A photograph from my recent trip home to Tasmania for Christmas. This long exposure photograph was captured at Park Beach, Tasmania just after sunset. This is one of my favourite coastlines to photograph in the Hobart area even if it is quite limited on sunset. Unfortunately you’re limited to shooting in this direction if you wish to capture any colour in the sky, ignoring all the interesting rock formation that faces the opposite direction.
This is a 10 minute long exposure that was captured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, B+W 110 and tripod.
Before and After
And for something different, this is the before and after images from Lightroom. The image is around a stop over exposed which was both good and bad. The reason for it being good is that it brought out a lot of detail in the dark area of the rocks which can easily be lost in a regular exposure due to the area having strong shadows. But on the other hand, I also lost a lot of sky straight out of camera. Fortunately the Canon 5D Mark II retains a lot of detail and I was able to save the sky.
The edit was actually quick and probably only took around 2 minutes. In Lightroom I dropped the exposure considerably which brought back the sky but darkened the rocks. Rather than keep the rocks under exposed, I used the adjustment brush with a +1.00 exposure to bring the rocks back out. After that I adjusted the temperature of the image (cooling it) and selectively adjusting the saturation points of parts of the image until happy. Finally sharpening the image in Photoshop with the unsharpen mask.
Update 10/06/2012 – I’ve since created a tutorial video on how I went about editing this photograph. Granted the final image doesn’t come out exactly the same as the image used in this post but it should give you a good idea of how the I went from the before shot above to the final image. The key things to note is the graduated filter and adjustment brush make all the difference and allow you to make the majority of your edits without needing to open up Photoshop. Be careful though. It’s easy to over do the editing when using these tools and I think the final image is starting to reach that.
Direct link to this Adobe Lightroom Tutorial Clip
Perfect shot!
Thanks for stopping by David! 🙂
i love this shot. And i really appreciate the reasonable in-depth before/after text and pictures.
It shows that even you may be unsure of a shot at first, the beauty is still there. Especially with long exposure, the point of perfect is slim to hit it right.
I also use the 5Dii and they are an incredible camera. Cant wait to play with a 5diii soon.
God bless Alex.
– Durham
Hi Durham,
Thanks so much for stopping by and for leaving such a nice comment.
I’m glad you appreciated the before/after comparison. It’s something that I’d like to continue sharing in future posts to give insight into how the image did look straight out of camera.
Are you upgrading to the Canon 5D III? As someone who also owns the Canon 5D Mark II, I’m struggling to find the justification. Looks a beautiful camera but my trusty Canon 5D Mark II is more than capable for the time being. I’ll just sit back and be envious of the lucky ones purchasing 😉
Thanks again,
– ALex
That is a gorgeous shot – i love the way you’ve done it.