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In Search of Starfish

Posted by
Darkelf Photography (Perth, Australia) on 5 February 2024 in Landscape & Rural.

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Amazing rugged coast at Motukiekie Beach on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand. This was a location I had to plan for in advance as it is very tide dependent, and the difference in sea levels can be quite dramatic. Even with planning though, one just never knows what conditions will be like and one needs a bit of luck for everything to work out. This location is famous for its sea stacks and a large colony of starfish dwelling on the rock shelf close to the main cliffs. To get there, one has to hop around from rock to rock at low tide and be very aware of stray waves and fast rising sea level.

We had two evenings to explore the area with the low tide falling around the sunset time. However, I was not able to get too close to the sea stacks in the distance because of higher than expected waves. It was just too hazardous to get out there without any wading gear. The rock shelf is very uneven and it would be almost impossible to traverse if underwater. I met another photographer on one of the evenings and he was in the same predicament. Every time it looked like the sea had settled and I could start to make my way across, higher waves would return and cover all the rocks. This forced me to abandon my original plans and look around for other compositions. Luckily, it is a location that has plenty to offer and I managed to track down some starfish too. I hope you can see them in the photo.

When we walked past this spot a day before, I could not see any starfish hiding on the rocks and the water level might have already been too high anyway. On this evening, I took some photos at the original planned spot, as close to the sea stacks as I could get to, before walking slowly back to the car. As we walked back, I jumped over the closest rocks here and there, still looking for compositions. I managed to find this one just in time to be able to take a couple of shots. Soon afterwards more water started to come through the little channel and over the rocks, disturbing the reflections and also covering the starfish.

It took a little bit of time to get the composition right. I wanted to include the stacks and the starfish in the frame as well as the reflected clouds. I also wanted to get the right balance between the rocks in the sea on the left and right of the scene. If I turned more toward the left, I would lose the shapes of the starfish, and if turned more towards the right, the starfish would be more prominent but the rest of the composition would not be as interesting. I ended up going a little wider than needed and then cropping slightly during processing to get that everything working together as I had envisioned.

I bracketed my exposures and blended them together in post processing to recover detail and tones in the highlight areas of the frame. I used to struggle a lot when it came to blending scenes where there were elements reaching up into the sky. With practice it has become more natural for me but these are always challenging photos to handle, both in the field and on the computer. What I liked about the light in this instance, was that it added lovely glow around the stacks, it brought texture and definition out of the midground rocks, and it was also hitting the edge of the rock shelf where there starfish were located to give them good brightness and saturation.

It was my first time at this intriguing location and I hope to use the experience I gathered when we return there again in the future. I know that it will definitely be on the list, if we ever go back to the south island of New Zealand. I think that this is one of these locations where one must return at least a few times before being satisfied. Being so tide dependent, the window to visit during a single trip is very small, unless I could hang around for a couple of months.

Canon EOS R5 1/2 second F/8.0 ISO 100 15 mm

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REMIX#2024 by Florence Maugendre