Instagram & Karijini - Match made in Heaven?

I know I've written about Instagram before. It is a marvelous program that seems to have the ability to turn every photo into a masterpiece. Nearly - it doesn't seem to work that well for me.

It does seem to bring out the colours of Karijini quite nicely.

































But it does frustrate me a little bit. OK, more like a lot. I'm not sure why, it just does. It's given terrific photos to your fingertips - instantly - but you can't actually do anything with them! They are too small to print, they are square, and I get really tired of the presets.

Have I mentioned how great it is for Karijini though? It does do a marvelous job of highlighting the colours, enhancing the shadows an creating interesting images.

Pilbara Gems: Python Pool

The landscape of the Pilbara is vast and arid. There are continuous subtle changes for those driving for more than an hour that may go unnoticed to the unappreciative eye. For those willing, there are a number of small but precious gems scattered across the region.

Python Pool is one – situated in Millstream-Chichester National Park, it is a local haunt when it has had a flow. Sure, it’s not the grand canyon, it’s not even Karijini, but for a relatively short drive, it’s refreshing.

Not to mention the drive out there is spectacular. I am planning a trip out there soon – we have had a lot of rain and I can just imagine the wildflowers that will be gracing the roadside!
My last visit to Python Pool was in April this year. I am only showing you the photos now because I was about to format my card when I realised  I hadn’t backed these ones up yet. Always, always double check!

Python Pool. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy) f/3/5 1/400 ISO 200 +2 step exposure bias 18mm, shutter priority

Dragonfly Python Pool. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy) f/5.6 1/400 ISO 200 +2 step exposure bias 200mm, shutter priority

Dragonfly Python Pool. Sitting on my camera bag. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy) f/5.6 1/400 ISO 200 +2 step exposure bias 200mm, shutter priority

How to Harass your Husband

I am in no way, shape or form, an early morning riser. My husband calls me a morning zombie. I do not function without coffee and even then it takes a good hour for full brain functionality to flow.

We recently purchased some kayaks, one thing I have always wanted to do. In order to fit it into our busy schedule last weekend, we decided to ditch cleaning the house on Saturday morning and go kayaking instead. This of course meant getting up at 6am. At the moment, this requires rising before the sun, which according to myself, humans are not supposed to do.

We trundled out to Cleaverville Beach, which is midway between Karratha and Roebourne. It’s known to be infested with two things – flying creatures that bite you and grey nomads.

We pull into the ‘boat ramp’ (that is, a muddy gap in the mangroves) and I immediately start helping my husband unload the kayaks…or would have if I didn’t have Betsy in the car and decide a better use of my time was taking advantage of the early morning sun. I so rarely get to see the light after sunrise due to my not-so-rare condition!

This of course is a perfect way to annoy your husband, especially one who was up half an hour before you packing the kayaks. My photography adventures with him are all about balance – photos, being with him. Hence, on this occasion, not too many photos were taken. I tried to be a good wife.

Cleaverville Boat Ramp. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy) f/3.5 1/8000 shutter, ISO 500, +1, 18mm. Cropped. Edited in Photoshop Adobe RAW

Canon EOS 50D (Betsy) f/3.5 1/8000 shutter, ISO 500, +1, 18mm. Cropped. Edited in Photoshop Adobe RAW

PS: Pirate Instagram

Just as a postscript to the previous post, I also snapped this Instagram of Pirate Cove, just to prove how impressed I was with the colours! (I was also impressed there was phone reception there…not so remote after all!)

Pirate Panoramas

Arrr, She’s at it again!

I finally have a weekend where I can sit down on a Saturday morning, drink my coffee and edit my photos. Unfortunately I haven’t been out much taking photos lately. To tell you the truth, I’m struggling to find new inspiration. There are only so many times you can climb the Karratha Hills and take photos of the sunset!

Last month I had the opportunity to go out on a charter boat to some of the islands of the Dampier Archipelago for a social function. Of course I took Betsy with me, despite the threat of rain. I must confess, I took some okay photos of the local rock art, but I am unsure of whether or not it is appropriate to post them on here. You may see those pop up in the near future, but for now I will focus on the shots I took of a place called Pirate Cove.
We climbed the rocks and there were some amazing colours. I’d wager you would be hard pressed to find these colour combinations anywhere in the world – Iron rust red, sandy yellow, ocean blue, mangrove green, black and grey all contrasting stunningly with the turquoise water. It’s spectacular.I was left behind by the group at one point (this is actually a frequent occurrence!)

