We are out at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, California. We came here today to do some tide pool photography.
If you live near a coastal area, you usually can find a safe, rocky coastline, that when “Low Tide” happens, a whole host of sea creatures and life is revealed.
I’m Terry VanderHeiden and this is The Nature Photography Podcast
To prepare for this, we first checked when low tide was. Tides change about every six hours. In keeping with WHEN this area is open to the public, our low tide choices on this day were 9 am or 9 pm.
For obvious reasons, not the least of which is navigating slippery rocks in the dark, low tide at night is not going work for us. So that left us with choosing a daytime tide that worked. Here’s how we arrived at that:
The tides change from day to day, advancing about 40 minutes. That means that when low tide is at 6 am on a Monday, Tuesday, morning low tide will be about 6:40 am.
In the case of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, the hours are from 8:00 am to 7:pm and we wanted make sure we were here and ready to photograph at low tide. Our low tide today is at 9 am, so getting here at 8 am would give us the best opportunity to move out with the lessening tide and not be worried about the tide coming back in making use move back in right away.
The other thing to know about shooting at a tide pool is that you are ideally looking for ultra-low tides.
It’s pretty simple, the lower the tide, the farther out you can explore and the farther out you can go, the more species are revealed.
Tides are easy to follow and determine. I use an app on my phone that is called “Tides Near Me” and it seems to work pretty well. But I am sure there are many apps out there or just a simple internet search that will give you accurate tide tables where you are.
Off the coast of California, the lowest tides we see are in the winter, because the moon is closer to the earth and increases the gravitational pull of the moon. This yields high tides that are usually higher than normal and also the opposite effect that low tides are lower. These low tides are called “minus tides”.
Also in the winter, in the Bay Area, there is the real possibility of sleeper waves. This is a phenomenon that happens every year when storms gather in the pacific and huge waves can unexpectedly sweep beach goers into the ocean. The winter also brings a stronger undertow so the victims that are swept off their feet are rapidly pulled away from shore into very cold water, sometimes never to be seen again.
As a warning, when you are out photographing and concentrating on what’s in your viewfinder, keep vigilant about the possibility of rogue waves. Always do this type of shooting with a partner just to keep each other safe.
What kind of gear do you want to bring to a tidepool shoot?
Most cases, all you will need to bring is a macro lens and flash. Since you will be photographing in shallow pools that form when the waves recede.
You can also skip the flash and just use available light. If you decide to go this way, not using a flash, you will need to bring a polarizing filter. This filter will help cut the reflection on the surface of the water and reflections on kelp and such.
Let’s do a quick refresher on how to use a polarizer filter. A polarizer is one of the two filters I recommend to my students and other photographers, to have in their camera bags. (The other filter is a Neutral Density filter which we can talk about another time.)
The polarizer works like your sunglasses to cut the glare. And just like your sunglasses, they only work when the direction of the sunlight is at the correct angle.
The advantage to the Polarizer filter is that most of the time it has a rotating lens front. Sometimes this filter is called a CIRCULAR polarizer. This allows the photographer to rotate the polarizer filter to do the most elimination of glare. On top of each circular polarizer filter usually a painted-on dot. This dot is for orientation. The simple way is to just keep the dot pointed at the sun.
The best way to use a polarizer filter is to attach it to the camera and look through the lens and rotate the filter. This will show you when the filter is in the best position to eliminate the most glare.
When you do this, you will lose about a stop and half of light, so you may need to raise up your ISO to compensate for the outside light. The nice thing is you’re at the beach! So there should be plenty of light.
If you didn’t’ know already, now you know how to properly use a polarizer filter. This is not a filter to KEEP on your lens. I see this all the time; photographers leave the polarizer on the lens. Think of the Polarizer filter as a filter to be used between 10 am and 3 pm. The polarizer does little good for early morning and late afternoon shoots because of the angle of the sunlight isn’t there yet.
There is seldom a reason to use the polarizer at night, or with a flash, since you don’t’ have the sun creating glare you need to eliminate. So take it off when the light is not creating glare.
If you want to use available light and a polarizer, find your subject and put it in the frame of your camera. Rotate the filter so the glare disappears as you look through the viewfinder. That is the most fool proof way of using the polarizer.
At the tide pools, some of your subjects will be under a few inches of water. This will cause a few issues, so you need to know how to shoot through a few inches of water.
Lets go back to the beginning and talk about how to prep for all of this.
The first thing I start with is to wear my waders and wading boots. These boots have small metal nubs on them to help reduce slipping on rocks. As you can imagine, stepping over tide pools on to moss and seaweed covered rocks can result in a nasty fall. That’s why I use the waders and studded boots.
I desperately try to avoid stepping in the tide pools. After all, this the home to many creatures. Just because I have waders on, doesn’t mean I can go slogging wherever I want. It’s important to be cautious where ever you step while visiting the tide pools. Don’t go bulldogging over areas where muscles are attached or other sea creatures trying to survive until the tide comes back in.
Another reason not to step into the tidepools is that you will unsettle silt that will cloud up your photographs and make the pool unusable for quite a while.
Be sure to know and follow the guidelines at your destination. At the Fitzgerald reserve, there is no touching of animals, no removing or even moving them to a better spot for photography. Just shoot as you find things and do no disrupt the animal’s lives. That way, yourself and others can keep coming back again and again.
With the waders on, depending on what I’m shooting that day, if its close up, I will just bring my macro lens attached to my camera and a ring flash attached to the lens. That’s it.
I also carry with me a kneeling pad. These are made out dense foam and only cost about $4 at Harbor Freight. I think they are meant to be sold to gardeners who have to kneel all the time. This is perfect for getting down on the rocks to get yourself low to your subject.
It takes a little getting used to, to photograph in the tide pools. You have to deal sometimes with water between you and your subject and the glare from the sky reflecting off the surface of the water. While we already talked about using a polarizer, if you are using a ring flash like me, there are some other considerations.
What I did, is some practice in my back yard a few days before I went over to the tide pools.
I’m outside in my backyard and what I am doing is making a test tide pool to work on a few shooting techniques.
I found a shallow bucket and I have lined it with a black garbage bag. I then filled it half way with some small rocks I have in the yard. I’m trying to replicate what I will find at the tide pools in terms of how my light is going to work and how to avoid reflections from overcast light.
I need to place it in an accessible location so I can easily photograph it. if I don’t need to lay on the ground to do it, so much the better. I’ll be doing plenty of that when I get to the tide pools.
I’ll place it on my picnic table for my tests, and let it sit overnight to settle any of the floating material in the water.
Ok, it’s my little test tide pool has been sitting overnight so all the things that were swirling around in the water have settled into place. I happen to have an overcast morning, which should be similar to what I will find at the coast.
I have decided to mostly use my ring flash for the lighting. And I have discovered that as long as I shoot into the shallow water at an angle, I don’t have any reflection problems. This eliminates the straight down shots but that is no big deal.
On a ring flash, the flash hangs onto the front of the macro lens. This makes it easy to shoot close up subjects because I don’t have to worry about holding the flash with one hand and trying to get it to the right position. Also, I don’t have to be concerned with shadows caused by the flash being on top of the camera hooked into the hot shoe. Sometimes, the flash from that angle can cause shadows of the lens, since it will be lighting behind that lens.
What I use as a ring light is the Nissin, MF18. I chose it because of the power, flexibility of the ring light – being able to change the intensity out of one side or the other as the ring light is divided into two halves the A and B side. This allows me to have a stronger light coming from the right side if I want and the left side is fill in light. I also can rotate it so the light comes from above and is balanced with some fill light from below.
There are several ring lights available so go check them out and see if you might want to add one to your camera bag.
I’m back at the tide pools and just walking around I can see many things that were living under water a short time ago. Star fish clinging to the rocks right out in the open, muscles in large groups attached to the rocks.
I like the smell of the fresh sea water as it crashes over the rocks in the distance. Since I am here just before low tide, each wave pulls back a bit, revealing more wildlife subjects.
Hey look at this, a tiny crab is making his way around the seaweed. This is a fun subject to photograph. When you try to get close up, he moves quite a bit faster than he seemed to. Since everything is magnified that is one of the challenges. So, I just watch him for a few minutes and see if is developing a pattern. Then I will set up and try to capture him as he goes by.
Here is nice find. A bright green sea anemone. He’s just under the surface of the water, with his tentacles extending and moving slightly.
Since the tide has moved away, this little pool has really still water, so the sea anemone is very clear. I do have some overcast reflections on the surface of the water but since I tested this the other day in my back yard, I know how to deal with this.
First, I have to shoot at an angle. Since this subject is clinging to an edge of a rock, the angle is already set up to me. In order to get a straight shot, I need to come in at an angle that is about 45 dregrees to the surface of the water, now there is no glare.
I am shooting with my ring light so the illumination is great.
I learned from shooting in the back yard in my fake tide pool sample that I do lose some light that has to penetrate the water to get to my subject. This is an easy fix, to either pump up the power of the flash, open the lens or bump up my ISO. I’ll just increase the power to the flash.
This is fun stuff shooting out in the tide pool. Let’s get back to the studio to take a look at these on the computer and see what the next steps are.
I have brought up the image of the sea anemone here in lightroom and there are few things that I need to work on.
First off, since I was photographing through the water, my contrast was dropped quite a bit. So all I need to do is add contrast by moving the contrast slider. Once I get to the desired look, I pull it back a bit and then go down to the DeHaze slider. This is kind of like micro contrast, so I can creep up on the contrast I am looking for.
When bumping up the color in Lightroom, you have two choices. Vibrance and Saturation. Saturation will increase all the colors in the image. This can work well, but it can also be over down pretty quickly.
Vibrance on the other hand, will increase colors that are not too bold to begin with. Kind of think of it as raising the intensity of the mid-tones of your photographs. I find that it works well with the cool colors like teal and green to intensify those colors.
Luckily, the sea anemone is mostly green so I can be a bit more free with this slider to bring up the colors that were lost through those few inches of sea water in the tide pools.
If you have accessibility to tide pools, or are planning a vacation to a coastal area, check the tide tables in that area and make some time to go shoot at the tide pools.
As always you can head over to my web site, IMAGE LIGHT dot com and see some of the images we shot during this podcast to get a better feeling of what we’re doing on this shoot at the tide pools.
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Until next time, this is Terry VanderHeiden with the Nature Photograph podcast. Thanks for listening.