Landscape Project 5 - interacting subjects

The photographs for this project were taken around the lighthouse at Cape Trafalgar on the Costa de la Luz in southern Spain. It was a scorching hot day (about 30 degrees) and the light was very harsh although, for the purposes of this project, that was not a particular problem, although some clouds would have helped considerably. This distant view places the lighthouse within its general surroundings.

I used my Tokina 11 to 18 mm wide angle lens at f/22 to ensure a full depth of field and took a selection of shots as I approached and circled the lighthouse.

I took a mixture of portrait and landscape shots so that the foreground was more in evidence. Clearly the nature of the main subject i.e. the lighthouse, lends itself to a portrait aspect.

This shot was cropped to reduce the amount of rather uninteresting sky.

This photograph was taken from directly below the outcrop on which the lighthouse is situated so the foreground is more dominant.

Moving around about 45 degrees produced this low viewpoint from a rock-strewn beach. I placed the lighthouse towards the left of the frame and used the small stone building on the right for balance. I tried to ensure that the beach was also a prominent part of the shot.

Finally, this is the shot from the top of the outcrop, at the foot of the lighthouse. I took the photograph with the lighthouse central, for symmetry, but decided to crop it slightly because of some (even more) unsightly fencing on the right hand side.

I am sure that, with some cloud formations, I would have composed these photographs with a greater proportion of sky but I tried to create a range of compositions using angle and a variety of foreground features.

Technically, my use of a polariser with the wide-angle lens was probably a mistake as this led to uneven colour in the sky with some areas intensely blue. I understand that this is a common problem when shooting at less than 30mm focal length - and I was using 11mm (or 16mm for a full frame camera). This wasn't such a problem with the photographs in portrait mode, though.