This series shows some experiments – and that there are a number of ways to skin a cat.  Some are better than others. All edited in Adobe raw, with presets for the stitching, they still don’t quite fit together which is unfortunate. The sun just didn’t do as it was told! Which one is your favourite?

Also bear in mind I was clambering over unstable rocks…in bare feet. Real smart.

Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), f/3.5 1/800 sec ISO500, +1 step exposure bias, 18mm. Auto white balance, Shutter Priority mode. Five portraits stitched in Photoshop. Edited in Adobe RAW to enhance colours

Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), f/3.5, 1/8000 sec shutter, ISO 500 , +1 step exposure bias, 18mm, shutter priority. Two landscapes stitched in Photoshop. Edited in Adobe RAW to enhance colours.

Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), f/3.5, 1/8000 sec shutter, ISO 500 , +1 step exposure bias, 18mm, shutter priority. Two landscapes stitched in Photoshop. Edited in Adobe RAW to enhance colours.This is slightly crooked. Oops.

Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), f/3.5, 1/8000 sec shutter, ISO 500 , +1 step exposure bias, 18mm, shutter priority. Two landscapes stitched in Photoshop. Edited in Adobe RAW to enhance colours.This one will annoy you when you see it. I'm not going to point it out. But it's annoying. Very annoying.

Under the Sea

I know I have been pretty slack in this blog lately, but let me assure you it is due neither to lack of passion, or too much Dr Who! I have been unable to access the internet much from home lately as we used most of our bandwidth downloading a CyberLink program to edit GoPro footage. It's fun, but time consuming.

Printing on Canvas

There is a lot more to producing high quality photos for a wall than what people realise. When I had an old film camera I never gave the developing process much thought – you gave the chemist your film, paid him, and an hour later ta-da! 24 photos.

I have in the past used Photobookshop.com.au to get myself some photobooks. I even turned my previous blog into a photo book. I like this company because they are fast, high quality bound and Australian. Not to mention the knock out deals you can get when you purchase their vouchers. So when I saw them advertising canvas prints at a discounted rate of 70%. Bargain! I selected four of my favourite landscapes. I bought four vouchers, uploaded my photos and thus began my anxious wait.

They arrived beautifully mounted and a lot larger than I anticipated. However it was soon very clear that the pictures appeared a lot darker than they did on my laptop screen. Colour calibration is not something easily done when sending files to the east coast. Note to self – take more care when preparing files for printing. Where possible, ask for a proof or something. Or have it done locally…

Karijini the third: Panoramas

I love panoramic photography. I have done since I saw a panoramic picture my Pa took of the Back Beach in Mornington Peninsula - this was five photos placed next to each other and framed, and I just thought it was the coolest thing!

Then of course, as you grow older you soon come to realise the King of panoramic photography is Ken Duncan - Check out my favourite photo of his. Guess where?

To capture so much information, what you are seeing is a huge challenge, especially when it requires photo stitching. I started panoramic photos when I had my first digital camera - a little Kodak. I stitched them together with a free program, Arc Soft, that came with a memory card I purchased.   The results were reasonable, maybe I'll share them with you sometime, but it was clear from the start several techniques and pieces of equipment were required - tripod, a straight horizon and even lighting.

So in our recent journey to Karijini, a place where there are simply too many places to look, I had a stab at a few panoramic images. This is tricky because of the cast of light and shadow in the gorges - exposure is a hard thing to get consistent so most of the successful pieces are actually only two photos stitched together. The ones below are the picks.

Circular Pool - Dales Gorge, Karijini National Park. Canon 50D, f/3.5, 1/200 sec shutter, ISO 250, polarized lens filter, 18mm focal length, four portrait images stitched.

 Circular pool is a fantastic place to swim, and we were blessed with the lighting when we got there - the sun was reflecting off the opposite wall and onto the red rocks behind the pool creating these amazing oranges and reds! I've found with panoramas it's good to take portrait photos instead of landscape. As you can see in the image below, too many landscape photos stitched together and the image becomes quite thin. The image above is four portrait photos, below is three landscape photos.

