Horseshoe Falls, Hazelbrook, Blue Mountains, NSW

This shot was taken yesterday while running my Blue Mountains Day Course… great weather but the rain got a bit heavy towards the end of the day. None the less perfect weather for shooting waterfalls.

This shot had quite a bit of work done on it in terms of trying to balance the dark tones and shadow detail in the image. Quite tricky to edit when some techniques adding contrast resulting in the greens really popping so you have to go back and kill the colour back a bit.

All the tonal work has been done using different types of luminosity masks, blurring them / sharpening them in selective areas that kind of thing. I didnt use the shadow / highlight tool in this shot (which I am a big fan of). Think the image could still do with some more work especially in the colour, but next time I might think about bracketing a shot or two for some more shadow detail in certain areas.

Single image capture | 5D MkII | 17-40mm lens @ 17mm | Polariser | F11 for 8 sec 50 iso

BEST VIEWED LARGE, SO CLICK ON THE IMAGE

North Avoca Three image Exposure Blend

Last nights sunset at Avoca Beach taken when out teaching a private course. Wish there was some cloud. Cloud around today… out teaching again so lets see what happens.

Forresters Rocks, Central Coast, NSW

With bad weather comes interesting clouds and lighting. Today I ran a course on the Central Coast for a lovely couple Mick and Trudy and we were able to squeeze in a full day just before it poured down.

This was an interesting spot at Forresters Beach with some strong foreground rock and great clouds in the back ground. I deliberately desaturated the clouds which worked well but I had to find a nice balance of contrast as I did have a B&W soft light layer on the clouds but the contrast too much so I got rid of it.

Avoca Beach, Shutter Blending

Out at Avoca Beach teaching once again on a private course, walking people through the technique of Shutter Blending. This one is done with the 10 stop ND filter and is a blend of four images from memory.

For some reason the conversion to jpeg made the blues in the sky quite grainy. Not sure what happened there. Would have loved to get some cloud in the shot but it wasn’t meant to be.