Articles
The Story Behind the Image: Baltimore Beacon
The Baltimore Beacon is a classic West Cork landmark. Standing on a promontory near the town of Baltimore, it marks – along with the Sherkin lighthouse (seen across the channel to the right of the beacon in this photograph) – the entrance to Baltimore harbour. Without these two markers the entrance to the harbour would be hard to spot from the sea, as Sherkin Island and the mainland overlap, disguising the channel.
Because of its commanding position and accessibility, it’s a frequently visited site. This view of Sherkin Island with the beacon standing in the foreground is the classic, even obvious viewpoint and as such is commonly photographed.
It’s a spot that I’ve visited many times and for this image, I wanted to do something a little different.
Baltimore Beacon (Lot’s Wife), Baltimore, Co. Cork
Canon EOS 5D Mk II, TS-E 24mm f/3.5L
f/3.5, 1/80 sec @ ISO 100, 3-stop and 2-stop ND graduated filters, polarizer
Arrival
This image was made the day following the worst flooding that West Cork had seen in living memory. Ballingeary, the village where I live, was virtually cut off from the rest of the county – the only way out was over obscure mountain roads, some of which were in the process of being washed away by floodwater.
My good friend Neil McShane had come down for a few days photographing and had arrived the day before. Not to be deterred by the raging torrents, we set out to capture the waves crashing on the south coast. However, upon reaching Bantry and discovering the widespread nature of the flooding and being made aware that high tide was only going to make it worse, we beat a retreat back home lest we be unable to return later.
The next day dawned bright and clear and seemed to promise some great photography. The floodwaters hadn’t receded much, but we were able to get out easily enough and worked our way along the south coast until we hit Baltimore. Arriving a few hours before sunset, we walked up to the beacon and were presented with stunning views of the heavy swell sending waves of spray up Sherkin’s southern cliffs.
The Composition
Composition is always key to a photograph’s success or failure, and especially for a scene as frequently photographed as this one. I also wanted to include some foreground elements to give a sense of depth to the image. After a quick scount, I decided to use this rocky outcrop. On a previous visit, I used it as a platform for the tripod – I’m not sure how I missed the leading lines created by the cracks in the rock!
With the camera carefully positioned to the left of the outcrop, the lines created by the cracks form a strong diagonal to the beacon. Further, it’s carried through and past it by the south coast of Sherkin in the background. With the decision to use this line, the comosition fell into place easily. The beacon went on the left-hand third and the start of the crack close to the bottom-right intersection.
Lens Choice
With any art form, you need to try new things every now and then to stimulate the creative juices and remain inventive. I decided to play with the plane of focus to create a narrow band of sharpness through the image along the line I wanted the viewer to look.
In most photography, the plane of focus is fixed – it’s always perpendicular to the lens axis. We can move it in and out, but we can’t tilt it up or down, or side to side. With a view camera, it’s possible to tilt and swing the lens, thereby creating a ‘wedge’ of focus that’s either vertical (in the case of a swing) or horizontal (in the case of a tilt).
Most 35mm lenses don’t have this functionality, but there are a few that do. Neil had brought his 24mm Canon TS-E lens with him, which allows just these sorts of movements. See below for an image of this lens mounted on my camera.
24mm TS-E f/3.5L lens mounted on my 5D Mk II
This image also shows three filters mounted in front of the lens – two graduated neutral density filters (3-stop and 2-stop – needed to balance the exposure between the sky and the darker foreground), and a circular polarizer to create better contrast between the sky and the clouds. The ND grads are the long rectangular filters and the polarizer is the circular one in front of them.
In the photograph above, you can see that the lens has been tilted on a diagonal away from the viewer. That was not the movement used in this image – the tilt was diagonal and downwards, and there was a downward shift of the lens as well(to stop the beacon from leaning into the frame, which it would have done if I pointed the camera downwards at all).
The Effect
All of this was done to create the effect you see in the photograph. There is a narrow band of focus from the large crack in the bottom-right of the frame, through the beacon, and on to the island beyond. A wide aperture of f/3.5 was used to give minimal depth of field to ensure the rest of the image would be distinctly out of focus.
This results in a three-dimensional appearance as well as reinforcing the diagonal line mentioned earlier. It shows a familiar object in an unfamiliar fashion, prompting the viewer to examine it more closely.
Postprocessing
There was not much postprocessing necessary in this image – the ND filters meant that there was little need to balance the brightness of the sky and foreground. Some basic Curves adjustments were used to tweak the contrast and a little localized saturation reduction was performed to take some of the strong blue cast out of the shadowed areas of the beacon and the foreground rocks.
In Conclusion
This image is somewhat experimental, and is probably not to everyone’s taste. It defies the conventions of landscape photography, which was its aim. I’m sure I’ll be using this technique more in the future.
If you’d like to find out more about the technique of using tilt/shift lenses to manipulate depth of field, this article is an excellent resource.
I hope that you have found this tutorial useful. If you’d like to improve your camera or post-processing techniques, I run regular workshops at my studio in West Cork and in Dublin.
On top of that, I also run ten-day touring workshops. Contact me for details.
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