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Cliff at Morsum
In Morsum one finds a cliff on the northern shore at the border to the Hindenburgdamm, shaped some 120.000 years ago, which is a national geotope. It is a soil structure formed by northern European glaciers with red (limonite), yellowish and white(kaolin) sands. These sands itself had been deposited 7 – 11 million years ago. More detailed information can be found in a Wiki (English oder German).
The image is an HDR of 5 exposures, intentionally overexposed and combined manually and one processed with software (HDR Efex Pro 2). Doing so no traces of a technically generated HDR image are recognizable. The resulting HighKey image looks natural. I adopted this way of processing HDR images from Harold Davis.
View of Morsum cliff in eastern direction. © Julian Köpke The layer structure only detects at close range. These layers are like loose sandstone. Unfortunately, they got knotted. Some layers a pretty coarse.
North Sea is rough and versatile. The water comes close to the cliff. It was low tide today when we passed by. So we didn’t get wet feet.
Patterns of deposit layers at Morsum cliff © Julian Köpke 
Patterns of deposit layers at Morsum cliff © Julian Köpke It is spring on Sylt, during the year everything blooms later than in the South.
Willow catkin © Julian Köpke -
Beach Westerland
The German philosopher Karl Jaspers described in his memoirs the boy’s experiences with the sea. The sea, he noted, is a symbol of philosophy, because it makes infinity present to us.
Is a photo on the beach enough to bring us closer to the infinity of thought? Maybe at that moment, I think, when we stop thinking focused when we look at the photo.
Different motifs are able to change our inner view. They don’t have to be pictures of the sea. But with these, our feeling is often more evident.
Technically I did three longtime exposure of 15s, which is a sort of time fusion. I used a 6EV Lee filter to photograph these three stones at the beach short after sunrise. You can see the colourful reflections of the morning sky in the sea and on the damp beach.
Colors of waves. Early morning near Westerland, Sylt. © Julian Köpke -
Painted waves at Kampen, Sylt
Looking at waves captivates us just as much as looking at an open fire. Digital photography provides us with very short shutter speeds or exposure times static, better: frozen images of the ups and downs of water movements.
There are no creative limits when trying to extend exposure times (or shutter speeds) instead of further shortening them, at most technical ones. Longer exposure times merge several moments of water movement and thus paradoxically have a dynamic effect, meaning a look and feel of a movement.
There is no right or wrong exposure time. There is a special impression for each exposure time in the fusion image of several moments.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. By experimenting with a neutral density filter of 10 EV I managed to get at a not too long exposure time of 1/4s to 1/3s making waves look like painted. With only economical digital post-processing worth seeing images were created.
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Island in the sun
Always changing weather conditions is normal on Sylt, the northern most island of Germany. Heat, winds and rain alternate continuously. Just arrived I had to go straight to the beach, where clouds and sun welcomed me at the same time.
On the beach of Westerland © Julian Köpke The on average better weather awaits one in the north, the so-called elbow, a peninsula near List. A lot of unused beach chairs with low numbers are standing there.
Beach at so-called ellbow near List, Sylt © Julian Köpke Some 40 km south one finds the south tip of Sylt with its characteristic lighthouse. Many lighthouses can be found on this island, which is surrounded by sandbanks and often changing flow conditions of the water at low or high tide.
Lighthouse at south end of Sylt (Hörnum) © Julian Köpke A beach walk is accompanied by many birds, seagulls mostly, but also cormorants or sandpipers. Sometimes you flush them out unvoluntarily and they fly wildly confused.
Seagulls at Hörnum (Sylt) © Julian Köpke Cyclists become tiny like ants against the seemingly overpowering clouds. Without mountains one loses any scale.
Clouds hanging over the dike at Rantum polder © Julian Köpke Experimenting with longtime exposure my first results of waves at the beaches are not yet convincing. Three seconds turn out to be a vivid interval of the time fusion on my sensor.
Time fusion waves Dikjen Deel (3s), Sylt © Julian Köpke -
Sunny Sylt
After a rainy New Years eve and a cloudy 1st January there was a chance to escape to an island in the sun: Sylt.
A walk south along the beach at noon had a phantastic front light. We strolled without sorrows. The horizon wasn’t clear at all.
It’s good to have these days without sorrows.
Strollers sans soucies. Beach Westerland, Sylt. © Julian Köpke Short after 4 pm the sunset happened much earlier than in southern parts of Germany. The winds became more weak. A composit image of horizontal motion blur and a normal shot after the camera movement rendered a little bit of structure.
Sky and North Sea © Julian Köpke Increasingly great reflections occurred the next minutes. Hot waters ?
Reflections at sunset near Westerland at low tide © Julian Köpke The darker it becomes the more fatigant is our way home. Less people are now on the beach. All tend to go home.
People are going home at sunset. Evening glow with clouds at Westerland Beach. © Julian Köpke
