Landscape or Photojournalism!
8th May 2018
Over the weekend I went down to the mouth of the river Don, here in Aberdeen, to take some photos of sunrise and capture some images of the new wind farm that is being constructed offshore in Aberdeen Bay.
It was something of an early start, I arrived at Donmouth at around 4.15am, which gave me plenty of time to pick my spot and watch the Blue Hour develop into dawn (5.08am) and the Golden Hour.
I am something of a novice landscape photographer, and have only started to take it seriously over the past year or so. As such, my kit is still only slowly growing and I still need plenty of practice before I will be confident in my skills.
The Blue Hour slowly goes pink!
The newest addition to my landscape kit is a set of Neutral Density (ND) filters. I bought a very basic set of 4 (2,4,8,16 stop), with the intention that I can slowly upgrade and replace them with better filters as and when I need to. I planned this shoot as an initial test for my ND filters.
ND filters are used to slow down the shutter speed, giving the option for long exposures. I wanted to smooth out the waves in these images to give something of an ethereal feel to them.
Smoothing out the waves with an ND filter.
The tide was at it's highest when I arrived. The piece of driftwood that I used as foreground interest in the photos would be fully exposed (in fact, beached about 10 metres from the waterline) later in the day, so I was very pleased to be able to use it in these photos.
The shoot evolved as the sun slowly climbed higher above the horizon. From the initial blue hour shots though the dawn light and then on to focusing on the wind farm, once the sun was up.
The haze over the sea adds to the emotion in this image.
As for the title "Landscape or Photojournalism!" the wind farm in Aberdeen Bay has been surrounded by controversy since it's earliest planning stages. Donald Trump (before his presidential days) notoriously objected to the planned wind farm as it would spoil the view from his golf course on the Aberdeenshire coast.
Personally, I am all in favour of renewable energy and I think it is important to work towards a greener future as fast as possible.
A sunny future for renewable energy!