster speeds in very bright sunlight. As the sun sets behind the Angel, our best hope was to grab some silhouette shots, with the setting sun in the background and hopefully a burst of colour after it had set. We fired off a few frames on the plot where the tree's had been felled, which offered us a position which was impossible to imagine just a few weeks ago. I explained to Billy that the inclusion of people in the shot was, in my opinion, quite important, as a sense of scale gives the image an extra dimension. Without people in the frame the image simply doesn't have the same impact, so it was a waiting game as we picked off the best visitors to include in our shots. It was quiet at first, with no-one showing up, so we improvised and added ourselves to each others shots, just to warm up, ready for those unsuspecting folk walking into our shots and not having a clue what was going on behind our lenses. My first shot shows Billy doing a spot of modelling, he he, as he does as he is told by his mentor and gets his arse into the picture. Metering off the brightest part of the sky I was running with a fast shutter speed of 500th of a second, in shutter speed priority. Seven frames per second and the job was done, as Billy walked up the hill towards the Angel. I was lucky to see some colour in the sky too, on the horizon, which made the shot. Abstract worked quite well with this one, as I zoomed in to clip one of the Angel's wings.
My second shot is in Landscape mode, and again I went for scale, using a young girl who was photographing the sculpture from the approach path. This was actually taken before my first shot (above), and before the sun had set. Some nice cloud formation in this one, which was emphasised with a polarising filter - always a handy piece of kit to have tucked away in the bag. I deliberately under-exposed this shot to add that little bit of moody drama to it, and it seemed to work. Composition is all important, as usual, so get this aspect right and you're half way there. Billy took my advice on board and was quickly up and running on his own, pulling in some great shots.My final shot of the Angel was taken the next day, from a viewpoint near the 'Angel View' pub, on the roadside towards Wrekenton. I was driving along this route and noticed an angle that I'd never seen before, so quickly pulled over and done the necessary. Something a bit different, with the countryside backdrop offering a different slant on my Angel photo's.
Plenty more photo's to come...
Until then, see ya.
Ash
