St Augustine Morning
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus Aurelius
I used a EOS Canon R5 with a 17mm Tilt Shift lens. During the blue hour, I used a 150x150 ten-stop ND filter (Big Stopper) in a SW 150 Lee filter holder.
After the sunrise, I added a 150x150 square polarizer. For all exposure calculations, I used a Sekonic L758DR spot meter. It is much easier to add the filter compensation (10 stops for Big Stopper) and then set exposure compensation on the meter. I set the meter so that it would give me readings for +3 stops (to compensate for about one stop loss with polarizer and 2 stops to place the highlight on zone-seven.
Wordsworth composed this poem “Upon the Westminster’s Bridge”; this applies to the bridge of Lions in St Augustine too!
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
