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Unchained Dreams

Posted by
Darkelf Photography (Perth, Australia) on 14 February 2023 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

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This is a second photo from a beautiful sunset on the coast of Christmas Island taken on our first evening there. I took the previous photo - Out in The Indian Ocean - facing east and away from the sunset, while the main show was starting to develop in the west. I was originally reluctant to shoot in the western direction, mostly due to the lack of natural features for my foreground composition. However, sometimes one needs to make use of man-made elements to complete the photo and I decided to utilise this old rusty chain for the purpose of this image.

It is my philosophy to avoid man-made objects and people in landscape photos, unless there is something substantial that they can contribute to my artistic vision or I have a concept which I can associate them with. In this case, it was mostly a matter of necessity because I could not find any interesting bit of coast when looking towards the sunset. Later on, after I examined the photos at home, I thought of a possible title and I had two things running through my mind. One was a metaphor of me being chained (in a good sense of the word) to the sea because I do like and shoot a lot of seascapes. The second one was that the light and colours made me feel like a dream that has escaped the chain to be released into the world for us to admire on the day. These ideas made me really glad that in the end I overcame my reluctance and took this photo.

The air on Christmas Island was beautifully pristine and clean, and we were glad to encounter partly cloudy conditions on most of the days. There were low clouds moving about but there was also plenty of high clouds, especially in the evenings. Because of this, I knew that if we got some colours at sunset, they would be spectacular providing that high humidity did not introduce a bit of haze, which could reduce the luminance and colour intensity. Sunset light also lasted for a long enough time to allow me to photograph a number of different compositions to make the most of these conditions. Actually, the colours were so saturated in this scene that I had to keep toning them down in my post processing work as they could have easily gone off the histogram.

I took a number of bracketed exposures to account for the high dynamic range in the scene. I used one frame for the foreground to keep it noise free and sharp. Second one was used for the water to get the beautiful reflected tones and to be able to choose the best texture. I did not take a full on long exposure, so I did not want the water to end up looking washed out in a bad way. Finally, I used another three frames for the sky to ensure that the brightest highlights were not too blown out. While that all sounds complicated, it allowed me to get the blend just right with smooth tonal transitions and natural feel to the scene (at least in my mind). When working on the image I also realised that I rather liked the way the rusty tones of the chain complimented the colours of the sunset. There is the obvious wide angle distortion, as I was pointing the camera down towards the chain, but I am not too bothered about it the big post anchors the scene well for me.

As you can see, it all came together very nicely in the end and I hope that the vivid atmosphere of that evening transcends down to your screens and homes as well.

Canon EOS R5 16/5 second F/8.0 ISO 200 15 mm

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