Horizontal lines in nature are difficult to find so I 'cheated' a little in this challenge by using the obvious—the horizon. I first thought of shooting an ultra-minimalist shot in the style of Hiroshi Sugimoto (check out his seascape work here) but found a location to shoot that provided roughly horizontal bands of colour in the sea.
Ocean Grove Beach Lookout
The elevated view from the lookout enabled me to frame a shot with distinct horizontal regions—the sky, the deep sea, the shallows with waves and the sand. I added a polarising filter to deepen the colour of the sea by reducing the surface glare.
Ocean Grove Beach
Unedited Raw file 55mm, ISO 100, 1/125 second @ f/11, Circular Polarising Filter
To emphasise the horizontal bands, I shot a long exposure (10 minutes) by adding 10-stop and 6-stop Neutral Density Filters to the front of the lens in addition to the Circular Polariser already used in the shot above (I opened the aperture to f/8 to reduce the calculated exposure time from 20 minutes). I also waited for the clouds behind me to move away from the sun providing much more vivid colours than the test shot above, which was taken under a hazy overcast sky.
Ocean Grove Beach
55mm, ISO 100, 10 minutes @ f/8, Circular Polarising Filter + 10-stop ND and 6-stop ND Filters
Check the video of this shoot from my YouTube Channel:
Please feel free to comment below. Constructive criticism and informed discussion are always welcome.
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