noellebennett
FollowDarkness descends over the Kaikorai Stream at Island Park, Dunedin, New Zealand, bringing with it stunning colours and reflections ...
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Darkness descends over the Kaikorai Stream at Island Park, Dunedin, New Zealand, bringing with it stunning colours and reflections
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Action Award
Zenith Award
Legendary Award
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Contest Finalist in Light Through The Clouds Photo Contest
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p_eileenbaltz
November 30, 2015
Beautifully composed and captured! Congratulations on being chosen a finalist in the 'Light Through The Clouds' contest.:)
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
The photo was taken at Kaikorai Lagoon which is a few kilometres to the south of Dunedin, New Zealand.Time
I have to say this isn't the image I was after. It was taken at 8.47pm on 09 October which is well into spring down here in New Zealand. We had headed out about an hour earlier in the hope of capturing a sunset down at Brighton, which is a beach about five kilometres from here. After a promising start, the sunset came to nothing. So we carried on to Kaikorai Lagoon with the intention of walking down to the beach at Island Park where the lagoon empties into the sea in the hope of seeing the aurora...and that didn't happen either!Lighting
Once I accepted that there would be no aurora that evening, what really appealed here was the range of colours. I did only very basic post-processing so what you see here is more-or-less what I saw that evening. There is very little in the way of colour enhancement so those oranges, turquoises and magentas were actually all visible. Added to that, the simplicity of the trees on the shores of the lagoon and the crisp reflection is the lagoon with just a tiny bit of disturbance close in to the shore was the perfect finishing touch.Equipment
I took this image with a Panasonic DMC-GH4 camera with a Lumix G20/f1.7 lens. Focal length was 20mm and exposure was 20 seconds at f/6.3 (I generally shoot using manual settings) and 200 ISO. The tripod I used was the Mefoto Air Roadtrip.Inspiration
To be totally honest, it was my husband who suggested I took this image. I was feeling rather despondent when neither of the intended subjects for that night's trip worked and I was ready to go home. As we walked along the lagoon he asked if there was any reason that I was ignoring what seemed to be a potentially good image. That jolted me out of my apathy!Editing
I always shoot in RAW and as I said earlier, this image actually took minimal processing. I put it through Dfine 2 before I did anything elseto reduce some of the noise and then just made some minor adjustments to the contrast in Color Efex Pro 4. I then added a tiny amount of warmth and vibrance in Lightroom 6.In my camera bag
My camera bag is ever evolving...and shared with my husband so there are the occasional squabbles over lenses!! I now use a Panasonic DC-G9 camera which I absolutely love (I had a brief dalliance after the G3 with my husband's cast-off Olympus E-M5 which I didn't get on with at all - before moving to the GH4 and now the G9). My must-have lenses now are the Lumix G Vario 14-140 telephoto lens; an Olympus M.12 - stunning for imaging the Milky Way which is another passion of mine and a Leica DG 100-400 which is an absolutely stunning lens and just possibly my favourite. Apart from that I have the usual cable release and various elements of the Cokin filter systemFeedback
I suppose the best advice I could offer (although still being relatively new to the photography game I would not pretend to be any sort of expert!) would be to look for something that inspires you and then have a go. If you don't have a go you will never find out what does and doesn't work...and you may just miss that perfect image.