This is the River Mersey in NW England with Fiddlers Ferry Power Station in the background.
It's only in the last 20 years or so that the River Mersey has been cleaned up enough to allow it to be restocked with fish. Before that it was pretty much a dead river just like the the River Styx of mythology.
About 30 years ago when we were kids my friends and I used to swim in the sea a few miles down the coast from here at Crosby - it's amazing none of us died from the pollution!
Fiddlers Ferry generates 1989MW of power burning 16,000 tonnes of coal and biofuel every day. It uses nearly 200 million liters of water daily from the river for cooling.
For those who are interested in the technicalities of long exposure photography this was a 3 minute exposure at f8 and iso200 using a Nikon D40 and Nikon 16-85vr lens.
Like what you see here and are interested in photographic composition?.....the blog section of my website now has a complete set of 5 articles covering my personal approach to the subject: Ian Bramham Photography - Blog
For purchasing high quality archival prints of any of these photos you can send me an email by clicking here or by going to my website Ian Bramham - Fine Art Photography where prices are listed in the gallery sections under each individual photo.
@Mike: Thanks Mike!
@yz: Thanks yz!
@Foto-aksent: Thanks very much!
@Ted: Hi Ted....yes, I was lucky with the tree wasn't I :-) To get good quality blacks in long exposure photos like this there's a few different things that help: #1 - Expose right to maximise signal to noise ratio: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml This really helps to avoid noise in the shadow areas. #2 - Shoot in RAW format in the highest bit quality that your camera offers. Mine is only 12 bit but your D300 offers 14 bit which is much bettter. I then process using Nikon's NX2 for basic exposure adjustments etc then 'save as' a 16 bit Tiff for conversion to B&W in one of the later Photoshop versions (I use CS3). The RAW/16 bit Tiff combination helps to maximise quality and helps to avoid the appearance of banding or posterization. #3 - as a final step I add a pinch of sepia tone which helps to soften the B&W a little :-) Edit #4 - it should go without saying but shoot in the lowest native iso of your camera - my D40 operates optimally at iso200 but most cameras are best at iso100.
@Curly: Thanks Curly!
@Frida: Thanks Frida!
@Sarito: Thanks Sanito!
@k@: Thank you very much !
@Babzy: Thanks Babzy!
@Peter Zsakai: Thanks Peter!
@Anna.C: Thanks Anna!
@Luca Bobbiesi: Thanks Luca!
@bluechameleon: Thanks Sharon!....I do love photographing with these nd filters!....sometimes the results seem to work out and sometimes they don't. Part of the interest for me lies in never really knowing exactly what I'm going to get.
@Ian Smith: Thanks Ian....I had so much help myself from you and John leech when I was starting out that it would be very strange if I didn't also want to follow your example and help others as much as I'm able. That tree branch must have weighed several hundred pounds and there was no way I'd have liked to try moving it. The mud would have been everywhere!
@Anita: Thanks Anita!
@alex centrella: Thanks Alex!
@Mags: Thanks Mags!
@Ted: Ted - It sounds like it's complicated but believe me when I say I get rapidly bored with post processing my photos and if a photo hasn't got to the way I want it within about 5 minutes then I usually forget about it and move onto processing another one instead. It's very rare that I spend longer than about 10 minutes processing any of my photos. As you've got a Nikon I'd strongly recommend 'Capture NX2' - it's great for handling Nikon's Raw file format and the 'U' control technology is much easier to use and more intuitive than anything in Photoshop. For my family photos in colour it's all that I use these days.
@hugo poon: Thanks Hugo....that's very kind of you!
@john4jack: Thanks Jack!
@Bishop: Thanks....it was bright autumn sunshine believe it or not! (UK autumn sunshine that is!). I used a total of 2 extreme neutral density filters screwed onto the front of the lens for this shot - a 10 stop and a 6 stop (giving 16 total) The nd filters and long exposure give an ambiguous quality to the light which I really love as I feel that it leaves more to the imagination.
@Fred: Thanks Fred....it's a lovely simple camera to use isn't it but with great image quality.
@Betty: Thanks Betty!
NIKON D40
1813/10 second
F/8.0
ISO 200
37 mm (35mm equiv.)