Karijini National Park, Pilbara. Canon 50D, f/4, 1/4000 sec ISO 250, Exposure bias +2 step, 35mm focal length, three landscape images stitched

The golden hour - as we were driving home from a day of gorging the sun was setting, casting golden light on everything. The golden hour in the Pilbara is pure magic.

Lesson #7: Long Exposures - second & third attempt at star trails

As promised, I attempted a few star trails in my travels over Easter. These suckers are difficult. This is the first time I have found myself wishing for a film camera. Apparently it's easier.

As part of the .com generation, if I don't know something I Google it. Google is a verb, in case you are wondering. According to my extensive research (Wikipedia and photo forums) taking star trails with a bulb setting on a digital camera makes the camera prone to a lot of noise. Coupled with this, the sensor gets hot, creating pixel hot spots - the RGB dots that confused me last time. (A bulb setting is opening the shutter indefinitely to capture movements of light in low light conditions)

The digital technique - the consensus on the Internet was - to take a whole bunch of 30 second exposure shots, one with the foreground lit up, and a complete black one to reduce noise and then stack them in your processing afterwards. This is a long time to wait if you want long star trails, so I only have four attempts to share. I used the stacking method in Photoshop CS4. I was happy with the results, and learnt a number of valuable long exposure star trail tips:

1. Have a full battery - My battery ran out while attempting this at Karijini. It's OK, I had a spare, but not enough to waste on a shot that 'might work later.'
2. Have an empty CF card - I did have enough space but only because I shot in JPEG. It also helps to have a good quality card that will write the photo information quickly.
3. Remotes are gold - This means the shots are taken as close together as possible with as little break in the trail. I set the camera on continuous shooting and just pressed the remote button and left it at that.
4. Use a warm light when lighting the foreground - I only had an LED torch which as you will see, came out very cold. 
5. Do this on a still night with no clouds and as little light pollution as possible (including the Moon) - The moon interrupted the Karijini shot, and I got some interesting photos of lightening under stars, but the trails peter out. My final test wast interrupted by clouds, and therefore you can see breaks in the trails.

First attempt at Karijini. Either the tripod wasn't stable or the Image Stabilizer hadn't been turned off on the lens, but the trails are crooked. Plus you can see the light pollution from the Moon.

This is quite cool - I got a shooting star effect! Below the stars is where a fence was, but you can see how over time the moon came up and the stars faded - giving the shooting look.

Demonstrating the cold light of LED torch, as well as the importance of a still (meaning, no wind) night. There were also clouds that broke the trails.

This is the best of the four - taken at an increased focal length, which I think helped the clarity of the trail. Funnily enough the increased focal length was due to the storm in the distance - for lightning photos, see my Facebook page!

Mysteries of Misty Waters in Karijini

As promised, a second edition on the Karijini expedition. The jury is still out on the third. This trip was surprisingly good for water shots, despite the incredibly bright sun. Once down in the shade of the gorges, and the sun had started to disappear, water shots were so much fun to take. There is something so satisfying about setting up a shot, leaving the shutter open for a few seconds, and eagerly checking the LCD screen to see if the water is misty while the rocks are crystal clear.

Can I just say, I am so glad I do not have a film camera for water shots? Star trails - different story. I learnt so much from shot to shot - composition, timing, reducing camera shake, or in my case, tripod shake. Some of these things you just don't know with film until they are developed!

Once you have the settings done for a particular gorge, you can go from little run of water, to small waterfall, to bigger waterfalls, composing shots and taking misty water photos. I say again, it is so much fun. What would you do down those gorges without a camera I ask you?

The other thing that was really valuable from this trip is the amount I shot in RAW and had to process later. Only then did I realise I had the white balance wrong for a lot of my water shots, and it needed to be corrected in Camera RAW (a lot of my water had an odd blue tinge).

Check out some of my water shots below:

Handrail Pool, Weano Gorge Karijini NP. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), 1 second shutter, Manual program, f/14, ISO 100, 18mm focal length. Increased contrast, vibrance, saturation in Camera Raw. Also slight warming with magenta tint.

