Landscape Photography

The mood here pretty much sums up the weather conditions during shooting: cold with gentle 40 mph wind gusts. This photo is one case where the potential was there but was not revealed until I was stuck in the editing and the right textures, gradients, and color were applied. The original contains part of the black sand beach along the bottom, but the high contrast with white water crashing ashore was too distracting. A 16:9 crop drew better focus to the horizon and provides a cinematic feel. Camera settings using the Nikon D850 at 130 mm were 1/25 s, f/11, ISO 64. Given the longer focal length, I kept the aperture high to ensure the water and sea stacks were sharp from front to back while still allowing a fast enough shutter speed to capture the choppy textures in the stormy seas. I wanted to invoke an eerie feeling with this one, for the cool dreary conditions, and for the mysterious seas stacks adjacent to the looming mountain in southern Iceland.