Misty

Tip: Crop dead areas away

Misty Orange Sunrise

Sunrises and sunsets keeps amazing me. You still can be surprised and see new wonderful variations. This photo is hardly processed. In Lightroom I have increased the contrast a bit, lowered the clarity a little and then raised the vibrance slightly. Not a lot compared to what I do to some of my other photos.

Tip: Crop dead areas away photo
In the beginning I didn’t want to cut away pixels. The more pixels, the better. I’m still struggling with this, but I have learned that some photos really get a much stronger composition by cropping them.

This particular photo doesn’t have much of an interesting foregrund and the sky continues upwards as orange. It becomes dead areas with nothing interesting. By cutting that away, I cut away dead zones and is left with the good stuff and that makes a stronger composition.

Lake Matheson in New Zealand

Lake Matheson in New Zealand

“Get up before sunrise and walk around Lake Matheson at sunset. See Mount Cook mirrored in the lake“. Said the guide book. “Yessir!” I thought, and I wasn’t disappointed. When we got up and drove the few miles to Lake Matheson it was pitch dark. We almost hit a japanese guy running in black clothes with backpack on his back. We arrived at the view point at Lake Matheson exactly at sunrise. Within five minutes the japanese guy turned up too, and he too had a camera. We ended up being a small group taking photos of this beautiful morning. This particular photo is taken about 30 minutes after sunrise. I had expected a golden sunrise, but of cause the mountains give shade a long time. The golden light came later.

This photo is the photo that I have used in detailed HDR tutorial you can find here.

Misty Cathedral

The cathedral of Roskilde lies in my hometown and contains the bones of 21 kings and 18 queens, including the famous viking Harald Bluetooth. The first king of Denmark to become a Christian. The technology of the modern age called Bluetooth is actually named after him – how about that!
Jack the Ripper just went around the corner, and the bat mobile also came by, while I was shooting. Unfortunately due to the long exposures, they kind of disappeared. Next time they come around, I’ll be sure to use a faster shutter speed! I used 7 exposures for this one. Then I used Photomatix and photoshop to merge layers to the final result.