Newport Beach Pembrokeshire.

As kid I remember being hugely disappointed when I first discovered that waves hadn’t really travelled all the way over the ocean. In fact no water had travelled anywhere but it was just going up and down and back and forth in circles. It’s only the energy that travels... How unromantic can you get!

So these aren’t waves from America like I’d really like them to be. Realistically, at best, they are the energetic remnants of a windy squall in mid-Atlantic. Sorry. Poetry and imagination will resume later, but found somewhere else…

In spite of that disappointment waves still turn out to be interesting (speaking as a would-be physicist). Life depends on them; energy wouldn’t exist without them.

Even sea waves are interesting, especially when they hit the shore. When that happens the movement of water becomes chaotic, and water does move a lot further. It’s unmodelable in maths because there are too many unknown parameters and slight irregularities in flow cause unpredictable chaos. So when you look at a wave you are looking at the triumph of nature over mathematics. ‘Great!’ I hear you say (my vivid imagination runs away... :) ).

Not one of the best in the series of five so far and probably the last landscape from this set, but still fun to process. I liked the white frothy breakers against the dark solidity of the headland and the brooding sky, so that was the aim for tweaking this one.

For 7DWF Thursday: Black & White/Sepia.

Thank you for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image!

[Processed in LR for a full range of colour and light contrast for tonality (for feeding the B&W converter later).
Affinity Photo: Strong Haze filter to rescue the clouds from the British murk.
Converted in Nik Silver Efex with contrast and structure boost, and light sepia toning.
Back in AP sharpening with High Pass and Linear Light blend, masked to prevent haloes on the horizon and granulation of the sky; lightened shadows with Shadows/Highlights filter, selectively changed contrast with Curves in the Lightness channel of LAB; added a masked Gaussian Blur to counter some of the messy artefacts in the high contrast processing.
Finally fairly strong dark vignette, and flipped the whole piece horizontally because this was another of those curious shots that said something different when you did that :) ]

Tags:   elements beach waves sepia sea Newport arrival clouds B&W black and white Pembrokeshire black & white 7DWF

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Newport Beach.

It was a chilly November day and with a freezing wind. At the end of the beach I saw this kite surfer wet in his wetsuit. Madness.

Half an hour later he had packed in and the wind was blowing onshore so I was really fortunate to be able to get a couple of frames with everything lined up.

Another of my Black & White experiments. I’ve done less than ten intentional B&W images so still very much meandering about on my learning curve.

With this one I wanted to isolate the surfer from the background but still keep in the details in the waves. The lens flare had the curious but useful effect of lightening the surfer himself, so I didn’t have to do extra tweaking to bring him out. High contrast and dark: why does that keep appealing to me?

For 7 Days with Flickr Black and White/ Sepia Thursday theme.

Thanks for taking time to look. Very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy the image :)

[Cropped and leveled and produced a medium contrast image in LR.
Then in Affinity Photo added a Haze filter to clear the sky and clouds; a bit of sharpening with the Clarity filter.
Converted to B&W with Nik Silver Efex (free), adjusting for a high structure and careful contrast to keep the sun and the surfer but not the background; slight Sepia tint to increase the tonal range; dark edges to take out the foreground and the flare above the sun.
Used a Curves adjustment to balance the results (again) and then an Unsharp Mask with a mask to sharpen everything except the kite and the top horizon of the hill which were prone to sharpening halos. No vignette.]

Tags:   kite high contrast beach sky dark hills sepia 7DWF Newport surf kitesurfer B&W black and white Pembrokeshire low key

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Newport Beach, Pembrokeshire.

Black and white photography seems something of a dark art to me† but I have been inspired by some of my Flickr friends who really use B&W to express something different in their images. Monochrome processing enables you to concentrate on form and pattern and the quality of light... But colour is a difficult addiction to counter!

