After visiting Seacombe ferry terminal over the past weeks for some sunset shots of the Liverpool waterfront, I decided it would make a nice change to capture the sunrise instead especially since the sun would rise from the direction of the city centre.

I’d also just recently taken delivery of a Cokin P neutral density (ND) graduated filter set and was keen to try them out on a landscape shoot.

So, just after 7am this morning, we (I dragged my able assistant along - don’t worry, she’s a morning person!) arrived at the waterfront to find a number of other photographers already set-up and the sky was already turning a light blue.  I felt like a schoolkid arriving late for class!

Anyway, with auto-bracketing on and my new ND grads in place in front of my EF-S 17-55mm, I set about taking a series of shots with the intention of stitching them together.

Why stitch?  I could easily fit the most significant parts of the Liverpool cityscape into frame with my lens set to 17mm, but the resultant image would be too much sky and river.  There’s just not enough detail to be able to crop down a single shot so I prefer to take several and fill the frame with more buildings.

Here’s an image that’s actual comprised of 15 individual exposures - 5 sets of 3 bracketed shots tone mapped and stitched.  It’s too wide to see in full here so click it and view the original size to see it the detail.

I’m happy to say that this particular pic has been featured on the RedBubble Liverpool group.  Now, if only someone would buy a print…

It wasn’t easy, getting up so early on a weekend, but I will do it again and next time I’ll be further to right so that I can get the sunlight reflecting off the other side of the buildings.  I’ll also shoot in vertical format instead of horizontal so I can get more sky and water without losing any detail.  It means a bit more post processing, but when I’m faced with clouds and reflections like this I’d prefer to capture them.

To make the most of the fantastic weather we were having this weekend, I revisited West Kirby Marine Lake with a photographer friend of mine.

There wasn’t as much activity on the lake as I’d seen on previous visits, but the conditions made it ideal for capturing some waterscapes with this being my favourite:

This image is actually a composite of 3 separate long exposures blended together using HDR techniques.  Personally, I think this composite represents what I saw more accurately than any of the single exposures.

There was another shots I was trying to get and it involved this boat:

As soon as I saw the light from the setting sun hitting the boat, I made a run towards it in my brand new pair of walking boots only to discover the sand was not quite as solid as I thought it was…

Oh well, at least I got to test them out properly.  Though, next time, I’ll take wellies too.

If you’re in the Wirral area and the weather’s looking photogenic then I’d strongly recommend a visit to the marine lake because there’s just so much to take photos of there.

As the lake is less than an hour’s drive away from me, before setting off, I check on the very handy West Kirby marine lake web cam to see what the sky is like and whether there’s any activity on the lake.

If you’re wondering exactly where it is, then here’s a useful map:

View Larger Map

An interesting question recently came up in a forum regarding one of my HDR composite Buttermere landscape images,

Why choose HDR?

High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging techniques aren’t new. They’ve actually been around since the 1930s, but have only really become accessible in mainstream digital photography relatively recently with the release of HDR software aimed at the amateur and professional market.

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On Saturday, a group of us took a trip up to Buttermere, a stretch of water in the north-west of The Lake District. As we arrived at Saturday lunchtime and the weather was looking a bit gloomy, we stopped for lunch at The Fish Hotel before setting off for a leisurely walk around the lake.

The clouds started to break as we started walking which provided ideal conditions for some landscape photos as patches of sun were rolling over the surrounding mountains. The very bright sky presented a problem in so much it made getting a suitable exposure to preserve all of the visible detail impossible with my 40D and a single exposure. So I set up my tripod and 40D to auto-bracket with the intention of capturing the highlights, mid-tones and low-lights separately so that I could combine them later on using HDR techniques.

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