[Kombisaurus]

After seeing guerito's lovely pics of a winter's morning today, I thought it was only fitting that I compliment those photos with some from the other side of the planet, at the end of summer instead of the end of winter, and at sunset instead of sunrise.

I live within bike-riding distance of about six lakes, almost all of them with tracks around them I can ride my bike along. I often go for a ride around these lakes for exercise, so this evening I decided to take my camera (and tripod) with me.

Shortly before I left home, I was discussing (http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2147) and thinking about the issues involved in a high-contrast scene which often results in blown-out skies or loss of detail or noise in the shadows.

So when I was out, I used it as an opportunity to explore some high-contrast situations and challenge myself with some "shadow detail vs highlight detail" questions.

Although the photos below show that I tend to have chosen to sacrifice shadow detail for the benefit of sky detail, this was mainly due to the fact that the sky was simply much more interesting today, wheras turning the trees into silhoettes didn't detract too much from them. If the sky was bland and boring, I would have probably exposed for the trees (the silhoetted tree in the monochrome picture was particularly interesting and it was a bit of a shame to reduce it to a silhoette).
I did do a couple of double exposures (ie take a photo on tripod exposed for sky, then take the same shot again exposed for shadows), but I haven't combined them in photoshop yet.
All I've done with these photos is touch up their levels, crop a couple a little bit, and give them a quick once-over with noise-ninja (not that they need it at this resolution). The monochrome tree silhoette has also been colourized, as it was an infra-red photo and came out of the camera in shades of pink.

We are very lucky here in Perth - we get some wonderful sunsets.
Tonight's was good, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Cheers
Adrian

[shuttertalk]

Wow, Adrian, if that is ordinary, I'd like to see extraordinary! Those shots are absolutely awesome!

My favourites:
#1 - great colour and mood

#2 - I love the smooth velvety colours

#4 and 5 - love the beatiful clouds and and colours on the clouds.

Superb job!

[Toad]

Very spectacular - #4 in particular is a great capture. It illustrates the first rule of great sunset shots - have an interesting foreground silouhette.

#2 is also really interesting. In a perfect world I would like to see the top of the stumps - but it is still a super capture at I suspect a slow shutter speed. Any technical data?

[adam]

woah! when did you take those shots? Sunday evening?
I saw the same clouds in #4 yesterday but it was over some houses, so I didn't want to point my camera in that direction.

Your pictures are very nice! Especially the fire in the sky burning above the water!


I hope you don't mind me posting some of my shots from yesterday
The colour on mine seems strange, maybe it's my RAW conversion process.





Was quite rush, looking out the window then running to the park with my camera..

Your pictures, are very good!

[guerito]

Awww, you have beautiful sunsets down under! It really does me good to see pictures where the temp and the colors are warm. Thanks for sharing!

[shuttertalk]

Wow, postcard pics, adam!

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks guys for the feedback.

ST.. I guess it comes down to your definition of "extraordinary". Certainly we get sunsets with more colour in them and more clouds to get "lit up", but the shape and formation of the clouds were lovely last night. I guess in that sense it was unusual.

Toad, the reason I framed the stumps the way I did is because if I included any more in the top of the frame then it would have shown some of the shore, which was a bit distracting. I took the shot at 50 ISO, f/8 aperture, 1.6" shutter, 380mm (35mm equiv) focal length, with a polarising filter attached.
Below is a shot I took immediately before it, which made me decide to crop more tightly at the top and go for a slower shutter speed for that "brushed aluminium" look.
The shot below has the same settings except it has f/3.7 aperture and 0.3" shutter speed.



Adam, yes it was Sunday evening (last night)! I can't believe you were out taking pics of the same sunset. I actually went out long before it was sunset, so I had no idea if it would be good or not, I just wanted to get some pics of a particular tree.
Your pics are fantastic. The 1st one has wonderful colours in it, a fantastic layered effect and a classic Australian bush silhoette. I love the framing of it - simple, yet it just seems to "work".
And as for the panorama.. well, all I can say is I'm kicking myself for not taking panoramas myself last night - that is amazing. It would look wonderful as a large image I bet.
I know what you mean about "running to the park". I could almost get great sunset shots from my backyard, but there are some big powerlines about 1/2 km away that are bang in the way (see pic below, taken on another evenin). I mean its OK to have one pic of powerlines silhoetted against the sunset, but it isn't a scene you can take over and over, no matter how different the sunsets are.



And Guerito, it's funny but I look at your pictures with snow in them and think how lovely and refreshing it would be to be standing where you were when taking them. In your posts yesterday, you can just see how clean and crisp the air is, which is just wonderful when it comes with a sunny day like it did.
I grew up in a relatively cold part of Australia (Hobart, Tasmania), and now I live in Western Australia where we have hot dry summers - I really look forward to summer trips back to see my family in Tassie to get out of the heat for a week or so, and I miss that I used to be able to drive up a mountain in Tassie and have snow fights.
But we never had sunsets like this back in Tassie (at least not in Hobart, where the sun disappeared behind mountains long before it hit the horizon).

Cheers
Adrian

[Toad]

K:

I totally see why you did the crop you did, and you definately want to have the slow shutter speed. Forgive me for unwanted advice, but I messed with your shot slightly to see if that crop could be improved and came up with this.



I made a slightly taller canvas and pasted your photo into the bottom of it. Did some slight cloning to get rid of the pieces of the stump actually touching the top of the photo and then sampled the dark shore color and painted the empty part of the new canvas with that color. This gives the photo a tiny bit of breathing room at the top without damaging your excellent composition.

Sorry again for meddling.

BTW: this was done at work rapidly - I know you could do it better if you wanted fo.

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Toad,

Well done and thanks, I like your version much better. I agree that the cropping was a problem in the original, and it was much too "top heavy" and the stumps should not have gone out of the frame. I just didn't have many options short of finding something to raise the tripod a few feet higher or getting wet.
In hindsight, I think I should have moved the camera up and made the shot less top-heavy at the price of including the shore behind the stumps. I should have also opened the aperture up a couple of stops to blur out the background as much as I could, and stuck an ND filter on to let me get back to slow shutter speeds without over-exposing.
Then if it was still a problem, I could mask it in photoshop and make it less obvious on the PC.

I took what you have done with the image by creating more room at the top, and then threw the 4:3 aspect ratio out the window. I cropped some of the bottom out to really emphasize the stacked horizontal lines in the water and spacing between the stumps, and I think the result works. What do you think?



By the way, in the context of this thread, I'm perfectly happy for anyone to hack away at my pics to their heart's content. You can photochop the queen in the water going for a skinnydip if you feel like it!
Don't apologize for meddling, I appreciate the time you spent.
I'm not particularly precious about keeping my images "pure", and the only thing that would annoy me is somebody using my images elsewhere on the web for their own ends without acknowledgement or my knowledge. Just the usual common-sense and courtesy stuff. I'm sure none of the people who actually contribute to these forums would be like that, and generally people won't steal images unless they are good enough to be worth stealing, so I'm fairly safe there

But within the walls of this thread (where anyone reading can see where the original image came from), feel free to go nuts. I appreciate the input, and looking at my images from a different point of view is always helpful.
If I do ever post any images I am a bit precious about then I'll make sure I mention this when I post it.

Cheers
Adrian

[Toad]

Very nice - your bottom cropped improved the shot even further. Glad to be of help.