Mountain Levels of Riverston, Sri Lanka
After 3 hours on a van through villages and beautiful landscapes, my faithful tour guide and local friends of Sri Lanka brought me to this location high above R...
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After 3 hours on a van through villages and beautiful landscapes, my faithful tour guide and local friends of Sri Lanka brought me to this location high above Riverston, Sri Lanka.
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Jan, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in Riverston, Sri Lanka. Riverston was an area surrounded by mountains, and it took us about 3 hour drive from the main city center of Colombo. As we entered the area, I was overwhelmed by the scenic untouched beauty of the location that I decided I am going to dedicate myself to create an image that best display its vastness and its beauty. I pleaded my van driver ( the tour's driver ) to drive us all around the place for hours until i settled on this particular spot from the top of one of the hills with an unobstructed view until the horizon.Time
I waited until it was about mid-noon, where the sun was the brightest, masked by thick heavy clouds until i took my shot. I reasoned that I had to make do with noon, where the sun was the brightest where I could achieve enough light to illuminate the shot with minimal camera shake. I traveled light, and therefore did not have a tripod with me at the time. It was a pity I had missed the morning sun, or this image would have been more gorgeous with the morning mist, but I had to work with what I have as to not miss this scenic location. I was not a local - just a tourist on a tour; hence I knew I may never return to this place ever again.Lighting
With the light being directly above, and I waited until the clouds block some rays of the sun to create dynamic shadows on the hills. It provides much more tonal value to it that adds interest to the overall image.Equipment
This was shot with my old Canon 40D with a 70-200mm Tamron.Inspiration
The mountains of Riverston was indeed beautiful, and it is significant for the fact that it has barely any trace of human disturbance within a wide radius of several kilometers from the center. I decided I need to showcase that aspect of it, while not resorting to the overly done method of shooting a conventional landscape wide-angle. As the van was driving around and I was contemplating this, I had an idea that since the hills were not even in height, I could use it as an advantage, like some sort of a scale. For this location, I even included the foreground element of a pavement road with some trees to act as a base scale factor for the viewer to gauge the enormity of scene. By using a 70-200mm telephoto, it flattens the image so that the hills appear vector-shape, which is more aesthetically pleasing.Editing
This image has been post-processed, as do all of my images. Post production is just another stage of the overall creative process in my work, and it is one that I focus quite some attention to. For this image, the primary goal is to increase the contour of each hill to provide a strong separation from each other, but while trying to not overdo it until it becomes a vector art. The eye of the viewer is also directed across the tonal colors from warm to blue ( or vice versa, depending on the viewer's psychology ) - thus providing a linear guideline across the image.In my camera bag
I generally travel light, with my ( now Canon 6D ) with 3 prime lenses. But for this image above, because I was in Sri Lanka for a wedding shoot, I had only packed a 17-70mm and 70-200mm at the time.Feedback
The best way to achieve a scenic landscape is to have a guide that knows the whereabouts of the subject at hand. In this case, my driver was kind enough to drive me around the scenic spots until i pick one that I see potential in. It was indeed a tedious process, and it may aggravate most people. But persevere and you may get a beautiful opportunity such as this. If in the event nothing works out at the end, at the very least you have had exhausted all manner of angles in studying a beautiful sight of nature - and that is never a bad thing.
