Blue Sky

I think that this will be the last image that I'll post from last Saturday at McDonald Beach.

Like the other two, this one is an HDR image; this time from five photos. When I set up to take this one I thought it would turn out well. However, my first attempt with this one yielded a so-so result and I put is aside in favour of the others. This evening I decided to revisit it and came to the conclusion that what I really needed to do was reprocess it from scratch. I'm glad I did as I'm much happier with the result now.

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Rust(ic)

Second shot from McDonald Beach on Saturday afternoon. This one is also an HDR image, but created from a single RAW photo, rather than the five used to create my previous post.

Processing an image like this as an HDR allows a lot more of the detail and colour to pop out. It's actually quite a bit brighter than the actual scene - it was the last shot of the day - but that was courtesy of a nice long exposure and not really a factor of the post-processing.

As for the subject matter... I've spent a bit of time puzzling over the particular arrangement of metal plates, washers chain and nut/bolt. Haven't come to any conclusions yet as to why they're arranged the way they are.

[still no word on my lens...]

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Beach & Barges

I got out with the camera for a couple of hours on Saturday, not really expecting to shoot anything interesting just out for the exercise more than anything.

I ended up at McDonald Beach where I found the lighting a bit of a challenge, but hey, no problem - I'd taken my tripod along (more weight to carry so more exercise...) so I just did some multiple exposure magic and pulled the result together with photomatix pro.

This shot (composite of 5 exposures) is looking south-east, and is just across the river from FRP, where Sherlock was barking up a storm as he played in the water with his usual tree trunk.

This is actually the second effort at this picture. The first, which I possibly liked better, was accidentally corrupted in Adobe Bridge so I had to redo it in photomatix; unfortunately I hadn't saved the settings I used and couldn't remember exactly what I'd done. There are enough variables to set in the detail enhancer that unless you have a really good memory or have saved the settings it's almost impossible to get the exact same result. I don't know how much that really matters though, as I played with it some more in photoshop anyway...

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A Stream Runs Through It

Although I'd thought I might post another picture or two from up around the Cleveland Dam, and indeed it's always possible, I confess I find myself getting tired of looking at that particular batch of photos at the moment, so I'm going to put them aside for now and post this, which was taken a week earlier and sat in the camera for most of that week and had mostly been -unfairly- ignored.

This is the Woods Island Marsh which seems to me oddly named for several reasons as it's located within MacDonald Beach Park which in turn is located on Sea Island. Although I've wandered around MacDonald Beach a few times I don't recall ever having noticed it before. It's a no-go area of the park - a part of the ecological reserve, so this is one of the few views that one can conveniently get, dependant on the tides.

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(Almost) Empty Dock

I'd had in mind to post a different shot next, but when I took another look I decided that I wasn't happy with the processing after all. I spent some more time working on it this evening, but I guess I'm not quite sure just what it is that I want out of it as I'm still not satisfied with the result. Oh well, I can always waste a little more time tomorrow...
In the meantime, here's another shot from Saturday. This one was taken a bit later in the day than the previous post (about 25 minutes before sunset) and to the west (McDonald Beach). I'd gone there to get a shot of something else that I've been thinking about for a while; I'll have to go back again though as the tide was in and I couldn't get the vantage that I wanted and the light really wasn't right either.

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