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Straight after our sunrise shoot at Macquarie Light House we headed to nearby Diamond Bay Reserve on the coastline on South Head to see what the location was like.

We followed the path around the clifftops above the bay to check out what we could see. Just off the boardwalk at the southern end we followed a small trail down onto the cliff and found a fisherman on the rocks on a cliff ledge way below. The old path down was about as precarious as it could be, with narrow exposed steps and some rotten looking logs bridging a gap where the cliff had likely fallen away followed by some more steps and then a ladder down to the ledge where a small stone hut perched above the raging waves. Not for the faint of heart - and yes those fisherman are certifiable

This isn't the best composition but was taken lying down and hanging slightly over the edge of the cliff looking down...



From here we could also see some fishermen on lower ledges of the cliff on the other side of the bay along with some ladders and ropes along the bottom of the cliff. We headed back around the top of the cliff with a view to finding a way down. After scrambling down a narrow gorge Gerry and I made our way to the bottom and took some shots from the rocks (which were getting nicely submerged (and almost me along with it) as some waves came crashing in)

It's amazing the sorts of buildings they allow perched right on the headland cliffs - I'd be interested to know if you like the mono or colour (or neither) view of this composition...

Raging Water and Skies


The Block


I wasn't really sure this image using the ten stop ND has worked but I'd be interested to see (the original in colour is also pretty interesting - with really blue skies and turquoise water and slightly aqua fog on the rocks)

For kicks - we found Suren's next car down in the gorge crying out for some HDR treatment...

#2 and 3 do not really do it for me beacuse of the overly hdr effect. I do like number 4 but that building just looks weird, is that distortion or has it been built like that?

CraigVTR wrote:#2 and 3 do not really do it for me beacuse of the overly hdr effect. I do like number 4 but that building just looks weird, is that distortion or has it been built like that?

Thanks Craig - and I do understand however as shot the bottom half and right side of the image was in full shade whilst the top left corner was in full sun so you either had 3/4 black or 1/4 white. And distortion I think (although I can't be sure since I cant remember if it was actually exactly square or not - I assume it was?)

I applied some vertical distortion lens correction in LR to the original colour image to mostly fix it and recropped the image and the reapplied the monochrome processing:



I also re-affirmed something VERY cool about Lightroom:
Even though I applied distortion controls to the original colour and then recropped for a different crop - when I then made a new virtual copy of that image I went to the previous monochrome I'd made and copied the extra processing steps I'd done to it and copied them to this new colour version to monochrome it. Thats cool enough but what was uber cool is that some of the processing I'd done to the image included selective dodging and burning - e.g. I had done some selective stuff to just the building itself to make it a little lighter and more contrasty, likewise another "mask" on just the cliffs below - when I copied this to the new version it automatically altered the mask shape and position to conform to the changes I'd made to the new image so it again perfectly aligned with both the new location AND shape of the building - SWEET!

NB: here is the (reworked - distortion+crop) original colour version:

all processing aside, the seascape shot with the building is a good composition, everything else is elementary, although I do prefer the bigstopper sky..

The last colour version looks the goods now.

CraigVTR wrote:The last colour version looks the goods now.

Thanks Craig - you still prefer the colour bigstopper to the monochrome?

Remorhaz wrote:we found Suren's next car down in the gorge crying out for some HDR treatment...

I reckon the insurance will be cheap for this one.

Rodney
Some bloody brilliant work there! You are just getting soooo good at photography!

surenj wrote:

Remorhaz wrote:we found Suren's next car down in the gorge crying out for some HDR treatment...

I reckon the insurance will be cheap for this one.

I was just thinking with the unreliability of your current one this one looks pretty rock steady

Matt. K wrote:Rodney, Some bloody brilliant work there! You are just getting soooo good at photography!

Thanks Matt - could be just sheer weight of numbers but I am hoping I am actually improving - thanks it does mean a lot coming from you

Remorhaz wrote:

CraigVTR wrote:The last colour version looks the goods now.

Thanks Craig - you still prefer the colour bigstopper to the monochrome?

Rodney What I like about the colour version is the better detail in the rocks. But thinking outside the square I wonder what a triptych split horizontally would look like. Iam thinking from the bottom colour, desat, monochrome. mmmmmmm, could not find an approprate smilie.