Wailua Bay Sunrise

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 7 August 2009 in Landscape & Rural.

Tropical sunrises and sunsets are so seductive to photograph (or to just sit back and watch). Postcards and magazines on this island (Kauai) are filled with such images. But what I notice when looking at these images is that most don't pay attention enough to foregrounds. There is the occasional silhouetted palm tree, but for the most-part, most images lack that strong foreground element.

With this in mind, I set out to scout the day prior to making this image and found this stretch of beach at Wailua Bay (on the east side of the island) that had many photographable foreground elements, from washed-up drift wood to these large black boulders. When I arrived 30 minutes prior to posted sunrise the next morning, I came to my pre-scouted location and simply waited for the light.

Just prior to the sun hitting the horizon, I noticed this vibrant warm glow reflecting down from the lit clouds above. Normally when shooting towards the sun, I remove my polarizer to help reduce flare, but in this case, I noticed that the warm glow was intensified with the polarizer on.

My next thought was to make a sunstar out of the rising sun which is accomplished with a small aperture of f/16 or f/22. With my Canon 16-35mmL lens, I find I get a sharper image at f/16 (especially around the edges). As soon as the sun began to poke its head over the horizon, I started shooting 1-stop bracketed frames (changing my shutter and not my aperture). The sun rises so quickly, I did not have time to chance using a split-grad. I bracketed 6-stops starting with an exposure for the sun which I metered in spot mode just off the side of the sun itself. I also loved the bands of rain falling to the right of the sun and wanted to make sure they exposed correctly.

Because the rocks were so dark, I needed to blend two images, one exposed for the sky, and one exposed for the rocks. The transition line was the ocean and I did a blend (with mask) with the opacity set for 50%. It's really pretty simple to combine a multitude of images in Photoshop using layers and masks. If you would like to learn more, please click here: HDR the Old Fashioned Way.

I did try this image in Photomatix Pro v3.2 but the flare was overly intensified, so I opted for working the image in Photoshop. Lastly, I used Nik Viveza to balance the tones in the image (a very important step in image processing), and Nik Sharpener Pro 3.0 to add the final sharpening layer. Both these products are available at a 15% discount by clicking on the links provided below.

My Website: "how to" articles, galleries, stock photos, and more...
www.donsmithphotography.com

Software Discounts:
Photomatix Pro 3.0 type in code at checkout: donsmithphotography
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