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Dusk falls over Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. After exploring the western side of the lake, for this evening we decided to go for a drive and a walk along the eastern shore. The idea was to find a good spot for a potential sunset, which was looking promising throughout the afternoon. During our previous visit a fair while ago, we were not able to explore too much as our stay at Wanaka was very much rained out. This time around, we had more time set aside to explore and the weather was a lot more cooperative as well.
I was especially keen to find a stretch of the shoreline with something that would work well for the foreground. I was looking for small coves, pools of water, interesting trees or rocks to be included in the photo. Preferably, that would also be somewhere where there was a nice open view of the mountains, and where I could see the colours in the sky. I originally wanted to photograph in the direction of the setting sun, or thereabouts, because this was where the best light and colour usually happen. I could not find anything overly compelling when looking in the westerly direction though, so I had to work out a different plan.
As we walked along we reached a little bit of the shore which was facing in the northerly direction, and which allowed for good views alongside in both westerly and easterly directions. This is where I settled for the sunset. As the evening progressed, I kept an eye on both sides to see where the best light and colours were. There was good high cloud coverage across the entire sky and that created a lot of potential opportunities across the entire area. Another reason why I did not end up shooting directly towards the setting sun was that the tall mountains on the western shore became rather grey and uninteresting once the sun went behind them. I did not want just a textureless mass occupying half of the frame.
Just as the sun was right over the horizon and about to disappear, I noticed the sky being illuminated in the easterly direction. I also spotted the beautiful warm glow on the mountains in the distance. By then I have already worked out a possible composition, so I quickly switched to face away from the sunset and used the waves and the rocks to add interest to the scene in the foreground. I liked the edge of the lake closing the frame from the right, and I felt that it also helped to lead the eyes to the colour in the sky and then towards the mountains. In addition to the colour present in the sky, there was also some of it being reflected in the water, and it was combining well with the darked tone of the lake. I really liked the way the magenta tones mixed with the early stages of the blue hour.
I did have to take multiple exposures to make this scene work. The sky was too bright for the foreground and I would not have been able to cover the entire dynamic range in one exposure, even with information contained in the raw file. I also worked with different shutter speeds to find the best one for the surface of the lake to match my vision of this scene. Having taken multiple exposures also allowed me to blend in parts of the photo where the trees in the background ended up blurred out due to longer exposure times. It was quite windy, as you can see by the water, and anything longer that one second resulted in blurry trees, which just did not work for me here.
This was one of the rare occasions for me to combine "seascape" photography with mountain photography. I love working with water and it was fantastic to be able to include mountains with a touch of alpenglow. The conditions really did come together nicely on that evening, and I hope that you like the resulting photo.
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This image has been featured in 1 Remix collection.