Handrail Pool is a great spot in the park, although it is precarious going down the rail you see to the right, carrying camera gear. It's amazing this shot looks so peaceful, there were backpackers jumping off rocks on the other side! This has got to be my favourite shot of the trip. I know I said that last time about the spider, but you go to Karijini for the gorges, so this trumps a golden orb any day!

I've had people say, why not just Photoshop the rail out of the photo so it all looks natural? Well, one, that would be extremely fiddly and I think difficult (too much like hard work) and two, it's called Handrail Pool for a reason...

Dales Gorge, Karijini NP. Betsy again, with EF-S18-200mm lens set at 50mm. 1/4 sec shutter, f/25. Much the same RAW edits as above - warming and magenta tint, contrast, vibrance and saturation adjustments.

This was quite spectacular. We went down Dales Gorge hoping for some interesting light options at sunset and were rewarded with good conditions for water photos plus some really great golden reflections. I promise you, the gold has nothing to do with Photoshop. This was taken at the top of Fortescue Falls, but I thought, if I call this photo Fortescue Falls everyone is going to look at me like I'm crazy!

Knox Gorge, Karijini. Betsy once more (I only have one!) set at 18mm focal length. F/22, 2 sec shutter. Increased contrast, saturation and vibrance with a magenta tint in Camera RAW.

Just as above, the blue has not much at all to do with Photoshop (it may be slightly enhanced) - Knox Gorge really is blue in parts! This is a good example of smooth running water and gives a good indication of the terrain we were carrying camera gear over! But in all seriousness - blue rocks and purple rocks. Really impressive.

Cascades in Knox Gorge, Karijini. Canon EOS 50D with my Nifty Fifty (EF 50mm f/1.8 II), 0.8 sec shutter, f/22, ISO 100. Contrast, brightness, white balance adjustment as well as vibrance and saturation for two photos before stitching in CS4.

I realised on this trip that while the EF-S18-200mm is a brilliant all rounder lens for traveling, it does not specialise well. It's a pretty good zoom in a tight spot and the wide angle does capture a good landscape, however I do tend to miss out on those crystal clear shots. So I complemented it with my Nifty Fifty - this is literally the cheapest Canon lens you can buy. And I love it. It will take some time to master, but it's F-stop can go all the way up to 1.8. Brilliant. It doesn't give you great depth of field for landscapes usually, but I thought I would try it for some of the water photos in Knox Gorge to try and get increased sharpness. Above is the resulting photo - it's actually a panorama. I learnt to edit these RAW images by processing the first image, setting a preset of the settings so the second is processed exactly the same before stitching together.

You may have noticed a lot of talk about editing in Camera RAW in this post, and the captions on the photos indicate pretty much all my photos are edited slightly. I read once that all digital images usually require at least some tweaking in contrast and brightness. But for some purists, I may need to defend myself. When capturing a RAW image what you are actually doing is capturing a digital negative - that is, all the information collected by your camera's sensor. You then need to process them on the computer and it is not much different to developing a negative (not that I have ever done that - I'm pretty sure there are at least a few more controls...). All I really change is the contrast, brightness, vibrance and saturation. For my Karijini photos I warmed up the white balance and increased the tint to the magenta side for most photos to capture as many colours as possible. I will give you an example of what this does below:

Fortescue Falls, Dales Gorge Karijini. Betsy, at 18mm on tripod, 1/4 second, f/22, ISO 250.

This is the unedited version of this shot. One of the last I took before we headed up to the top of the gorge for the sunset. It is dark and the white balance is incorrect. Below is the processed version.

Same shot, only the colours have been corrected by adjusting the white balance and it's brighter and clearer. You particularly notice it in the water - the water has a slight blue tinge in the first shot, and is white in the second.  Could I have done this with my camera on the day I took the shot by adjusting settings? Good question. I like to think not as it was a custom white balance I set on the computer - I already have my camera set to capture slightly saturated images and as I said before, my 18-200mm lens is great at everything but a master of nothing. With more time and fiddling, I could have set a custom white balance on the camera that day, but when you are standing precariously on wet slippery rocks, with your camera pointing down this waterfall and you have to let it go for a few seconds - you want to make as little adjustments as possible!

