Taking his second, First Place of the year, Zane Llewellyn won Grade A in our latest competition, themed ‘Motion’ with the compelling image above. This is how he made the shot:

I’d missed the previous weeks ECCG shoot to Pilmore beach, near Youghal and after seeing some great shots I headed down with my dog, Holly, for a recce. It was a grey, damp, foggy day with the tide way out, a far cry from the dramatic scene that my fellow ECCG members had experienced only days before.

While I may have been underwhelmed, Holly was very excited so we headed off down the beach while taking random grey photos. It wasn’t looking good for getting any decent photo, but it’s all practice I told myself.

Holly – My ever faithful model

Remembering that there was a motion theme for the next competition, I tried to get some panning shots of Holly running along the beach, but she would only run towards me or away from me, never across. W.C. Fields saying, “Never work with Children or Animals”, was ringing in my ears!

As we rounded the corner, I noticed a large gathering of birds down at the waterline, so keeping my camera in the settings I’d had for the previous failed shots, we walked slowly towards them. About 50 metres away from them and without warning, off they flew. Luckily they flew past me rather than away and I managed to get a few shots panning left to right at the same speed as the birds. They didn’t look much on the camera, but it was impressive to witness all the same.

It was only when I opened them on the computer that I saw one photo looked like it might be a keeper. I cropped it to a panoramic format to try and emphasise the sense of motion, while keeping the horizon and birds on the horizontal thirds. The sea and sky were very grey and dull because of the fog, so I added a gradient to reduce the exposure and add some contrast to the sky. I did the same with the foreground to hide the messy seaweed and bring the focus to the birds.

The camera settings were 1/40 sec @ f16, ISO 100.

Well done Zane. Just goes to show that even in the worst of conditions, a great shot is never far away.

See also:
How I took that Shot – Jim O’Neill
How I took that Shot – Sonja Eisenberg
Competition Blog
Competition Gallery
Winners Presentation Photos
Competition Results and 2016 League Table