Our Pro team member Emily Endean has written a guest blog about her work photographing seascapes!
Emily Endean: I've always been drawn to the ocean. Growing up in the seaside town of Bournemouth, I've always spent a lot of time by the ocean and felt a strong connection.
Going into my adult life and developing a love for capturing moments through my lens, I found a love for landscape photography, and as this grew, I found myself choosing the sea over the land more often than not and this then quickly became my favourite type of environment to create images of.
The ocean is so full of inspiration, always changing from one moment to the next. The conditions are always different, the changing tides, the swell growing and fading, along with the weather and light changing too. It makes for some very exciting photography!
Whether I am heading out at sunrise or sunset, slowing down and making the most of the lovely golden light or seeking the more rough, stormy conditions of waves crashing in, there is always something great to capture.
If you want to get started in seascape photography, these are my top three tips to get you going!
1. Weatherproof kit!
Being by the shoreline it's very likely you will get sea spray on your kit so it's worth making sure you have kit you can rely on. My bag contains the Fujifilm X-T5 and various lenses. With these being weatherproof it's very helpful, but the salt from sea spray can damage your gear regardless of this, so keep plenty of cloths handy and be prepared for a bit of a clean-up when you get home. I use the Bucky 3 Legged Thing tripod. Bucky is lightweight and packs down small enough to transport really easily, but is also sturdy enough to rely upon! The leg locks come undone really easily so it can be taken apart and given a fresh water rinse off, when back on dry land too!
2. Shoot in manual mode!
Get to know your camera so well that you can shoot in full manual, controlling the light that you are letting in to your camera. It means you can expose the image just how you want, along with shooting in RAW to keep all of the image data there within the file ready for processing.
3. Get creative!
Once you get to know your camera and are shooting in manual mode, you can really get creative with your shutter speed. Play around with anything from 0.5 seconds to 10 seconds and experiment with the different ways you can interpret a scene. Do you want to create wave trails, or do you want to smooth out the scene and give the water that ethereal, misty feel? Being on a tripod gives you that freedom to play around and experiment!
So now you are ready to get going, get out there and have some fun!