As I understand it, it is no different than photographers who used to develop their own negatives and get all arty-farty with contrast and colour. Occasionally I mess with hues and gradients but with digital editing I have come to realise that less really is more.

Photographer's paradise

Karijini National Park, formerly known as the Hamersley Ranges. If you don't know where it is, frankly, I'm not telling because there were too many people there when we visited at Easter time!

None-the-less, this place is a photographers paradise - despite the constant threat of you falling down a gorge or dropping your camera off a cliff. For those of you who followed my previous blog while we were traveling, you will have seen shots of this place before, and heard a couple of stories about how treacherous but rewarding this place can be! They advertise a five or something days trip out here, just for photographers for, I kid you not, around $3,000. Better to just visit it yourself.

We visited with some friends of ours, camping at Dales Gorge for four nights. Karijini is one of the largest National Parks in Australia, and consists of several subterranean gorges. These are great fun to climb down, swim in and just admire. They are full of colour in the banded rocks and interesting rock formations carved out by water. But the colours, oh the colours, are just sensation. Deep, vibrant reds against clear deep blue skys, with white silhouette of snappy gums. Purple, blue, grey, red rocks are prolific.

Your typical Karijini banded rocks - how mind blowing are those colours? Taken with Betsy and my Nifty Fifty down the bottom of Joffre Gorge. Minor editing in RAW - increased warmth and slight magenta hue to bring out the purple rocks. Increased contrast and brightness

It is very isolated though, so being prepared is crucial. I took two batteries and two CF cards. I used both.

This trip was not what I expected. I went with the full intention of getting great photos of huge, impressive gorges - one in particular down the end of Hancock Gorge, however twas not to be - the sun was so blinking bright! I am convinced that the sun is more concentrated in the Pilbara. There is simply, more of it here. Makes it very difficult to take photos during the day.

As it turned out, I had some success with the water shots (after the sun started making its way to bed), which I will write a separate post about, but also a couple of wildlife shots, shown below.

Taken with Betsy and my 18-200mm lens, focal length 187mm. f/5.6, ISO 250, 1/400 shutter.  Minor adjustments in Camera RAW - contrast, exposure, clarity, vibrance and saturation.

 This shot of the golden orb is, ironically, one of my favorites from the trip. I also snapped one of him sucking a dratted fly dry, however is front legs were slightly out of focus on that one. A good zoom is great for shots like this. I may not have needed to go to Karijini to get a shot like this, but this harps back to lesson one: be prepared for every opportunity!

Betsy and my long lens again - 1/640 sec shutter, f/5.6, focal length 200mm ISO 250. Increased contrast, vibrance and saturation in Photoshop.

 This little guy visited the camp one morning. Unfortunately, I ran out of room on my CF card, so instead of shooting in RAW+S JPEG just shot in LG JPEG. This shot was just a JPEG but still came out ok. Plus, this guy is just way too pretty!

Betsy and long lens - 200mm, 1/2500 shutter, shutter priority program. f/5.6, ISO 250. Slight adjustments in Camera RAW - contrast, brightness, warmth, vibrance, saturation.

 Spinafex pigeon! Back in QLD, these guys are grey and called top knots and are considered quite, well, ordinary. But these guys have terrific colouring and cruise around the rocks and the spinafex - it's quite amazing to see these little guys getting around in such a harsh environment!

Keep an eye out for the second Karijini edition - water.

Long Exposure - Star Trails

These are photos I have been longing to take, but again been too lazy to go out after dark to find a nice dark spot to test it out.

A recent evening at Settler's Lookout at Cossack has filled me with hope. I was shooting some lightning of in the distance, leaving the shutter open for a few minutes at a time, when I realised to my delight I was also capturing some stars and some tiny trails. Sure, I kept bumping the seat I was resting my camera on, so they were a little blurry, and I need to get to the bottom of the RGB spots of colour that aren't supposed to be there, but hopefully, by the time you are reading this I will have been out to Karijini NP where I will have achieved a clearer image! Watch this space...

Sunrise and the Dawn

For a photographer, I'm pretty lazy. I hate getting up before the sun. But to get gorgeous sunrises, you have to. So two years ago - my husband and I were still traveling around Australia - we were camped out bush at Shark Bay, WA. It was Easter Sunday and my husband roused me out of bed telling me there was a gorgeous sunset right at the door stop of our caravan. Groaning, I got out of bed and stumbled out to the most tranquil sunrise I have ever seen.

