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Back to the coast of Western Australia with today's photo. I took it a couple of years ago near Cape Leeuwin on the south west point of Australia. This was an area which we wanted to explore a bit more, and international covid restrictions gave us an opportunity to travel more locally and catch up on some of the places what we wanted to see or re-visit. In addition, we have seen many of the coastal places mostly during the summer months, so it was also great to be able to explore during winter conditions. Winter means more storms, more rain, more clouds and more wind. That has its own hazards but it can also produce great moody scenes or interesting light.

This was one of the last photos I took on that evening before havens really opened up and rain bucketed down. I think I was already lucky to avoid getting any raindrops on the leans and filters. I just checked the exposure time again and noticed that it states 192 seconds. It means that I must have terminated the exposure before it ran its full course, as this is a somewhat strange setting which I would not deliberately select. From memory, I must have done so because of the rain, but also possibly because of the bright patch of light over the horizon. I monitor the conditions around me when shooting long exposure as any significant changes on luminosity can affect the final result. Exposing longer in this case would have most likely resulted on blown highlights in the sky.

I explored the nearby rocks and bays beforehand and I remembered this particular spot with rock "fingers" stretching out before me towards the ocean and the sky. I decided on a long exposure because I thought that it would create a good contrast between the still rocks and the movement in the water and in the clouds. It felt to me like, as my title suggest, I was taming the chaos of the scene by calming down the water and smoothing out the clouds to give them a more ethereal appearance. I loved all the detail in the foreground and I did not want it to be fighting for attention with angry seas. Already, I took some dramatic photos at faster shutter speeds so I wanted this image to be more dreamy and maybe even a touch soothing despite the inherent darkness.

What I also liked about the scene before my eyes were the subtle tonal contrasts between different hues of the rocks. Dark clouds and evening light added a tinge of blue, while the red and brown tones were still present enough to be notices. They lost a little of their daylight saturation and their subdued nature worked perfectly for my vision here. I was careful in post processing to keep saturation under control. Any contrast adjustments affect saturation and it can be easily pushed too far, which can work in some situations but I did not want that to happen here. I usually start with a quite flat looking image and that also helps with saturation control as I work through each photo.

I do not take as many long exposures as I used to and that is because I have been able to photograph a lot of different landscapes and conditions during our recent travels. I spent most of my early photographic days on the local coast, where water movement and dreamy seascapes were the staple for me. In the last few years I have been able to add to those skills and I am always looking out for something different and new to photograph. I do still love the coast though, and I was glad to be able to go back to my archives and work on this photo. There are many more seascapes still waiting to be published and I will bring them out gradually in between other photos.