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Before and After – Dark Mofo 2014

Following up from my recent post sharing photos of [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2014/08/22/a-quick-weekend-in-tasmania/”]a quick weekend photographing parts of Tasmania,[/ilink] I shared a photo from Dark Mofo 2014 and thought it was good timing to share a before and after of how the image came together.

[twentytwenty]Dark Mofo 1Dark Mofo 2[/twentytwenty]

Capturing and Processing Dark Mofo 2014

This forms part of a [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/”]Before and After Series[/ilink] where I share both the before and after images and do my best to provide an explanation of how the images were captured and processed. I’m not one to heavily process my images but when I can’t capture what I see, I will resort to using Photoshop and multiple layers to achieve what I visualised before even pressing the shutter.  Perhaps some may feel that this is cheating and I appreciate that this level of post processing isn’t to everyone’s tastes but I would argue that post processing like this remains within an acceptable level of photography post processing and does not cross over to photo manipulation. The later involves adding skies, moons or sunbursts from other shoots where the lines of an acceptable level of Photoshop starts to be questioned. But let’s move on to how this particular image was captured and post processed.

Capturing the Images

Some background about this years Dark Mofo

This year Dark Mofo had an installation of multiple lights scattered around the city of Hobart where the general public could go and control them for a few minutes. Last year the organisers of Dark Mofo had a one light installation which was centered in the city of Hobart – making things a bit more easier for photographers. This great image of Dark Mofo 2012 by Ben Short captures it in all its glory.

With the lights being controlled manually, imagine a kid dialed up on red cordial controlling the lights and them quickly moving around the sky (in case you’re curious I recorded this admittedly terrible video of two of the installations doing their thing). Rather than take a photo close up of the installation I looked for somewhere out of the city which would provide me with a viewpoint that captured all of the lights located around Hobart. For this reason I chose Bellerive which provided a direct view from across the river looking towards the city and the Dark Mofo light installations. After standing and watching the lights flicker around the sky I knew straight away that I would need to capture multiple exposures of the lights and combine them in Photoshop if I was to get the result I was after.

Capturing the light installation

Setting up for the image I decided to use my [ilink url=”http://www.adorama.com/ICA5DM2.html?KBID=65353″ style=”note”]Canon 5D Mark II[/ilink] , [ilink url=”http://www.adorama.com/CA2470.html?KBID=65353″ style=”note”]Canon 24-70 2.8 L[/ilink] , tripod and interval remote for the photo. Composing the image I used the jetty with me standing on it in the foreground and the Dark Mofo lights in the background.  This would require multiple images to be captured of the light installations (to capture them at the different points in the sky) and then another shot of me standing on the jetty.

Capturing the light bursts I wanted to capture shorter exposure times so ramped up my ISO to 2000 and set my camera to aperture priority mode and shot at F/2.8 which resulted in an exposure time of around 0.5″ of a second.  I set the camera to burst mode and fired around 15 shots of the lights. These would later be selectively combined to form the top part of the image

Capturing the image of me standing on the jetty

For the image of me standing on the jetty, I changed my camera settings to manual and set the ISO to 200, aperture to F/4 and an exposure time of 15 seconds. Using the interval remote, I was able to set the count down timer to be one minute, giving me plenty of time to get down to the jetty and stand ready for the photo to capture. The reason I used a longer exposure (15 seconds) was to smooth the water of the bottom part of the image. I found the shorter (0.5 second) exposures were leaving the water a little choppy from the outgoing tides and by capturing a longer exposure time this would also capture more reflection of the light installation.

Post Processing the Images

The final image was composed of 8 images and various saturation, curves  and contrast adjustments (using Niksoft ProContrast and Viveza for the later).  The image below gives you a sense of how rapidly the lights were moving based on the exposures that were captured. Note the exposure time was 0.5″ of a second so the 10 blue temperature photos you see were taken over the space of around 40 seconds. Quite a lot of movement!

bracket-images
Some of the 15 images that were bracketed to capture the quick moving lights

Once I’d loaded the images up into Lightroom I exported them as full JPG and loaded them into Photoshop. Here I used one of 0.5″ second exposure images as the base image and then added the other images (including the one of me standing on the jetty) as layers. The idea here was to selectively mask myself and different parts of the light installation into the base image by using layer masks.

