Reflecting back on the trip I think that the open-ended nature of this exercise was a blessing. It would have probably been impossible to do much planning because of the bad weather. As it rained most of the time whilst I was in Scotland, my only photo session lasted about 3.5 hours instead of a number of sessions spread over 2 days. In this fairly limited time I managed to visit two locations and wiz through some 190 frames working at roughly at 55 frames per hour. To make the best of my session I decided to focus on one theme - to capture movement and stillness using water and its surroundings as the main subject. My locations were a nearby river and a small waterfall. All images were taken on a tripod but I often composed manually to save time and compare different angles and positioning before making my final shot. As far as this exercise is concerned, the most useful part of my workflow was my ‘add flash’ routine. I think it helped to achieve a good variety of images with a fair balance of horizontal & vertical, close up & overview shots. I experimented with different shutter speeds, focal lengths and angles to achieve desired results. For example, the image below was taken from above the river stream and at a slow shutter speed (30 sec at f22) to juxtapose the fast moving water against the still tree trunk and rocks.
Despite the fact that my approach throughout the whole session remained quite intuitive, I found myself following the same key steps of my workflow, perhaps with a little more flexibility. I also found skipping some non essential checks altogether but spending more time on some other tasks. For example, as part of my on-the-spot image improvement and editing I regularly checked the histogram and highlights warning function. The lighting conditions were changeable and at times challenging and I found these two camera functions indispensible when making the exposure adjustments. I mostly used long exposures on the day and regularly checked the sharpness of my images with the loupe tool. This ongoing review and editing process was necessary. For example, because of difficult access and awkward angle the above image was taken 3 times before I achieved the desired sharpness.
At the end of the session I reviewed all my images again to check that I achieved what I wanted and that my key images were of good quality. I was relatively pleased with the results. I thought I made the best of such a brief session and was looking forward to seeing the pictures on a computer screen back home.
