Sunsets and Stormclouds

The Pilbara is a marvelously inspiring place to shoot. I feel privileged I can experiment with photography and attempt to take it to a new level with this region on my backyard. Surely this is God's canvas.

Firstly, I promise not to bombard the blog with three posts at once - I just had a little catching up to do! This is current...

Yesterday, still reeling from my lack of photographer's intuition when it comes to storms and lightening, I decided to walk up the hill to take some test shots to really nut out this whole RAW thing, and even venture into some High Dynamic Range (HDR) territory.

To explain, Karratha is a long and skinny town. It's kind of shaped like a peanut. On one side is Nickol Bay and the Burrup Peninsula, on the other are some hills covered in iron-ore coloured rocks and spinafex. At this time of year a storm brews to the east most afternoons. Not many come our way like last week (unfortunately for those like me who missed that opportunity) but the thing to do in Karratha when there is a storm, is to take your 4WD up the hill to capture the storm, enjoy the wind and watch the dust decend (see image below). Luckily for me I can walk, although this does pose the problem of gear getting wet/dusty if the storm turns.

Let me tell you, this vastness and the richness of the rocks makes a stunning gamut of colour. Especially at sunset. Especially when storm clouds are brewing in the East, while the sun is setting in the West.

So here's me, with my $30 tripod on top of a small hill overlooking Karratha, constantly spinning my tripod head between the storm cloud and the sunset. Prime lighting for the stormcloud as the sunset was acting as a fill light for the rocks, hills and spinafex in the foreground leaving me with plenty of wriggle room to expose correctly for the clouds.

Here is where two key lessons (well, three now) were learnt when it comes to processing images:

1) You can overedit, especially when trying to lighten underexposed areas. These sunset photos - most of them are ruined because they are grainy due to too much fill light/exposure/brightness adjustments. I'm not happy with them, but decided to put them here anyway, so you can see what I am talking about.

2) HDR requires sepparate shots - I attempted a couple using a single shot with different exposures, but found they came out grainy and overexposed anyway. I need to perfect this technique. Now, I have sepparate shots, using the exposure bracketing feature on Betsy, I just haven't had time to combine them, focusing on the actual editing.

3) Looking at the photos now, at 10:45pm with no reflective light behind me, they appear worse. I think this warrents more research for my screen and ensuring that when I edit photos, there are no competing reflections and the screen is tilted optimally.

Lesson #2: Learn more about processing RAW

Editing RAW images is a craft unto itself. February has been the month of experimenting. I have taken to capturing photos in RAW + Large quality JPEG. This way I can navigate the photos I want to edit, without oeping each individual one.

Experimenting is all good and well, but too much and you have over-edited your photo, and lets be honest, they lose quality and integrity. Or at least mine have, so far. My second lesson, or rather, revelation is that editing a RAW photo is an art in itself - you are better off out in the elements taking all the steps possible to capture as many colours as possible.

My first pure RAW capturing expedition was to a little cove just past Hearson's on the Burrup. I had the bright idea of going at sunset, not realising the sun would set behind a pile of rocks leaving me with little natural light. I did manage to get some good golden hour shots, but nothing worth noting that was spectacular. The only noteworthy shot was of a mangrove in the golden hour below.

Hearson's by sunset, on the otherhand, is stunning. Sure, I didn't climb the rocks with the A Team (largely due to the fact that my battery had run out while trying to take wave motion photos with overexposed rocks in the background...) but I did manage to capture this little gem. Edited in RAW (CR2 converted to DNG to make it compatible with Adobe Photoshop) I'd say this is my most successful processed image to date. The first image is the JPEG churned out by Betsy (My Canon). The second is my edited version.

Lesson #1: Be ready for any opportunity

This last few weeks have been really disappointing photography wise for me. After promising myself to 'upskill' from a Point-and-shoot-with-a-fancy-DSLR-and-hope-for-the-best photographer, to one with slightly more technical skills, I have been quite lazy in the getting out and taking photos department. January was a complete write off. February I have had a few chances, but after only one month, I am starting to get bored with the same scenes, and longing for something other than red rocks!

I had a terrific opportunity this week, that was sadly missed. I was at home cooking dinner, my husband went for a pushbike ride right on sunset. I went outside when the Shepherd's pie went into the oven to discover a gorgeous sunset. Our house is a fairly well boxed in townhouse, which means it is very secure, but also provides zero opportunity for shooting sunsets. I toyed with the idea of climbing the hill and decided, I better not because I had the oven on and was the only one home. I went inside, and five minutes later, lightning begins to flash. It was minor at first, but you know something is seriously cracking when you have the blinds closed, lights on and you can still see an electric blue light illuminating your kitchen.

So I go to the laundry door to discover a rainbow is visible. As I am gazing at the gorgeous colours, thunderbolts start cracking through the sky and seemingly touching down on the other side of town (I later found out they were not far from it). I rush to get my camera, excited for the opportunity to shoot both lightning and a rainbow at once, and I just have it set up and lo and behold the rain comes. I am paranoid about getting my gear wet and don't believe in shooting through either wet glass or wet plastic (unless underwater) so I reluctantly gaze out the window at the most magnificent lightning show I have ever seen. The show continues for a good half hour.

My husband arrives home, shortly after the rain stops and there is still an enormous amount of electricity in the air. Unfortunately I didn't have the bright idea I had the next day of going out then when there was no rain, as I had a sopping, hungry husband to take care of! But in hindsight, I should have jumped in the car, driven to…anywhere in town you could see the horizon… and set my camera up for the show.

Words cannot explain how gutted I was…especially when photos like this started popping up on social media….

I did manage to venture into the world of editing RAW photos for the first time. Here are some of my first attempts – it is a lot more complicated than the books make out!

 

Rosella at the Bunya Mountains. Playing with the colours was a little more tricky, and I do think this one is a touch overdone, but not bad for a very first attempt.

 

First attempt at a HDR. It's a little grainy. I used three JPEGS from the one RAW file. I am quickly learning that while this is valuable for the exact photo composition, lightening the dark areas is not as high quality as an original capture. More on this next.