Early Morning @ Mount Maunganui

[Wazza]

Nearing the end of my 2 week break from work, and after travelling to Brisbane, the girflriend and I decided to drive to Mt Maunganui, for a 1 night stay. I love this place. Usually great surf (except this time, it was flat!), golden sand beach, shops, and a whole load of fun. I was there for a whole week, January last year. Decided this year's holiday should be dedicated to the overseas trip. :)

Here is just 4 of the many shots I took.

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/mount_sun.jpg
Overlooking the beach from a rocky outcrop.

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/mount_sun2.jpg
Tracks to nowhere.

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/mount_sun3.jpg
A pity about shooting directly into the sun, causing flare.

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/mount_sun4.jpg
Reflections were plentiful.

[Maureen Souza]

Awesome... I actually really like the 3rd picture... the bird helps detract from the sun and adds a nice dimension to it. The 1st one is my favorite.

[Maz]

Nice photos. Nice weather.

I like the tracks.

Maz
http://www.homesteadsforsale.com

[despot]

Very nice. Stunning views.

Andy

[ssim]

2 and 4 are quite breathtaking though they are all good but those are definitely my favs from these.

[flyfisher]

I like the second and thers one's,very nice.

[Reigh Higgins]

Number one is my choice. Beautiful shots!

[MarkoPolo]

Wazza, great photos! Really intense and very sharp.
I am computer challenged-how do you get 5 photos in one post? Mark

[cactusclay]

Great compositions.

[sparker1]

All are outstanding. Each time I look, I have a different favorite.

[Mills]

Each shot is great. Been waiting for you to get back so we could see your fantastic work!

[Wazza]

Thanks very much everyone.

I do still have 2700 photos to sort through from the holiday to Brisbane/Surfers. Not overly pleased with what I took. Wish I could have spent more time walking the streets taking some urban shots, or night shots. In fact, most the images are at the theme parks, showing the rides. Only spent 1 hour one night, walking along Brisbane, taking a few shots of the river and Story Bridge. I will post a few once, I get through them all.

MarkoPolo: I can post several images, as I'm using the [img] tags, rather than the upload. It means I must have these images stored on a different site, which I link to from here. I do have my own unlimited space which is free courtesy of nfscity.com. (the only condition is that it has to be either "Need for Speed" related, or for personal use.. It's for both so that's fine.)

[stoneylonesome]

All are very good, but I must say I love the second.

[Michaelmjc]

Abosolutely amazing pictures, Ya too bad about the sun flare one. You could always edit it in photoshop though.

Really nice pics.

[Wazza]

Would you have any tips on how to photoshop it out?
I just tried a couple of different ways, and they came out awful.
I tried choosing a large brush size for one, such as 480 pixels, about the same size as the flare. And that didn't work well. And the other way, I did a Lasso around it, and adjusted the levels and brightness. Still not good.

[jads]

wazza, I see you've been up to your usual good work. well done mate.

[Skitzy]

They're all fantastic, but they look a little blocky are they saved as gifs? If so change to jpeg, really ruins the colours. Could be these computers though :(

[Wazza]

They're all fantastic, but they look a little blocky are they saved as gifs? If so change to jpeg, really ruins the colours. Could be these computers though :(

I'm hoping it's your PC! :)
They look fine to me. I always save as Jpg, but as I'm only sharing some pics, most of them are saved pretty low quality, to keep the file size small, and download times quick. But that's still at least 40-50% full quality, which often only messes up skies a wee bit.

[Dimitry]

Amazing...I absolutely love sunset and sunrise shots!!!

[Rendezvous]

The last shot looks pretty good. We'll have to go and do some shooting and share lenses when I come back up to Auckland. It's more fun going out and shooting with a friend.

[Wazza]

Thanks Daniel. You still haven't seen my 20D. ;)
I guess you can use my 50mm 1.8. See the versatility of this lens.

