Shoot the Clouds - This Might Be My Last Landscape Photography Shoot...

Or I'm gonna get shot. This could be my last video. Hello and welcome. And boy am I excited this morning because we've had rain for two months. Two months of no rain. And overnight we've had rain. And we've got clouds. Clouds. They're amazing. So I'm about to come out local, but shoot, cannot miss this opportunity. Look at that. Brilliant. So again, I'm trying the filters out. The Freewell X Dunner Did It filter. So first thing I need to do is actually put the polariser on. And then I'm gonna get some long exposures. Or that's the plan. Okay, so with the polariser on, I need to get, I wanna go two minutes if I can. So I might need to take the polariser off and go six stop and then the 10 stop. So the good thing with these filters are they're ultra slim. So stacking filters isn't an issue. Need to wipe. As you can see, they are ultra thin. So we'll just grab the six stop. Whack that on. Like so, see if I can get my eighth of a second. Just up there, so a little bit. F8, eighth of a second, perfect. That is perfect. I'm just gonna, one more, there we go. Okay, eighth of a second. So that now, with the 10 stop on, will give me a two minute exposure. Exactly what I wanted. I was actually hoping that field weren't gonna be harvested, but obviously because of this rain, the farmers have tried to harvest as much as possible and they do a fantastic job. So the field has been harvested, but it's still nice and clean and tidy. What I'm hoping for next is to do get some fleeting light coming across. So I'm at Stonnell. I'm shooting the three trees. There's actually five. I removed the two on the left hand side. Keep a rule of odds, but the two, the extra two, they're together and there's actually a tree behind that or the top of a tree. So I'll remove that, make it nice and simple and yeah, makes for a great shot, especially in this weather. One problem I have got, I forgot my rain jacket, but I think I've got an old jacket in my van because I'm not used to the rain. This is amazing. This is fantastic. I've been waiting for this day for two months. Two months. It's been crazy. I can see the old rain shower in the distance as well. We've been desperate for this. There's wildfires all over Europe. Madness. I'm really thinking, can I get it down to a four minute exposure? Let's see what this exposure's like. See how the clouds moving, et cetera. Ooh, God, that's moody. That is moody. Ooh, got some nice light. Let's just grab that. Actually, let me stop that. Let me stop that. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to take the filters off. I'm just going to get a sharp shot of the trees just in case I need them. And that mood in the sky, wow. It's brilliant anyway, just on a normal exposure. Fantastic. So I've got the trees on the bottom third and then what I've done is got all that vista sky above. That's amazing. Okay, let's get another shot. I'll tell you what, I'm going to go down to four minute exposure, I think, if I can get it. So let's put the six stop back on first. So these filters, they're magnetic and they lock into place as well. So it's a double whammy. So I'll put my brightness over to 400. Perfect, a fourth of a second. That now gives me a four minute exposure. So let's try that. We'll just change the timer again. Exposure time, two, 40 seconds, go. They're moving quite nice. I think they're moving towards me, which is what I want. I want them moving that way or that way. That would be the perfect scenario. We've actually got someone in the field here. Who's shooting? I don't know if it's yours. Shooting the pigeon bowl. I hope you don't shoot this way. It's probably the farmer. Hopefully I'm okay here. Hopefully it is the farmer because I'm on the edge of the field, just in the entrance here. Yeah, we've got a problem. I'd rather say hello, just not with a gun in his hand or I'm going to get shot. This could be my last video. So I've had to really quickly change lenses to my wide angle. I'm at about 24 mil. Simple reason is this cloud formation above is amazing. So I wanted to point up, get the trees right at the bottom, point up and get a shot of these clouds. And then I'll revert back to the long exposure stuff. It's the cloud formation at the moment. Focus on the tree. Quite an easy shot. Got a couple of them. Job's a gun. So I've just put the camera away for a minute just because we've got a little shower coming over and I wanted to do the long exposure. And obviously the rain's going to be hitting the filter so I'm not going to bother for a minute. I've got the odd one or two drops, that'd be fine. But as you could probably see on my glasses, that it's more than one or two drops, but I think it is a quick shower. And if it's too bad, I will jump back into the van very quickly. Unfortunately, that big cloud that we captured earlier is now that rain shower that's passed us and beyond. But that might give us a little bit of better texture. We'll see. But the good thing is it's changed the composition. So it'll be a different image to that dirty black cloud. Now, what I could potentially do is, if it wasn't moving the right way, the clouds wasn't, I could take a photo of just the clouds, let's say at 45 degree to the shot and then blend that in in Photoshop. But I think at the minute, I'm all right. My biggest problem is, like I say, the rain, and it's also my saviour, the rain. I've been waiting for the rain. So we've just got to put up with it. This is brilliant. Need to wipe my glasses now. I can hardly see anything. That storm is actually behind us now, as you could probably see, which is good and bad because it was good to photograph the storm before it come over. I think I was there just in time. And another one coming over. If I don't get shot, I'll still shoot it. I think it's had more shots than me, to be honest. It's a totally different day now, five minutes later. Sun's out, casting a little bit of light on the land. That might change the composition. It might be slightly exposed, overexposed, I should say. But we'll have to see. I'm going to let it cut now. It's nearly done. And then we'll grab a few more. But that means I'm going to have to adjust my settings before I get the long exposure. Now, I'm doing a four minute exposure. Might be too much. It might not be enough. We'll have to have a look. That's what I'm trying. It's a trial image as well. But the mood behind it looks fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, I quite like it. I'm going to do another four minute one. I think it's worth it. We've got movement in the cloud, obviously, but it's quite slow. So, a four minute exposure. Probably two minute would do, which I will try again. I will try, but while I've set it at four minute, might as well give it another go. One thing is, obviously, because it's four minute and we've got a bit of a breeze, those trees are going to be moving. So, again, don't mind that because they're quite small in the image. But what I will do, just in case I want to blend them, which will be quite difficult, but I should be able to do it, what I will do is take another shot, if I remember, because I forget a lot, is take a nice, sharp shot of the trees. So, I've done my long exposures. Now we start to get some beautiful, spleeting light coming over the land. So, I've just put it on real fast shutter speed. I think it's 120th of a second, 150th of a second. No timer, just taking the shots as that light comes over, it catches the trees and then catches the land. I might do a time blend and I'll show you how to do that in Photoshop and Lightroom as well. But if I just prefer one image, I've got that as well, but I'm just constantly taking them images as the light rolls over. At the moment, it's gone flat again, but you might have just caught that on the timelapse you've just seen. Okay, I can see some light coming over already. It's just starting to come over. You'll probably get that in a second. It's only a little patch. If we can photograph that, we could potentially blend all this light together and it'll look amazing. It's just catching in front of the trees now, but you can just see that bit of light coming over in them dark, moody skies. Fabulous. There we go. That's moody, that's nice. That is fantastic, actually. That is fantastic. Loads of shots. Pick your best. Blend if you want. So what I like about the wide-angle shot is we're at, say, wide angle, but about 27 mil, 26 mil, something around that. Might come a bit wider, actually. Yeah, I think I will. Just lift that up a bit. The reason why I like this wide angle is because we've almost got two V-shapes of cloud lights coming that are pointed towards the trees. Looks brilliant. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab a standard shot. That's at 24 mil. I'm gonna keep it at 24 mil and grab that shot. Then what I need to do is put a filter on that's gonna drop it down a little bit. For that, I'm gonna need probably the six stop. Brilliant, 15th of a second. What should I go on? Let's go an eighth of a second. So F, 13, eighth of a second. On with the big stop. That'll do. Done. Knew that'd be a good morning. Fantastic. I've enjoyed it too. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one.