Clouds roll in from the west as morning sunrise light majestically shines through illuminating the massive dunes surrounding the Camelthorn graveyard known as Dead Vlei – Dead Vlei, Namib Naukluft Park, Namibia.
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If you want to learn how I process my images, my workflow and lighting techniques.
This morning, I was up with the lark. I set off at just after 6am and arrived at Ladram Bay Holiday Park a little after 7am. Why they build these awful places right on the edges of areas of beauty, I will never know. Seriously, these caravan parks are vile and they look like a death camp on the sea. Rows and rows of identical huts, all deserted at this time of year. The paths muddy, the hedges and grass overgrown – it is a wonder why anyone would actually want to live here, even if only for the summer.
Anyway, finding your way around a place you have never been, in the dark, is not easy. Having parked up and walked towards the sea, I eventually arrived at the top of the cliff. But I couldn’t see the composition I wanted. I walked right. Ten minutes later, nothing. The hedges are so overgrown at this place that you can barely even see the sea. So I walked left, found nothing but what looked like the playground from Pripyat (that is the town next door to Chernobyl, for anyone who wonders what I am on about). So I went the other way again, nothing. I started to get frustrated. Eventually, having gone back the way I came for the third or fourth time I eventually noticed how to get a decent view. You have to climb a fence, walk up a little bank and teeter right on the edge of certain death! Yep, the featured image for this trip was attained by pretty much hanging my camera and tripod over the edge of the cliff…it is the only way you can really get the shot.
So having taken all my shots here, I have decided to use a little bit of Luminosity Masking in order to bring out the detail in them. It can look a little like HDR, but it isn’t. Luminosity Masking allows you to selectively adjust brightness and contrast in an image, whilst protecting all other areas of the image. With the detail that is in these amazing rock formations, I thought it was the only way to do the images justice. I will be writing a tutorial on LM very soon.
I hope you like the images.
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A shot from one of my favourite swiss canton: Graubünden of Segantini and Giacometti !
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