Be prepared to do something different

Jan. 27, 2011 - PRLog -- A couple of weeks ago I drove up to Aldeburgh to photograph the “Scallop” at sunrise.  The weather forecast was promising and the sky looked good as I drove north.  The image I'd been hoping for relied heavily on the sun lighting up the clouds above the Scallop before it appeared over the horizon, but a heavy bank of cloud out to sea put paid to that and the sunrise turned out to be a bit of a damp squib.
Rather than go home empty handed I thought I’d try something a little different.  I grabbed a couple of flashguns from my bag and set about seeing what I could do with them.  It was getting lighter and they didn't have the power to illuminate the whole sculpture as the day brightened – the Scallop stands about 4m tall!  With the flashguns off camera in the shingle I decided to focus the light beam in the centre creating some fall off toward the edges.  I deliberately underexposed the sky to darken the mood.  Finally a conversion to monochrome in Lightroom followed by adjustments to the contrast created the image you can see above.
The Scallop is a tribute by the artist Maggi Hambling to the British composer Benjamin Britten and bears the words from his opera, Peter Grimes, “I hear those voices that will not be drowned”.  It stands on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk and is there to be enjoyed both visually and physically.  People are encouraged to climb on it and watch the sea.  I think it’s a bit like marmite – you either love it or you hate it.  Personally, I love it!
If you’d like to see more of my landscape work then please take a look at http:/www.hennelljameslandscapes.co.uk.
You can follow Hennell James Photography on Twitter at @HJPhotographer or email jeremy@hennelljamesphotography.co.uk

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Jeremy Hennell James is a wedding, portrait and landscape photographer based in East Anglia. Weddings & portraits capture memories in a moment. Jeremy’s landscapes, often including water, adding an ethereal look to a scene.