ngjames772photography: Sunrise in Kong Kong

ngjames772photography: Sunrise in Kong Kong:  I took this shot on the morning of 13th October 2013 at around 6.30 am. I am always looking forward to sunrise shots due to the wonderful c...

Sunset in Purple

 Hi! I was grounded for two weeks without a single photos taken due to the rainy season at the place where I am staying. I never give up hopes and would  bring along my camera to work just in case the rain do stops and the conditions just right that I can at least get a few shots and hope to get a great one too. You can take 50 to 100 photos of the same place and subjects but in the end only a few stand out. For this shot here I was rewarded for my passion and desire to get a shot at the slightest of opportunity. I was drinking a cup of tea at my favourite coffee shop and the rain stopped at 6 pm and upon glancing up to the sky I knew I was going to get something great. Only this time I knew exactly where I would be going because the sun would set at around 6.30 pm and time was limited. Upon reaching the spot, I quickly set up my gears and took a few shots but somehow something was missing. Most of the shots felt empty. I used the 18-55mm kit lens because that's the only landscape lens I have and at focal length of 18mm, although wide enough for my normal landscape shoots something just didn't feel right in those shots I took earlier. The sky was so beautiful then I knew I could not afford to waste anymore time! After a few more framing and shootings, there......I got this shot and I knew what I should do to the rest of the shots. You know what? Instead of making most of the wide angle the lens can provide it's zooming in that did the trick here. The space in front of me was empty with no foreground objects to focus on, just the empty sea. All the other objects were quite a distance away. By zooming in I managed to fill up the empty space in the frame and add character to the shots. I tried swapping lens and used my 55-200mm. Every shot after that improved. What I learned here is that not all landscape compositions have to be made with wide angle lens but tele zoom lens could be more effective when your nearest objects is far away and your can't walk on water! to reach it. Here is a secret I would like to share with you regarding this picture above. In normal pictures shot around this angle and time you will normally gets sillhoute pictures and because I love that little floating shed so much, I did a 3 shots exposures to create an HDR image in order to highlight what's inside the shed for better effect and tonemapped to as natural as possible. Another secret........ the sky, no doubt it was already very beautiful at that time I just needed more colour so I put a gradient tint to it using the software that I have. And this is the result I was going after. Have patience and you can create something out of nothing. Happy shooting!