[box]Haven’t used Photoshop Layer Masks before? Check out this tutorial on using Layer Masks  that should bring you up to speed.[/box]

Using layer masks on each light layer, I selectively introduced parts of the light into the base image and also masked myself standing on the jetty into the shot. Once this was done, I set about using some curves masks to play with the red, green and blue colour channels to make some subtle changes to the colour of the image.  Lately I’ve become quite the fan of the Pro Contrast Tool and Viveza that forms part of the [ilink url=”https://www.google.com/nikcollection/”]Nik Collection[/ilink]. I’ll generally use one of each and then play with the opacity of the layer. For this specific image though, I used a Pro Contrast layer just on the light beams of the shot to give them a bit more punch.

The above is a little confusing so to help explain things a little better I’ve put together a small clip that starts at the base image and enables each individual layer showing the progression and processing of the images.

Hopefully the clip provided some clarification regarding how the different layers were used and the subtle changes which using curves and ProContrast had on the image. If you have any questions about the process or the image itself be sure to leave a comment or drop an email and I’d be happy to help.

Thanks for reading,

– Alex

 

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A Quick Weekend in Tasmania

Admiring the lights at Dark Mofo 2014

IMG_3877As you’ve probably come to notice through reading past posts on my blog, I shoot a lot with Jon Sander, mostly because he brings refreshments and carries my gear whenever we go take photos. Haha I kid. He’s a good guy that lives close to me so when we’re both feeling spontaneous and in the mood to take photos it works well and we’re able to organise something very last minute. He’s been nagging me for a while now to go to New Zealand with him for a week. Instead I proposed that we still go overseas but to my home state, Tasmania. Originally the idea of the trip was to walk into Reynold’s Falls which is situated not far from Cradle Mountain. I’ve been wanting to walk it for probably 5 years now but have never got around to it. We decided to book flights in Feb to do the walk around June. It was a great idea at the time until we started doing some research and received some very valuable information from Casey Smith and Laurie Davison (thanks to both for the information provided, extremely grateful and will definitely come in handy when we do eventually walk it in summer). It was later when we sat down and started to really plan the walk that it occurred to us, we were aiming to walk 7-8 hours into the waterfall around the shortest day of the year. Factoring in a 3~ hour drive to the start of the walk, it was going to be a long day without much time for photos and that’s not even taking into account what the weather would potentially be doing. In the end we decided due to the shortage of light around that time of the year and the potential that the waterfalls could be flooded we decided to can the trip and arrange a last minute trip that would be focused on a quick trip around parts of Tasmania.

Dark Mofo 2014

Admiring the lights at Dark Mofo 2014
Admiring the lights at Dark Mofo 2014
Close up of one of the many Dark Mofo 2014 light installations
Close up of one of the many Dark Mofo 2014 light installations

Last year I was disappointed to of missed Dark Mofo’s first light show installation.  This photo by Gavin Wakerall displays last year’s installation in its stunning form. There were so many amazing photos taken of the installation and I was kicking myself for not making a last minute trip home. When I heard that Dark Mofo had a new light installation planned for this year where instead of a fixed light installation, the lights would be spaced around Hobart and operated by the general public, our cancelled Reynold’s Falls trip wasn’t turning out to be as bad as we originally thought.

Coming from Hobart airport and not quite sure how bright the lights would be, we visited Bellerive a favourite location of mine and a great spot for a direct view of the city. Fortunately for us the lights were well and truly visible from the Hobart eastern shore and we killed an hour or so taking some photos before making a quick trip into the city for a closer look. I actually found it incredibly difficult to photograph. Imagine school kids wired on sugar operating the lights, fluctuating around the sky randomly and quickly. In the end I opted to stand on the jetty and take a self portrait admiring the lights as they did their thing. All in all, it was a nice way to kick start the weekend and get things going.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded”]Curious how the photograph was captured and post processed? Don’t miss the Dark Mofo 2014 Before and After post[/box]

Clifton Beach

Not keen to waste any time we decided to take the chance and get up early for a sunrise shoot at Clifton Beach. It’s a favourite spot of mine as it’s reasonably close to Hobart (35~ mins drive) and has plenty of opportunities for photos. Unfortunately for us though, the sunrise was clouded over and we didn’t see any light or colour but nevertheless, we pulled out our camera’s and had a bit of fun.  Admittedly it was pretty awful shooting conditions but nice to break things up before heading towards the mountains later in the day.

