Boat and Beach at Red Wharf Bay

This is one of many sailboats moored on the beach at Red Wharf Bay, near Benllech, Anglesey.

The photo was taken at 4:40pm on the 7th September 2022 as a three-bracket HDR set and developed with On1 Photo RAW.

Parts of the estuary beach at Red Wharf Bay are rather boggy, so my trekking sandals and feet needed a thorough rinse after this little photo shoot!

I had been using telephoto focal lengths again for some of the shots of the boats to compress the distance between them. But for this shot, I returned to ultra-wide.

I found the familiar close-and-wide perspective added some extra interest to the architecture of the subject, its lead-in tether and the composition as a whole. The expansion also gave the distant boat a decidedly secondary and supportive role.

The photo was actually taken with the tether leading from the right and the boat on the left. In this situation, when developing an image, I often check whether it would look better flipped so the eye’s drawn from left and rewarded by the subject on the right. I think in this case, it made the composition much stronger.

I compared the captured image in monochrome and preferred it – although I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps the saturated colours were just a distraction from the content and negatively competed with the photo’s contrast and texture.

After optimising the luminosity levels, however, I did return just 3% of the original colours, toned the highlights with a little warmth and cooled the shadows with a bit of blue.

Comments welcome below: