The Giant’s Causeway is the result of a a volcanic eruption that created about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns about the size of an American football field. It is located in Northern Ireland near the town of Bushmills and was declared a World Heritage site in 1986. It is a very popular tourist attraction with over a million visitors a year. It’s pretty awesome to see, but can be a challenge to photograph. Here’s how I made this photo.

On our trip to Northern Ireland, we stayed in Portrush, specifically to see the Causeway. Mark and Cat just have to see every columnar basalt formation in the world. As with many natural attractions, it’s a lot to take in on your first visit and can be visually overwhelming, especially if you are trying to make a good photograph. I found this subject harder than most because the basalt is black and the water and waves are white, thereby causing some exposure challenges.

We went once at sunrise, which was glorious as there were no people there (you have to pay for parking and hike about 20 minutes). During the day there is a shuttle and it’s a zoo. Not quite getting what we wanted, we went back for sunset after the parking lot and visitor’s center closed. It was not THAT crowded, but we still had about 50 people getting comfortable for sunset.

Look

The largest part of the Causeway is a long slopping ramp into the ocean, but the most popular selfie station, and I think the most interesting section, was a small hill of basalt. I had a plan to use this in my sunset photo, as I knew the sun would set pretty much behind it if I composed it well. In my first composition, I tried to use the basalt in the foreground, but found it too chunky. I liked the curve of basalt and water.

See

For my second attempt, I moved back to get more water and the entire curve and I stayed low to have some basalt in the foreground. STILL too chunky.

Imagine

I finally gave up on the chunky foreground idea and stood up tall and moved to higher ground. Now I was almost the same height as the hill and I could shoot down at the water. I was fortunate to have the sun right in front of me and some good clouds were dropping in. I started to get really excited.

Once I got my composition set, I concentrated on getting the sky, water and basalt exposed well. I put on a circular 5 stop neutral density filter on my lens to slow down the water. I then used my Singh Ray neutral density graduated filters – a 2-stop grad and a 2-stop reverse grad to get the sky right. The reverse grad is a very cool tool as the darkest part of the filter is in the middle and you can put it right on the horizon for sunrises and sunsets when shooting directly at the sun.

Create

After I got the composition I wanted, I bracketed at least 20-30 exposures as the light kept changing. By the way, there was almost always someone or some people on the basalt hill making selfies. The shutter speed was slow enough to blur them out or I knew I could take them out in processing. I observed an interesting selfie courtesy as people waited in line and went to the top of the hill one-by-one. There was no crowding.

I knew that I needed to expose for the sky. I checked the shadows and though, it was dark, I had plenty of detail in the basalt. Below is my final image after processing. I brought up the shadows. I increased clarity and structure to bring out the clouds. I pushed the color saturation to bring out the blue in the water and pink, orange, and yellow in the sky. I probably should clean up the bottom right corner and I could take out the green algae, but honestly, that was what was there and I kind of like the contrast with the black basalt.

To see more of and buy our photographs, please go to www.pamphotography.com and check out more of our photos on FLICKR.