[Rendezvous]

You can always borrow my 18-55mm efs
Don't get mad if your camera doesn't work after though ok?

[MarkoPolo]

Wazza, thanks for the reply. I am thinking of using PBase as a site.

[rammy]

Fantastic shots wazza. Did you shoot "as is" or did you place any filters on the lens? If so what kind, ND Grads? Warm ups? The colours are fantastic, if only mine looked like that.

Regarding the sun flare, could you not use a layer mask and then an adjustment layer around the sun flare to blend the colour back into the rest of the image?

You could also try the dodge and burn trick with layers. Add a new layer from the menu, on the new layer dialog, choose OVERLAY for the mode and make sure you tick the "Fill with Overlay-neutral color" check box. You should then be able to use a black brush to try and burn the flare back into the picture.

[sGu]

1. Foreground way too dark, try combine two shots together to bring the details out, one expose for the sky and the other for the foreground. Beautiful sky though :)

2. Crop out the dark bit of foreground, maybe 1/3 from bottom up

3. Fantastic shot! Love every bit of it, composition, mood, colour, framing, it has everything there is to a great photo.

4. Excellent capture, here dark areas actually help to seperate foreground and background, give a sense of distance, also contrast with sun to enhance the mood, very very well done

:D

[Wazza]

1. Foreground way too dark, try combine two shots together to bring the details out, one expose for the sky and the other for the foreground. Beautiful sky though :)

2. Crop out the dark bit of foreground, maybe 1/3 from bottom up

3. Fantastic shot! Love every bit of it, composition, mood, colour, framing, it has everything there is to a great photo.

4. Excellent capture, here dark areas actually help to seperate foreground and background, give a sense of distance, also contrast with sun to enhance the mood, very very well done

:D

Thanks for those comments. I did have a couple of shots of #1, one which did expose it a bit more for the bottom, and one which showed more sky detail, and left the bottom darker, as this one was. It wasn't quite black, so I adjusted that part of the levels to be just dark. I felt either showing lots of detail, or no detail. The shots were kinda in between.

2. Laziness actually. I had seen the useless darkness there, but also liked the dark lines coming out of darkness. This was shot 25min before sunrise, on 2 sec shutter speed. Could have had more effect, or lighter, had I had a smaller tripod which gets lower to the ground. The tracks are only about 30cm apart.

And thanks for the other comments. :)

[Wazza]

Fantastic shots wazza. Did you shoot "as is" or did you place any filters on the lens? If so what kind, ND Grads? Warm ups? The colours are fantastic, if only mine looked like that.

Regarding the sun flare, could you not use a layer mask and then an adjustment layer around the sun flare to blend the colour back into the rest of the image?

You could also try the dodge and burn trick with layers. Add a new layer from the menu, on the new layer dialog, choose OVERLAY for the mode and make sure you tick the "Fill with Overlay-neutral color" check box. You should then be able to use a black brush to try and burn the flare back into the picture.

The wideangle shots, ie, all except the sunflare one, were shot with 17-40L. I didn't have any filter on, as I recently broke my UV filter on it. Dropped it 20cm, and it shattered. At least the lens isn't damaged or scratched in anyway. :)

The Sun view, was using my Sigma 70-300, and have a 58mm UV on this one.

Comparing the originals to the edits, they're all very close. All I've done is USM, and maybe a very slight colour balance change, to say bring out a bit more orange/red detail in the sky, and added say +5 saturation.

As to those other tips, I'm actually a really bad at photoshop. All I've ever used it for is to mildly edit photos with the basic levels, USM, and often just use AutoLevels, and fade out.

I honestly beleive the colours like this come out as it's New Zealand. I called Brisbane, Australia's sunrise/sunset Dull in comparison, as it just didn't seem to carry the same vibrant colours. (when I was there 2 weeks ago)

[RJSorensen]

Fine set . . . I favor #2 & #4 of the lot. Very nice color in them.