This misty, mono masterpiece was captured in Port Glasgow by photographer Stuart Neville (@glasgowpixman). The subject is a stainless steel sculpture by John McKenna called 'The Shipbuilders of Port Glasgow'. Stuart photographed the towering 33ft monument using his newly acquired Nikon Zf and Nikon Z 24-70mm f/4 S.
Stuart was on his way to the town of Largs, thanks to the weather forecast's promise of blue skies. But he couldn't resist stopping off at Port Glasgow to make the most of the misty conditions. He told me: "I saw that the whole area was covered in early morning mist. I got off the bus and spent about an hour photographing the area.
"I seem to remember that the autofocus was struggling a bit with the low visibility so I switched to manual focus when capturing the statue. I also had to move around to get a good position for a clean shot with no background buildings or cars."
Stuart couldn't move too much though, because he wanted to position the sun so it backlit the sculpture. "Luckily, the sculpture is in a small park with plenty of space around it to maneuver," he said.
The stunning mono conversion was performed in Adobe Lightroom. "I always saw it as a black-and-white picture," said Stuart. "I applied a Nikon camera monochrome preset, added some negative Dehaze to emphasize the mist and reduced the blacks to provide more of a silhouette."
But Stuart's love for monochrome goes back to film, which might be why he now wields a Nikon mirrorless that borrowed its good looks from the legendary Nikon FM2. "I’ve always liked monochrome, which probably goes back to my time doing film photography with Kodak Tri-X and developing my own film.
Stuart's top tips for photographing misty scenes...
"My tip for anyone wanting to capture this type of foggy image is to check the weather forecast the night before and be prepared to get up very early before the fog burns off. And wrap up warm, too!"
See more of Stuart's work by checking out his Flickr page.
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