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Another sunset from Christmas Island. This is a follow up to a previous photo I posted - Shadow of the Storm. That photo was taken around twenty minutes before this one. We hanged around for a little longer to see how the sunset would turn out or whether the rain would arrive first. If you compare the two, you can see the difference in light and mood. The main rain cloud moved over to the right and revealed behind it a break in the clouds which allowed beautiful warm glow to come through for a few moments.
Because it was very dark overhead, I decided to zoom in a bit further and focus on the main part of the scene where all the light action was taking place. This allowed me to avoid the plants in the foreground which were moving continuously about in the wind. The foreground was still great with interesting jagged texture of the volcanic rocks adding texture and detail. I also tried zooming in a bit further, right on the headland in the distance, but I just did not find that composition as compelling. Dark clouds and rocks framed the glow for me nicely and added extra drama. As I watched the clouds pass by and took earlier photos, I kept on thinking about how I can zoom in and make something of that distant land to give it a bit more prominence compared to the wider frames. Luckily at sunset I found the right conditions for what I had in mind, and I was able to use them in this photo.
At this stage we were holding out against the incoming rain and we could see another curtain of precipitation moving a lot closer and more directly towards us. You can actually see rain in the distance. It was quite dark already and I had to shoot longer exposures, especially if I wanted to keep the depth and detail in the image. If I went with wider aperture, I would have lost the sharpness in the foreground rock. Actually, I was very happy to use longer shutter speeds because, as you already know, I love the long exposure effect in many cases. Here, it allowed for the glow to become a bit more dreamy, it smoothed out the sea a little and it revealed more of the hazy part of the landscape over the horizon. It also mellowed out the waves crashing on the shore which worked greatly for the overall atmosphere.
It is just a single exposure this time and I able to get all the light and detail I needed in one frame. There was enough light hitting the rocks to be able to expose the scene for the highlights without sacrificing shadow texture. Post processing was reasonably straight forward with dodging and burning taking up the most of the time I spend on the image. This has become my main tool when doing processing work. I am often tempted to go back to some of my old photos to see how I would have processed them now compared to earlier, and if time ever permits I will do that one day. I know that I would definitely use dodging and burning as I never did that in my early photography days.
This is almost the end of the series of landscape photos from Christmas Island. There may be a couple more images hiding on the hard drive that I will process at some stage. I still have some crab photos that I want to post and might upload them here when we will be on our next journey. Another reason why I love photography is that once the trip is over, as I work on the photos it feels like I am still there and extends that experience for me. I hope you have been able to share in it as well through the images I have been posting.
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