Archive for July, 2009
I headed off down to a new spot I had read about in the Sydney suburb of Malabar this afternoon with my girlfriend Sonia in the hope that we might catch a few decent shots over the rock pool as the sun was setting behind us.
We were lucky enough to be treated to a very spectacular sunset as although the sun was setting behind us and well out of sight, it did do us the favour of lighting the whole sky up in a glorious pink for but half an hour.
Here is a small sequence of images shot over that 30 minutes or so that will give you a view of how the colours developed over that short but wonderful time.
I have shot a few sunsets since coming to Sydney now but this was by far the most beautiful and satisfying. I really had to crop my selection down a lot to reduce it to just 11 images to place on this post. When the conditions were like they were it was pretty much impossible to take a bad shot, every one was a keeper!
’til next time!
Steve
Bare Island, La Perouse
I have decided that it might be a nice idea to make an article or feature each time I go out shooting at a particularly interesting place. Seeing as my new home of Sydney seems to be surrounded by so many fascinating subjects to capture I am hoping that this can be fun, interesting and (most importantly for a photoblog) frequent!
So anyway, last night I went down to La Perouse to see if I could catch a nice sunset over Botany Bay and came away with a handful of decent shots. The sunset itself wasn’t as dramatic as it could have been but the nice golden light of the sun disappearing over the horizon did provide a very pleasant illumination of Bare Island.
Bare Island, La Perouse
All the while I was capturing shots of the island I was checking back behind me to see what the sun was doing and just before it disappeared for the night it gave us a little hint of the kind of spectacular pinks and oranges that can sometimes light up the sky on any given Sydney evening.
Botany Bay at sunset
So as the sun disappeared and the sky slowly turned dark I turned back around to try a long exposure shot of Bare Island, more to test out my newly acquired remote shutter release than anything else and to test if I am any good at figuring out getting a good exposure when I’m using BULB mode. So this next shot was a 60 second exposure at f16 and iso 100. Using Aperture Priority to figure out that 30 seconds at f11 would have given me the correct exposure, I then slipped into BULB mode to close my aperture to f16 to reduce the light by 1 stop. By doing so I knew that to get that one stop of light back I would need to double the exposure time to 60 seconds. In a roundabout way I think it worked – its a bit of a hack but there we go.
Bare Island at twilight
Here is one more shot of the bay, this time made of 3 exposures and hand-blended in photoshop using simple layer masks.
Botany Bay at Sunset
After a couple more less successful attempts at some even longer exposures I traversed the slippery rocks back up to dry land in pretty much pitch black and had one final go at a 6 minute exposure – this time of the tower at the top of the hill. In the 6 minutes that the shutter was open a few planes took off from Sydney Airport in the distance and added a couple of interesting streaks across the night sky. I don’t really know what it is that I like about this final shot, but there is just something about it that really takes my fancy. Possibly the kindof unreal look that the image has taken, but I don’t know.
La Perouse Tower at night.
I hope you enjoyed this short series of shots. I will be back soon with another batch of images soon!
To read more about La Perouse on Wikipedia, go here.
Here is a panorama I put together whilst holidaying in the Whitsunday Islands last December (08). Many of the shots I took that day did not turn out as well as I would have hoped but somehow the colours really came through and with this panorama and created a good representation of what I saw at the time. The blues of the sky and the sea were so beautiful and the pure white sand so soft, it was like heaven on earth. Having been working on my photographic techniques somewhat since I took this photo I would dearly love to head back there and spend some more time on the island purely with a photographic focus.
Click for Whitehaven Beach on Wikipedia
Here’s a real quick tip I wanted to share – I have only relatively recently happened upon it so I am thinking there may be a whole bunch of you out there who might not know about this simple yet excellent photoshop feature.
I see so many Photoshop tutorials that instruct you to flatten your image for various reasons, like sharpening for example and the vast majority of them literally tell you to do just that – flatten the layers. However this leaves you unable to go back and edit or adjust any of your layers should you wish to do so later.
As an alternative to flattening yout layers, I reccommend the following simple steps:
- Ensure you have the topmost layer selected in your layers palette.
- Hit ctrl-a (or your mac alternative) to make a selection covering your entire image
- Hit ctrl-shift-c (or your mac alternative) to make a merged copy of all of your layers
- Hit ctrl-v (or your mac alternative) to paste the merged layer as a new layer
The image below is an example of how my layers looked after I performed the above steps on one of my images – you can see all of my layers have been preserved whilst I am now free to perform sharpening on my top layer as I like.
This “copy merged” option is also available in the edit menu, but I never realised it was there until about a year ago – and I’ve been using photoshop for around 8 years… Makes me wonder what else I’m missing!
I spend a fair amount of time on Flickr checking my contacts list eagerly awaiting their next upload so I thought I would share 5 of my favourites with you.
This list contains people that I find inspirational in many ways but not necessarily all for the same reason. So, lets crack on!
Panorama Paul
The first time I encountered the phrase “Vertorama” was whilst browsing Pauls photostream and in my opinion he is consistently producing some of the finest examples of this type of photography. The term vertorama describes the process of creating a verticle panorama – a technique which Paul uses to create square images based on 2 stitched landscape oriented photos to stunning effect.
_Rebekka
Rebekka is an Icelandic photographer who utilises her environment to create some of the most awe-inspiring shots around. She has a very consistent look and feel to all of her shots, be they landscape, self-portraits, wildlife or anything else. I am regularly going back to her stream time and again regardless of whether she has uploaded anything new.
Kayode Okeyode
Kayode is a london based photographer who’s theme is centered strongly around night photography. The vibrance and imagination each of his images displays is a joy to behold. It is always a pleasure to receive a comment on my uploads from Kayode due to the level of respect I hold for him as a talented photographer.
Artie
A wonderfully skilled landscape photographer who seems to have travelled to every corner of the earth and still finds the time to regularly provide us with new and exciting photos of his travels. Artie is also kind enough to share his post-processing steps for each photo he uploads, which I always find interesting and inspiring in as much as he is honest enough to do so. He also finds the time to make informative and helpful comments on many of his contacts uploads.
Rosie Hardy
There is not a lot I need to say about Rosie except that I simply have ho idea how she consistently produces such creative and innovative images. Many of them are self portraits and include some extremely highly skilled post production to create such dreamy fairy-tale like imgages. She is a great storyteller through her photography and I highly reccomend you check her stream out.
I hope you take a few moments to check each of these photostreams out as you won’t be disappointed in what you find.
Steve
Posted in All Articles | Comments (0)