Running towards hazards

I took this shot a while back on a photography trip to Tasmania. It’s of a mountain range known as “The Hazards”.

Most of the day leading up to this sunset was really dark, wet and miserable and we’d pretty much written off taking any great photos. I’d go as far as saying the rain was torrential.

So the afternoon was spent killing time sitting around in the car, in a cafe, and back at the house. Just altogether feeling sorry for ourselves.

Like I said, the day was a write-off as far as we were concerned.

That was until about five minutes before the official sunset time.

One of our group (there were 7 of us on this trip) stepped in from outside and proclaimed “SUNSET ALERT!”.

“Mad panic” fails to describe the next 5 minutes!

By minute 5 we had packed our camera bags, piled in the car for the 2 minute drive to this location, ran from the car park to find a half-decent composition, set our cameras up on tripods and started firing off some shots.

The sky was on fire, conditions that only occur when the storms of the day cease right on cue at sunset.

Another one of those “photographers panic” moments for sure! lol

I’m sure there's a lesson in there somewhere!

Luckily we got there just in time because the stormy sunset colours started to fade after just a few minutes. But it was long enough to grab a few exposures.

This final image is made up of three exposures.

The movement in the water in the foreground was created with a 0.6 second exposure. Then a longer exposure to get a brighter frame of the dark mountains, then a shorter exposure to capture the detail in the brightest part of the sky.

Looking back, I’ve probably let some of the bright water over-expose in post processing and lost some detail. If I processed this image again, I’d definitely be more careful to not let that happen.

Otherwise, the image is again, textbook Luminosity Masking Mastery when it comes to processing technique.

Blending the bracketed exposures, by hand, to bring the best bits of each together for a high dynamic range result.

Come to think of it, I haven’t ever recorded a video processing this particular image.

So how about this – I’ll record one over the weekend, showing step by step every edit along the way (just like my other walkthrough videos which go for $17 each) and everyone who owns a copy of my Luminosity Masking Mastery course by this time on Monday will get the new video for free…

Sound cool?

Awesome 🙂 To make sure you get in on this, all you have to do is own my Luminosity Masking Mastery course before the end of the weekend.

Click here to get it now (along with some other free bonuses) and I’ll add the new walkthrough to your account on Monday.

Talk soon
Steve