The weather over the past few days has been wet and cloudy. So rather that go out to shoot I’ve been playing with Lightroom. I’ve spent some time going back over the past few years to find those shots that are not “keepers”, but very close to see if Lightroom can do some magic to get it over the line.
While in New Zealand last year I took some shots of Lake Waktipu ( Queenstown ). The amount of stars visible is amazing, The above shot would have been perfect with less cloud and maybe an ND Grad over the stars with a slightly longer exposure to bring out the lake and mountains. However Lightroom has done a fairly good job to recover some details.
Recently I spent 3 weeks in New Zealand, while on the south island I took this picture at a Department of Conservation camp site just west of Queenstown.
The amount of stars visible that evening was amazing.
It’s been a little while since I’ve added a shot to the store, but today I’ll be adding this shot. Pictured is Sydney Harbour, including the city of Sydney, The Sydney Opera House, Circular Quay and The Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The colours in the water and city are not process in any way, they are direct from the camera. The water is calm and smooth due to a long exposure. The stars have been added, allthough there were stars there, the lights of the city made them allmost impossible to see. I have added the stars as they would be seen from another long exposure.
I’m currently in the process of creating a Blurb book, and I’ve decided to use this image as the last one in the book.
This image was taken about 9 months ago at Mayfield Bay Coastal Reserve, just south of Swansea.
It was taken at night with moonlight and campfire glow and it’s a 30 second exposure. It’s quite grainy and I’m not sure how well it will print above 8×10″. If the results are good I guess I’ll add it to the store. Because of the moonlight and campfine glow I think this looks great as a sepia.
I’ve been playing about with long exposures recently, although I haven’t had the time to go out and take some more “formal” shots, I took this one locally recently. It’s a 17 min exposure, f5.6. Unfortunately with the cold weather (winter) the sky was a little hazy, which washed the stars out a little.
As past of my experiments into long exposures it became quite obvious that I needed a few new toys, an external timer and shutter release, which I got cheaply on eBay, and an easy method for calculating the correct exposure length. Solution: I made my own handheld exposure “computer”. Details on this can be found in the Long Exposure Tutorial.
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