Big Stopper Sunset at Barns Ness

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Yesterday evening the promises of a nice sunset had me grabbing the camera bag and tripod and heading out to Barns Ness in the car.  I haven't been out to the lighthouse for a couple of months and yesterday was time for another visit to one of my favourite photographic haunts in and around my home town of Dunbar.

 One of the techniques I haven't used for a few weeks is a long exposure using the Lee 'Big Stopper' 10x ND filter so I set the tripod up on the rocky shoreline facing east towards the lighthouse and with the sun behind me providing a distinctive glow to the scene.  With the 'Big Stopper' fitted to the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 lens, the exposure time was 90 seconds (f16 and 200ISO) so this gave me time to take some other shots on the X-Pro1 and 10-24mm f4 lens while I waited.

After taking several shots of the lighthouse I moved the X-T1 and the tripod out onto a rocky outcrop, keeping an eye on the sea that was approaching high tide.  The second long exposure shot was taken looking towards the setting sun.  The shot below was taken with an exposure of 180 seconds (f16 and 200ISO), which gave some interesting movement in the clouds and the mirror image in the water.


After several shots I moved around the small bay to get closer to the lighthouse in the fading light.  The setting sun suddenly hit the clouds above the beach turning them a wonderful red and plum colour.  Setting the camera up quickly I was able to capture the following shot with a 90 second exposure (f9 and 200ISO)


I carried on walking around the rocky shoreline and I spotted a rock pool with the lighthouse reflected perfectly, so for the final long exposure shot on the beach I set up the Manfrotto tripod with the X-T1 and 14mm attached to capture the scene.  For this shot I removed the 'Big Stopper' but the exposure was still 13 seconds in the receding light (f16 and 200ISO).


As I said at the top of the page, while I waited for the long exposure shots to countdown, I took some shots of the scene with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and 10-24mm, 18mm f2 or 55-200mm lenses.  Here are some of these handheld shots -





It was another beautiful evening in East Lothian and a successful trip out to Barns Ness lighthouse.

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