Harry Wheeler-Brand filled in tonight at short notice and gave us a tour of the East Anglian coast, mostly concentrating on long exposure images with ND filters from 6 to 15 stops. Like Andrew Bulloch, whom we met recently, Harry is a winner of the young landscape photographer of the year. Harry has been running his own photography business since his teens.
The use of neutral density filters to permit exposures of many seconds or even many minutes is favoured by many landscape photographers . Landscapes don't move much, but seascapes do- and most of the pictures Harry showed us were seascapes as much as landscapes.
The coastline of East Anglia (mostly) tends to be pretty flat. There is little scenic high drama between Hunstanton and Southend, (except in an easterly gale). So it's a place where adding a bit of oomph to images comes naturally and Harry showed us some grand techniques to do so. The drama is apt to be in the sky or right on the foreshore amid the waves. We had lowering and dramatic clouds, rainstorms and foam streaks, fluffy clouds scudding past beaches and buildings; shining vegetation in infra red.
But he also uses long exposure to conceal- to blend water movement in a way that draws attention to other features of the image, often with leading lines drawing the eye to finer details. Removing people, maybe even vehicles is another use he makes of long exposure, emptying a beach the way in the 19th century long exposure photography emptied city streets .
Like us, Harry has all the east coast sunrises he is willing to get up early for, but the sun moves a degree in 4 minutes, so long exposures take thought- and it only rises in the same place twice a year- and there are tides to deal with, so I don't doubt that planning takes a big part of his time.
Camera clubs tend to attract retired folk and it can be easy to wonder if photography is an old person's game and headed the way of the dinosaur, but then we meet characters like Andrew Bulloch and Harry Wheeler-Brand and feel that maybe the future of photography is in pretty good shape after all. An entertaining evening with lots of material to think about.