Aiming for perfection

It is intriguing to ask a professional photographer why they go back to the same place time after time and take (sometimes) a very similar photograph. In my case, I do that, and I also spend quite a lot of time waiting in that place for something! My wife often takes a book with her and, in this case, is able to read her novel in a lovely spot!

What I am waiting for, year after year in the case of somewhere on the other side of the world, is an image that really captures the feeling of being there and is truly worthy of being printed at a large size and displayed on someone’s wall. It isn’t a snapshot (although they can sometimes capture something lovely as well), but it is a carefully considered composition where the natural elements have all fallen into place.

I’m lucky to be able to visit Hawaii reasonably frequently (a technology conference is often the reason) and Kauai is the favorite of the islands there. At the far end of the island is Ke’e Beach – the road ends there and there is nothing but unspoiled coastline to see.

This is one of my favorite sunset images and was taken here back in 2009 and I keep going back to see what else I can do. In later years I have spent a bit more time wandering along the rocks in front of the headland on the far left and you get a very different feeling for the place with an image made from that location:

I particularly like the way the setting sun is able to just highlight some of the trees on this headland and well as more of the second headland in the distance.

But what can I do to bring another view of the sunset that might appeal to someone who has never been to Kauai and so isn’t seeking to remember their visit? A more general view of the sunset itself might do it, but sunsets are 10 a penny (if that English phrase translates!). I decided to frame the sunset with some of these worn rocks but of course ran into a major issue. With the sun in the picture, it is very hard (if not impossible) to get some detail in the clouds around the sun and also in the rocks themselves, which are, of course, in shadow. One exposure to get the sun and clouds detailed would look like this:

Not the best sunset image in the world! So, I set up my tripod among the rocks and took five images all with a different exposure so that I had this one that captured the sun, others that brought more detail back into the clouds and finally others that captured the detail in these foreground rocks. That is all I could do on the beach – the next stage had to wait until my return home.

Processing each one to bring out the right amount of detail gave me one good photo of the rocks and sea and another one of the sky and clouds. You may have heard of High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, which is a software process to automatically combine several exposures into one, but that rarely works when there is so much movement – and the sea was not going to sit quietly for its portrait! So more manual blending was needed to get these images into one final shot:

You might conclude that this was it – this is the general sunset photo that might appeal to a wide audience, but something bugged me. When I look at this, my eye is drawn to the sun as the brightest element and then down the image towards the rocks, but there is a reflection in the water between the rocks and the sun. It was there by chance in this one image and probably gone in the next shot as the sea swirled around, but I really didn’t like the way it stopped the flow around the image. So, back for a little more Photoshop work and I removed it but left the general brightness there. The final image I uploaded to my store is this one:

I hope you agree with my choices – photography is all about making those choices. The location, the placement of the camera, the timing, the exposure and finally the processing of the data from the camera. This is the result I loved!