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I am back after a little break. My apologies, we had some local travel for a couple of weeks and then it took me a few days to get back into photo processing and posting. Slight detour from the Faroe Islands and something a little closer to home in today's post. Few weeks ago, after some heavy rains, we ventured out to a place called Bells Rapids near Perth. During the summer months this area is usually bone dry but after some inland rains there was a small flow of water coming through the rocks and I was able to use the stream in this composition. It was great to get a lovely sunset as our companion as well.
It is one of the places that I have struggled to find a good composition and get some good light in the past. We have been here a few times before, especially during winter when the water level rises quite high. It is a place that is busy in character with many details and elements. There are rocks scattered around the river bed and there is almost too much choice for a composition. Reduced water flow worked in my favour, I think, because it allowed me to focus on narrower area to find a photo. Using the stream was a natural choice and working with water in my photos has become a second nature to me.
It was the kind of an evening that did not promise too much but turned out to be very beautiful. Not that it was not beautiful already. We enjoyed a bush walk around the river and hills nearby before settling down on the granite rocks not long before sunset. Initially I did not think we were going to get any sunset colours but we kept hanging around and just as we were almost packing up, the sky came to life. This is a moment where the first red and orange tones appeared over the hill. I am glad I had my camera still set up and ready as the colours fade very quickly in our part of the world.
Perth hills area, just to the east of the city, abounds in wonderful granite rocks and outcrops. Some of them have this lovely deep red/bronze hue which gets accentuated even further during the golden hours of the day. That is exactly what happened here and I loved the dark deep tone of the surrounding rocks. It felt like the world had turned crimson red for a moment or two. I was taking a number of photos and checking my histogram repeatedly to ensure that the red channel was not getting blown out. I had to take bracketed exposures to account for the dynamic range and the final image is a blend of two frames, one fore the sky and one for the foreground. Luckily the evening was very calm and there was no wind to disturb the branches which would have made blending a lot harder.
I hope you enjoy this very fresh and recent photo. I am still putting my new camera through its paces and learning a trick or two in the process. I have switched to mirrorless not long ago and while the basics are still very much the same there are differences compared to DLSR that take some getting used to. In any case, now that we are settled back at home, I should be be able to process and post photos regularly again.
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