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The clouds were all set up to flare nicely during sunset this evening, but it didn’t really take off the way I imagined. Still, it’s hard to beat a Maui sunset, and it gave me a chance to do some experimenting. Comments are welcome. Enjoy…
Traditional technique, 3-stop hard ND grad.
HDR, no filters, 8 exposures, artistically rendered.
My friend Beth is visiting from the mainland with her daughter Kali and insisted on experiencing a Maui sunset yesterday. Well, the sunset didn’t really deliver, but there was just enough good light to do an impromptu shoot with Kali for her senior photos. I have a feeling these will be the pride (or envy) of her senior class back home.
Just because I couldn’t resist, and I’d been doing HDR all weekend, I had to indulge myself. Here are a few renderings of last night’s sunset at different stages. All of these were done in Photomatix 4.0 and finished in Lightroom 3.4.1.
Which is your favorite?
A great evening to all the dads out there. Aloha…
When my friends Kim and Craig invited me to their house for the Premiere Party celebrating Season Two of Self Made in Hawaii, in which our Social Media Users Group was featured, I couldn’t resist asking if I could come early to shoot the sunset from their roof. When they built the second story addition to their home, they included a spiral starway leading to their rooftop so they could enjoy their South Maui vistas from a higher elevation.
As always, I was hoping for a lightshow in the clouds, but there was too much moisture (as usual) and it didn’t happen. However, the softbox effect on the horizon did allow me to get great shots of the fireball that powers our world from 93 million miles away, and follow it down to the slopes of Lana‘i on the horizon.
After living on Maui for a few years, you do tend to take these sunsets for granted, but I try not to. There aren’t many places in the world that offer views like this.
No matter what I tried with the earlier shots, I couldn’t get rid of the lens flares, so I decided to do some artistic renderings of the scene in HDR. This one consisted of six frames processed in Photomatix Pro 4.0, and finished in Lighroom 3.4.
From the beach near our house in Kihei. Consolation prize for not being able to get a supermoon-rise. Haleakala is all socked in.
Here’s something that doesn’t happen every day. Shortly after I wrote the blog post about the Cotton Carrier, I received an email message from them letting me know that they posted a link to it on their blog, and asked if I would be interested in swapping mine out for their latest and greatest model with the camera tethers.
It’s almost as if they were reading my mind. One of the reasons I love the Cotton Carrier is it eliminates the straps around my neck, but the downside to that is it also eliminates my drop prevention strategy, so I’ve been a little nervous about that. I accepted their offer gladly, and they shipped me a new system, complete with the tethers and handstraps.
In exchange, they asked me to post a photo of myself with the system against a Hawaiian backdrop, update the blog and send my system back for R&D evaluation. Easy enough.
Thanks, Cotton Carrier. Great system, great folks.
Peter Liu sporting the Cotton Carrier at the beach in Kihei, Maui, Hawaii. Photo by Kathy Becklin.
Things are back to normal after the tsunami scare we had last week. The ocean is calm and the trades are blowing. Typical sunrise in Kihei, Maui, Hawai’i, on the beach where I do my morning run.
Sunrise, Kihei, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 7 exposures, 2 stops each, tone mapped in Photomatix 3.2, finished in Lightroom 2.6.
On my way home from the store, I noticed the clouds near the horizon starting to glow a faint red, so I thought it might be worthwhile taking the gear to the beach in case they popped. They didn’t, but it was a nice sunset anyway; the first we’ve had in a while because of the vog and rain.
Good way to close a Sunday. Everyone have a great aloha week.
I love shooting panoramas, and decided to do one while I was shooting a sunset a couple of weeks ago. Check out Photogler for details on how I produced the image.
Winner of the 2009 Monterey Bay Aquarium World Oceans Day Photo Contest
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