Achieving the correct exposure for coastal scenes can be difficult.
There are several things that can fool your cameras light meter,
bright highlights on water or bright white foamy waves can lead
to under exposure. On the other hand if you have chosen a large
dark rock in your foreground this could lead your camera to
overexposed. So you need to keep an eye out for large areas
of bright or dark tones and apply exposure accordingly, check
your histogram after each photograph, adjust the exposure
and re-shoot if necessary.
There can also be a huge range of contrast within any one
scene, with bright skies, dark rocks and bright highlights on
the water. Neutral Density filters are essential to help
balance the exposure between the brightness of the sky and
Sea to the darkness of your foreground, so remember to take
readings from the three different areas, the foreground, the sky
and the sea.
Note: Use combinations of soft and hard neutral density filters
to balance out the exposure between sky, sea and land.
Use the hard edge for the sky, the the soft edge to remove
the glare from the sea, leaving the clear section of the
filter for your foreground.
Note: Use a polarizing filter to remove the glare from the sky
and sea, then a neutral density filter to balance the
exposure between the sky and foreground (land),
remember a polarizing filter works best when at right
angles to your primary light source (sun).
Expose to capture movement
One of the great advantages of taking photographs at the
sea is capturing the movement of the sea and waves, with
the lens stopped down to extend your depth of field, long
exposures are a necessity. Exposure times may range from
several seconds to minutes depending on your light
conditions. To capture the drama of waves breaking against
rocks and shores use speeds of 1/4 second or slower.
Expose to the right
Exposing your scene to the right of your histogram will help
maximize image quality - although this only applies to shooting
In RAW mode. The result is a histogram with the mayority of the
pixels grouped to the right of the mid point of your histogram.
Push the exposure as far to the right as possible without blowing
out your highlights, then opening the photograph in RAW
converter adjust the brightness and contrast until the image looks
right.