HARBOURING COLOUR - SKYWATCH

Set camera phasers to stun

All to easy to grab the pretty sunsets and sun ups when you live coastal to glean those "ooh ah stunning" comments. Well my poor little harbour has been neglected lately because of this laziness on my part. Ramsey Harbour is a wealth of colour, textures, layers and of course cranes. Am I the only one who likes a crane looming over the skyline? Possibly. A little slice of working dockside life then but how come the colours are so vivid for an industrial scene. It's all to do with your helpful little camera and it's setting, one's you may not even be aware you have. Shut up as tell us then you ask.



Obviously not all cameras from point and shoot to the big guns all singing dancing many lens ones have the same features but you might find yours has. Firstly you will need a manual setting mode switched on. Be brave try it. Next look around for these thing in your menu- sharp, vivid, saturate, etc or variations on those themes. These are different to your weather setting - cloudy, sunny, shade, etc.For this image I wanted to pick up the orange green and yellow bits and still keep the blue/lilac of the sky. For this I set the camera to vivid. This meant that the white stays white not bleaches so the clouds are white and not bleed into the colour part of the sky. The sky colour reflected in the water remains and doesn't lose out either. The hints of yellow, green and orange are picked up by the vivid mode without over egging them, just retaining the colour. As there was a slight haze I decided against using the sharp which can give harsh lines to retain the natural hazy feel to the building rooftops and the lighthouse far left keeping the sharp natural focus on the foreground. Ok there is slightly more to it than this. Seeing the scene in the first place and of course no amount of "magic buttons" on your camera can compensate for you if you know naff all about composition and chop the heads off (figuratively speaking) your nearest and dearest or can't keep a camera straight. That one's down to you.



Hoe you got all that.