Floating pillars

“Floating pillars”. Another shot taken on the beautiful island of Sant’Antioco, in Sardinia, to be precise at the stacks of the Nido dei Passeri. The magnificence of these rock formations and the time of day characterized by a high and intense light (about half past two in the afternoon) allowed me to create an image with strong contrasts. I therefore wanted to set the size and roughness of the stacks against the lightness and smoothness of the water.
To create this I made use of some technical and compositional choices: first of all, the use of black and white allowed to reduce the “information” to the essential, in order to concentrate on the important ones; in addition, the use of two ND filters (one solid 15 stops and one graduated 3 stops for the sky) allowed the extension of the shutter speed to 2 minutes, eliminating the waves and ripples of the sea and greatly reducing the structure of the clouds. The strong light of the scene made it possible to obtain an almost high-key effect with a chiaroscuro effective in increasing the visual contrast between the rock and the rest of the environment.