Immediately the zombie was gone and I got out Betsy and took my first panorama with my tripod. I took my time, and the result is still one of my favourite photos since I bought my camera.

To me, it is more than just a sunrise. It symbolises the resurrection, the dawn of a new era where we are reconciled with God through Christ and his sacrifice. Through him we have new life. The sacrifices we make to allow Jesus to be Lord of our lives are tiny compared with the sacrifice he made on that cross. Little sacrifices like getting up an hour earlier.

Happy Easter

The HDR Experiment #2

After discovering that, yes, putting in the time to edit RAW images before combining them into a HDR, I thought hey! that probably holds true for panorama's. I love panorama photography. I like capturing as much information as I can with Betsy - as many colours, the biggest scene, the most detail. Less is more most of the time but when you consider with sheer delight how much of the world we see with our eyes, cameras really become pretty pathetic at what they can capture, and editing them is just our attempt to improve something superficial. The master of the world has created gorgeous scenes and colours for us to enjoy every single day. Can you imagine God's computer screen? (I wonder if he operates on Apple or Microsoft...). How much fun must he have mixing all these colours!

But I digress...Panoramas with High Dynamic Range.

My attempt was fruitless. It was virtually impossible for someone as impatient as me to achieve perfect exposure for each of the RAW photos to stitch together, let alone the HDR photos on top of that...For a rainy day I think. (Given that I live in the Pilbara, I won't hold my breath). I like the idea, but I think I better concentrate on getting HDR right first. Small steps.

After my relatively disappointing efforts with HDR with this particular jaunt to Cossack I was quite down-hearted, however the lesson here is to never give up hope. I still believe it doesn't matter how much photographic skill you have, how whiz-bang your camera is, there is always chance. And by chance, I snapped this. This panorama is a combination of four Betsy churn-our JPEGs taken in portrait, with no post-shot editing other than photomerge. This is why I love Betsy...

Let me tell you this was the wrong day to wear open-toed shoes! But it was worth it.

The HDR Experiment #1

For some reason I am determined to master the HDR photo. It is a form of processing a number of images into one, and for some reason it doesn't like working for me. It's time consuming to edit RAW photos and then process them into HDR. I experimented by first creating a HDR image with the Betsy churn-outs and then editing the same photos in RAW. (Remember, I shoot in RAW + LG JPEG - and as I've discovered it's often a space waster...)

And just so you know the pain and effort I went to for this experiment, I was standing, (or actually crouching) in the middle of a line of bitey ants while I took all these photos - thank goodness for auto-bracketing!

Here are the first three JPEGS courtesy of my Betsy:

 And combined together for a HDR:

I then set about editing each of the RAW files corresponding to the three above to the highest quality and colour - increasing saturation, adding warmth and a slight magenta tint to each of them. The results:

Stitched together in HDR they came out thus:

The result is more colour and mood lifting the picture to life. Is it worth the time spent editing photos in RAW? Answer, yes - provided you don't get too carried away with colours. HDR is worth while too, but not for every photo. I spend hours with other images of this sunset trying to make it work, only to have the sky continually overexposed when merged. I could do more with the gradient tool in Photoshop for most.

DSLR vs Smartphone: Instagram and the question of what kind of image to capture?

Many of you out there would have heard of this little smartphone app. It has grown in popularity. I love it simply because it allows you to share spur of the moment photos on your online social life. It is a little overdone/overused now, and the settings you are given to choose from don't always match your photo. Having said that, I have seen some fabulous images uploaded on this baby!

So, wanting to record my photographic journey I wanted to share with the blogosphere the little critter that joined us for dinner the other night. Oh, I pulled out my DSLR to capture this little guy  as well, but with my smartphone, I was able to hold it with one hand while crouched down on an odd angle to capture this little guy, so I could put my thumb next to him to show just how darn small and therefore cute he is!

The composition is not great, but in the heat of the moment, I was able to share this little guy with my friends without little cumbersome photo editing required!

