Shooting long exposures in broad daylight - Laferla Cross

Malta frequently tops the list as the sunniest country in the European Union. This means we get a lot of harsh sun and little clouds. Hardly the right conditions for a moody long-exposure. 

What we do get, though, is a lot of wind. And when we do get the occasional cloudy day, suddenly our island becomes a gold-mine for long exposures. To start with, we are surrounded by the sea. But apart from that, we also have buildings like the Laferla Cross standing imperiously among our ever-diminishing countryside. Such buildings stand out from the surroundings, making them great long-exposure subjects.

To defeat the sun, I screwed on a 10 Stop ND filter and a Circular Polarizer on my Nikon 16-35mm. Although this did result in some corner vignetting, it allowed me to cut the amount of light by 12 stops. In addition, the corners were cropped out, so really, none of that ended up being a problem.

As for the composition, I purposely titled the lens upwards and took advantage of the pincushion distortion to elongate the lines going upwards. All of this was done to give a feeling of longing to the sky in order to better portray the religious nature of this building.


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