Glorious Sunset

I almost this one; I was driving around in an unfamiliar place, trying to find the sea.  I could see the Sun falling into the horizon.  Time was running out!  After a few wrong turns and couple of dead-ends, I found the sea.  I had literally minutes to spare.  There’s no thrill like “sunset chasing” – have you tried it yet?I took this shot hand-held, resting against the side of the pier.It’s a 3 exposure HDR, bracketed at -2/0/+2.   I tried processing through my normal route (HDR Efex Pro) but I just wasn’t happy with the result.   I through it all away and started from scratch.   The final image was done by manually blending in the 3 photos in Photoshop.  A little UnSharp and finally some Gaussian Blur, nice and easy.Have you tried this trick of adding blur after sharpening?  I can work pretty well.

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Auckland Sunset

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One More Look

Just one more shot, just one more moment.  It’s easy to take the shot or shots, figure you’ve got what you came for and just walk away.  I was doing just that when I thought I’d turn and look one more time.   You know what’s its like; when you cant help yourself, the beauty is all around and somehow it draws you in.   I was glad I stopped and took one last longing look at the sunset.   I could see that even though the sun had dipped below the horizon there remained that afterglow.  It was covering everything in pink, red and gold.   I hope I managed to capture the feeling in a picture.   You can’t rush these things; nature has her own tempo and we march to it.  We don’t dictate. Auckland Sunset HDR

These tools helped me work the magic:

With Photomatix use the coupon “stewartbaird” at the check-out and save 15%.

My Kind of Water

This is my kind of water!  The sun was setting behind me here and there were some great scenes to be had.  It’s hard to look away from the glow of the sun but I often find that behind is where the best shot can be found.  I suppose that sometimes that’s for the simple reason that the light is falling across everything in its path.  Here there was a bit of magic in that green water; I have a feeling that the colour would be quite different at sunrise.  So, if you want a tip, I’d say, “look behind”.  A funny postscript to this is that I was taking another sunset photograph a few days later, turned around and found a gathering of cows looking at me!This is photo is from Auckland, New Zealand. auckand new zealand sunset

These tools helped me work the magic:

With Photomatix use the coupon “stewartbaird” at the check-out and save 15%.

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