Your Best Photo of 2013 Assignment Winner Chris Gin

“This shot was taken just after sunrise in September 2013. I had taken a few shots earlier (just before sunrise) before moving onto another part of the beach and returned here just after the sun appeared over the horizon. By this time the color in the sky was not as intense but the clouds were moving quite fast. I pre-visualized this composition, but had not planned to do a long exposure. The clouds just happened to be moving quite fast and in the right direction so I decided to use a 10-stop ND filter and do a long exposure of 20 seconds to capture their movement. It turned out to be my best shot of the morning.

“There was not a lot of post processing here. I shot in RAW and used Lightroom to bright the foreground a bit, and also adjusted the white balance to reduce the magenta cast caused by the filter. Sharpening and noise reduction was then completed in Photoshop CS5.”

Equipment: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM lens, Benro Tripod, B+W 10-Stop ND filter