Dunstanburgh Castle Landscape Photography

Dunstanburgh castle in Northumberland

I was up at Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumbria on a bit of a motorbike/photography trip with a friend recently when I got this photo. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a sunset and there was even less of a sunrise but we did the best with the light we had. Dunstanburgh castle is a very photogenic location, with waves rolling in over the large round boulders as foreground interest and the ruined castle on the hill top it gives the landscape photographer numerous opportunities to create a great image. A great sky would really set the image off but as the clouds weren’t really dancing I made sure the sky wasn’t really the focal point, one of the ways this was done was by positioning the horizon on the top third as opposed to the bottom. I wanted the motion of the waves to appear misty, this was done by having the camera on bulb mode and keeping the shutter open for 90 seconds (a very opaque neutral density filter such as a 10-stop is pretty essential for long exposures).

Dunstanburgh castle in Northumberland (Colour Version)

Composition was a little tricky on the beach but I knew I didn’t want a single rock dominating the middle of the foreground so tried to make sure the rocks were fairly evenly scattered. I also had to wait for a bunch of pretty large waves as it is the white choppy water that gives the mist effect on long exposures, gentle waves wouldn’t have worked. It’s worth noting that the tripod was in about a foot of water here (as was I occasionally) and any wave splashes or rain on the filters had to be cleaned straight off, a tedious task to say the least. I used a 10 stop ND filter and a 3 stop grad to retail detail in the sky, as I wanted the cloud movement as well.

Dunstanburgh Castle with a Pink Sky

Processing was done in lightroom and the black and white conversion was done using nik software’s silver efex pro. The shot was taken at f/8, 16mm, ISO250 for 90 seconds. I’ve added a couple of colour versions of Dunstanburgh Castle as well, sometimes it’s difficult to choose!