I struggle to imagine our polychrome world in mono. Most of what I do in this genre is trial and (mainly) error. But practice perfects they say (though I discovered long ago that perfection is too lofty a goal, so I'm happy just having fun really ;-) )

This image was taken recently on the largest beach in Pembrokeshire a short while ago. I’d not been on the coast for a very long time and the experience was a sensory delight! The waning sunlight and the incoming tide were enchanting. Oh to capture it! Ever the photographer’s cry…

I took loads of images: waves, ripples, sand, sunshine reflected… even some pebbles, and a kite surfer (though he quickly retreated damp from the cold). For quite a number of shots I took bracketed exposures because of the very high contrast in the light.

What struck me when I eventually reviewed them back home was that the low-key members of the bracketed triplets were strikingly more dramatic. They were almost monochrome too, except for a small rainbow of flare, so that made it very easy for me!

So this is my attempt to convey the drama, and it’s Thursday so that means 7 Days With Flickr!

Thank you for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image 😊

†An accidental pun, but it amused me so I left it in!

[Cropped to get the diagonal right and processed initially in LR. Then into Affinity Photo for the Haze filter, Topaz Detail for sharpening, Nik Silver Efex for the conversion, a dark vignette to concentrate the mind, and a bit of playing around with contrast. Finally a white frame with a bit of drop shadow (shamelessly plagiarizing someone else I saw who did it so effectively recently (thank you 😉)!).

Silver Efex added quite a bit of grain , which I didn’t immediately notice, but I rather liked the effect because it really conveys the way it felt at the time with the bright sun and high contrast diminishing the visual detail…]

Tags:   sun sand sunset sunbeams light froth low key waves ripples beach coast Pembrokeshire clouds 7DWF

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Newport Beach.

Another attempt at black and white, from the same location as last time.

I chose this one because of the strong leading lines, and then tried to process it to create some drama and capture the textures, particularly in the sand and the posts.

I’m quite pleased with the end result (it certainly was fun, though B&W is a peculiar discipline). You can see, though, where I’ve over-cooked it (the haloes around the tall posts for example). Ah well, there’s always next time...

America is out there somewhere!

Thank you so much for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image :)

[LR for crop, straightening, lens correction (lots of barrel distortion) and perspective. Went for high contrast, and lots of colour to give something for the black and white conversion to work on.

Then into Photo: sharpening in Topaz Detail (so-so), then Topaz Clarity (very effective here); duplicated and blended with soft light at 55% opacity to enhance the skies.

Finally into Nik Silver Efex for the conversion (great fun tinkering) with slight dark vignette, and slight blue silver toning… et voila. :) ]

Tags:   Newport Beach navigation monochrome headland beach sand posts black and white B&W coast Pembrokeshire waves

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Newport Beach, but not the California one which would have been warmer :)

This is another image in the series from an afternoon I spent on Newport Beach in Pembrokeshire, West Wales last November.

The beach has a very long stretch of sand with a car park at one end and a river at the other. It’s very popular during the summer but in winter it’s only occupied by dog walkers and strollers going there and back again, and the occasional demented kite surfer (see the image I posted of one previously :) ).

Early on that afternoon I spotted from afar this lone lady on the beach so I took a couple of shots while nobody else was in the frame. This other shot was out of focus so this is it!

I'm slowly trying to crawl up the monochrome learning curve...

Thanks for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! :)

[Handheld in cloudy sunshine.
Lightroom: processed for even contrast and bumped colour a bit - the idea was to give the B&W converter more to options using colour filters.
Affinity Photo: long crop to accentuate the beach loneliness; hefty Haze filter to rescue the clouds from the overcast sky; converted in Nik Silver Efex with quite a bit of tweaking: high structure and high contrast; light sepia tone. Then sharpened using Clarity and Unsharp Mask, masking both layers so as not to include the headland outline which already had a bad halo (not sure where from). Finally to increase the drama duplicated the result with Overlay blend mode at 30% opacity. Slight dark vignette masked to exclude right side.]

Tags:   beach lonely monochrome solitary sepia Newport sky B&W solitude sea black & white

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