After our brief diversion to stage photography covering headshots and rehearsal photos, this week we’re back in the South Island with some Black & White landscapes from Golden Bay. Despite being mainly obsessed with wildlife and especially bird photography, I am always on the lookout for opportunities for Black & White landscape images. Colour landscapes usually rely on early or late light but Black & White can be more versatile with what would be considered suboptimal light for a colour image working well in monochrome. Another useful tool is a neutral density filter which can achieve slow shutter speeds in daylight and create some movement in clouds and smoothing of water textures. This requires a tripod which adds to the amount of gear to be carried but really expands opportunities.
One of my goals was to visit Wharariki Beach to see the impressive rock stacks that are a frequent landscape subject. We headed there on the day we arrived as we had booked the Farewell Spit Tour for the following day. The day was lovely and sunny but this meant uninspiring skies for photography. Timing of the tide was also unhelpful as it meant an expanse of sand rather than a reflective surface around the stacks. We explored the area a little, finding a pool of playing seal pups to photograph and then wandered down the beach to view the rocks. There were some clouds moving in the brisk wind so I tried some long exposures with the neutral density filter. This gave some cloud motion and blurred out some of the moving tourists on the beach. The tide was slowly coming in so we headed back to the seals and spent more time with them and some foraging Variable Oystercatchers before returning to the rocks. By using a wider angle lens and moving closer I was able to get a wet foreground.
The following day on our tour of Farewell Spit a couple more opportunities arose for Black & White landscape photos. Cape Farewell is more of a record shot but reveals the interesting textures in the rock. With a wide-angle lens these strata can be used as leading lines in toward the arch, the waves performing a similar function on the right of the image.
On Farewell Spit itself the sand textures really lend themselves to Black & White. At this stage of the day the light was getting lower in the sky and really accentuating the wind and tide generated sand ripples. The sand dunes in the first photo and this final photo out near the gannet colony at the tip of the spit highlight these ripple textures. Farewell Spit is a creation of wind and tide acting on sand and the lines of wind, water, sand and cloud illustrate this intertwined dynamism.
All photos with Nikon D810. Black&White conversions with SilverEfex Pro2 fro the Nik Collection by DXO. Silver Efex has long been my preferred Black&White conversion plugin and it is great that it has been taken over and updated by DXO. When Google made it free and stopped supporting it I began to explore other options and quite enjoyed MacPhun Tonality which has now been integrated into Skylum Luminar. The communication around these changes was suboptimal and caused me a bit of frustration so I was very pleased to purchase the updated DXO version of the Nik plugins. Silver Efex is quick and easy and seems to get you to where you need to be more efficiently than anything else I have tried.