Now check out the image I took with my DSLR. It's cropped and lightened in Photoshop. It's an OK-ish photo, but there is no point of reference to show how tiny he is! I tried to chase him so my husband's phone was in the shot to give an idea, but the little guy was too quick for me

The Instagram photo is more organic I feel - it may not be a higher quality but it captures the moment. As someone who really enjoys taking photos, I have to ask myself - what do I want to capture? A stunning, technically correct photo? A piece of art? Or the moment? Smartphones and technology make it so easy for us to capture anything and everything and store it for eternity. In 1000 years (if we last that  long) it is possible that someone will dig up photos being taken today from the ether and examine them like they examine ancient art. What do they want to see? Something technically beautiful, or a moment captured in time? Sometimes though it's worth capturing the moment with our minds and create a memory. The pressure to create lasting art is too much. Plus I felt guilty for momentarily blinding this poor little guy with my flash. And chasing him around.

Thrill of the Chase

There are some photos you have to be there to quickly capture the moment, and then there are some that you have planned in your head, waiting for the right moment to present itself, telling yourself you will be ready when that happens. This weekend I was able to chase after one such photo.

I was riding my bike yesterday afternoon, testing out our new GoPro (post to follow) when I noticed the clouds had the potential to contribute to a terrific sunset, one that turns the whole sky red. I had a vision of a photo down on the salt flats were someone, I'm not sure who, probably a bunch of different people, have placed different pieces of 'art' in the ponds for the salt crystals to grow. This is along the highway between Karratha and Dampier. The Rio train runs behind it, with the setting sun in the background. One of the art signs spells 'Karratha' with sharks circling and a lone hand reaching for the sky...I'm not sure what it's supposed to symbolise but it adds character.

So with the promise of a spectacular sunset I abandoned the curry I had cooking at home, left my husband to great our guest coming for dinner that night, and...followed the speed limit...down the highway to salt flats where I pulled over and started clicking madly away. An ore train was passing as I got there, which gave me the opportunity to include it in the shot.

Chasing after photos you have thought about for a long time - they never work out as you imagined. But still, I thought they came out alright, even if they aren't up to a 'pro' standard...

You can see how the shape of the clouds got me excited!

 Our 'public art'. This is the shot I was planning, although in my head you had more clouds and the sun just behind the train...I guess nature just didn't get the message.

I took a couple. I played with the colours a little bit in Photoshop - the actual colour is somewhere between the purple and the green. Still learning how to run that RAW editor!

My verdict? It won't be the last time I'm on those salt flats - I've still got the Loch Ness Monster, the Titanic, the man and the kangaroo to snap! The salt flat itself is challenging because of the way it reflects the colours. After this exercise I think I'm better off trying to take the photo first go, rather than messing around with them in Photoshop. But hey, isn't it all about the thrill of the chase?

I'm also pleased to report that while pulled over I was only honked at once!

Until next time Amigos! (and watch out for the GoPro post...)

Lesson #6: Graduated filters in Photoshop

My latest photography excursion was a disappointment. I tend to find that this is a regular occurrence. As one of my friends said this evening; 'It's an annoying hobby!'. There is so little room for a margin of error, and so often you think you have a good image, only to put it onto your laptop when you get home and be disappointed.

Armed with my nifty fifty, I took Betsy to the beach in Dampier under the palms. We were there on a picnic fare-welling some friends therefore it wasn't a dedicated photography trip. This spot is frequented by anyone living in the vicinity so shots of the sunset at the palms of Dampier are a dime a dozen.



So, because of the average quality of the photos themselves regarding...pretty much everything, I decided to have a little play. I took this opportunity to experiment back on my laptop, adding graduated filters post-production. This was done in Adobe Camera Raw plug in. In the end I used three different filters, because I went a little crazy. I've done bit of a fun screen shot to give you an idea of what these suckers can do, and how much fun they are to play with late at night...

The image I came to rest on after I went a little colour crazy was this one:

I had to lighten the top right hand corner a little, and that was probably the most difficult. One thing that amazes me is that while the colours in the sky in this shot  are more vibrant and the clouds stand out more, there is actually a larger gamut of colour in the original image (two above). You can only imagine just how many more colours our eyes pick up at sunset! Our eyes are the best camera we have.

Finally, after the sun went down, I experimented by the water with the nifty fifty and low light. The shot below is the best one that  came out, although the background is out of focus.