Sunset at Juno Beach more than 69 years after D-day

Sunset at Juno Beach. It's a very strong set of feelings that go through you, when you stand on the beaches on which the allied forces landed on the 6. of june 1944, also known as D-Day. Almost 60 years later you still find left overs from the war and from the 150.000 troops that landed on the beach that early morning. Almost 60 years later I got this peaceful photo from Juno beach, which is the beach where the Canadians landed. Imagening the number of dead people and the horrible events that took place on that day, is indeed very moving. This photo is taken at low tide and several hundred meters from the the coast line and only half way to the water. Photo by Jacob Surland, www.caughtinpixels.com

Nikon D600, Nikkor 14-24mm, ISO 1600, 14mm, f/3.2, 1/50 sec

It’s a very strong set of feelings that go through you, when you stand on the beaches on which the allied forces landed on the 6. of june 1944, also known as D-Day. Almost 70 years later you still find left overs from the war and from the 150.000 troops that landed on the beach that early morning. Almost 70 years later I got this peaceful photo from Juno beach, which is the beach where the Canadians landed. Imagening the number of dead people and the horrible events that took place on that day, is indeed very moving. This photo is taken at low tide and several hundred meters from the the coast line and only half way to the water.

About the shooting

I shot this photo as an bracketed shot. I shot it hand held at ISO 1600 on my Nikon D600. I wasn’t prepared for shooting any photos this evening and had not brought the tripod. However I managed to get some decent shots hand held and by working with the noise reduction, I get a decent result. Not the same quality, as if I had used a tripod.

I have found out, that when I shoot single exposures using both the Nikon D600 and Nikon D800 I need to set the exposure compensation to -2/3 EV step. This will in most cases give me an image that is slightly under exposed but with no burned out areas.

This was the setting my camera had when I went to the beach, and when I activated bracketed -2, 0 and +2, it will also get adjusted by the -2/3 of an exposure step. This gives odd exposures -2 2/3, -2/3 and +1 1/3

This photo I used for this one ended up being the +1 1/3 exposure. It is very bright, but has got almost no burned out high lights. If you look at the histogram you can see the information is spread all across, and all of the histogram to the right is used. For some reason you can keep more information in the right hand side of the histogram, than in the left hand (and dark side), so if you exposure to use the right hand side, you get more information in your photo and in this case less noise. This is called Expose To The Right (ETTR). In this case I can use the overexposed with a good result.

Juno beach - histogram

Processing

To get the look and feel I adjusted the White Balance to Daylight, even though it was not day light. That gives the warm bluish purple mood of the clouds. And then I changed the exposure compensation in Lightroom to -2 – which brought me to -2/3, which I normally shoot in.

I then exported to Photoshop to do straightening up and noise reduction. I used Noiseware for noise reduction.

I used a lot of time removing footsteps in the sand. Optimal there would have been no foot steps, but people were walking all around. There was no way to get the shot without any foot steps.

 

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