Logical Photography - Trying to document how I thought to take one photograph

I would like to start a new challenge.

Under the name of "logical photography", I want to document how I thought to take one photograph. By documenting my thought by myself, I will unexpectedly recognize something that I didn't consider or something that I didn't have logical reasons for it. I must take advantage of these opportunities.

One of the reasons is simply because I want to use the PDCA cycle. Another is because I want you to enjoy the story of how one photographer thinks to take one photograph.

Please enjoy yourself!

Long time no shooting the sunset over Tama River. Although I had little free time these days for shooting, I couldn't help going out of my house because of the strong sunlight from the west.

However, the sky was getting darker while I was running, and the sun had already disappeared into the thickly-stretching cloud when I arrived at Tama River.

The extent of the orange color was not that good, and the sky over the cloud was a monotone. I could easily guess my photo would be the simple one which I had shooted a long ago.

But I did want to shoot something to prove that my running had any meaning. I thought and thought thoroughly, and decided to go down to the edge of the river. And I took a photo of the orange waves under the sunset and the stretching cloud.

Canon EOS 6D, Canon EF50mm F1.4 USM (50mm, f/16, 1/20 sec, ISO-100)

I adopted the large F-number of 16 so that I could take a photo of the buildings in the distance and the waves very close to me. The shatter speed was as slow as 1/20 seconds because I wanted to keep the ISO-value to be 100. It was easy for me because I have trained a lot so that I can take photos with 1/6 seconds by the 50mm prime lens on my hand-held camera.

I once read an article saying that our eyesight is the world where the shatter speed is about 1/60 seconds. Then the 1/20 seconds will create the world where the waves are deformed a bit. I like how the waves look in this photo, even from the small screen of my smartphone.

By the way, there were no uncommon artificial lights around me. I set the white balance to be 5200K while checking with my eyes.

This is how I thought while this photo was created. This is the manual shooting in which I adjusted all the possible parameters by myself.

When I started to use a DSLR, I was dependent on its auto setting. But it is too scary to use it now because I cannot control the output. I will keep trying the maual shooting to take full advantage of my DSLR.

P.S. It must be interesting to compare the photos by the auto and the ones by the manual. I will challenge this soon.

Well... my article doesn't explain all the necessary arguments. I adopted the large F-number of 16. But it didn't explain why I didn't adopt F/22.

Even if I adopted F/22, the shatter speed would be 1/10 seconds. I can take photos by my hand-held camera well, and the waves will look beautifully because of the slow shatter speed. If I have to mention one disadvantage, I dare to say that the largest F-number will cause the diffraction phenomenon which leads to the quality deterioration in total.

It seems like I'm likely to have an idea of using F/16 as a large F-number because I saw many of Mr. Kent Shiraishi's work with the number. I should have my own idea about the appropriate large F-number. This is my homework.