An overcast sunrise at Clifton Beach
An overcast sunrise at Clifton Beach
Jon shooting the best sunrise of his life...
Jon shooting the best sunrise of his life…

Although for a moment there, the dull (read – terrible) sunrise almost ruined the trip all together with the first shot splashing all over my camera. Freaking out I quickly smothered my camera with my jumper, turned it off and put it aside until we got home. Having photographed Clifton many a times, it was nice just to potter around the rocks and explore for possible future compositions when the tides and swell are different. After a slightly nerve wracking trip home, worried about my camera, we got home and I eventually turned it on to find that it was working fine. Phew. Thanking the camera gods for that. I haven’t had the best luck over the years and managed to drown my previous 5D Mark II at Turpin Falls a couple of years ago. More about that day and tips on what to do if your camera does go for a swim or gets a few splashes can be read in that article. Although a rumoured Canon 5D Mark 4 or experimenting with a new Sony mirrorless like Ricardo De Cunha has recently done would have been slightly tempting if it was to have died 😉 With the worry of a dead camera resolved, we were all ready to go for a colder trip to the Hartz Mountains National Park in the hunt for cold foggy Mountains.

Waves rolling through Clifton Beach
Waves rolling through Clifton Beach

Hartz Mountains National Park

Selfies - I've got them down pat
Selfies – I’ve got them down pat

After finishing up at Clifton Beach and driving home in the rain, we weren’t feeling overly confident about our next trip off to the Hartz Mountains National Park so slightly took our time as we ate breakfast pondering the rest of the day. Tasmania being Tasmania where the weather is all over the show, the weather slightly cleared and we decided to take a chance and continue with our trip with a quick stop at Huonville for a bite to eat. I’d been wanting to walk into the Hartz Mountains National Park for a while now as each time I’d walk in with friends it had been shrouded in a sea of fog so we hoped this time it may be slightly clear allowing us to get some photos of the Hartz Mountains.

Road side reflections near Huonville with the Fujifilm X100
Road side reflections near Huonville with the Fujifilm X100

Once we arrived at the Hartz Mountains National Park the fog was quickly rolling through the area.  Wanting to get a photo of the Hartz Mountains not completely shrouded in fog, we got a wriggle on and quickly powered our way to the Ladies Tarn, the first of the tarn’s along this beautiful day walk.

Hartz Mountains National Park - A great day walk
Hartz Mountains National Park – A great day walk
Jon at Ladies Tarn, Hartz Mountains National Park
Jon at Ladies Tarn, Hartz Mountains National Park

We arrived at Ladies Tarn in perfect timing with the fog just sitting about right and the water not ripply. It wasn’t long and the breeze had picked up bringing in plenty of more fog and the water quite ripply. It was nice spending half an hour here just pottering around taking snaps in the  such a quiet and beautiful place (admittedly that does sound corny but it was beautiful up there). The images below are both captured with my Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40 and B+W 110 10 stop neural density filter. With the fog and breeze starting to pick up we decided to keep walking in the hope it would pass and we could make it to the top of the Hartz Mountains and get a view beneath the cloud/fog.

Ladies Tarn, Hartz National Park
Ladies Tarn, Hartz National Park
Playing around with minimalist long exposures at the Hartz Mountains National Park
Playing around with minimalist long exposures at the Hartz Mountains National Park

After spending some time at the Ladies Tarn we decided to walk a bit further in the hope of getting a nice view from the top of the Hartz Mountains but unfortunately the weather had other ideas and the fog was very much setting in for the rest of the day so we set off home.

Arve Falls

As we were leaving, we were around 45 minutes away from sunset and quite close to a waterfall we spotted signposted as we drove into the national park.  Rather than drive and hope to find a good location in time for the sunset, we decided to take a quick walk in to Arve Falls for some photos as the sun slowly went down. It was a nice way to spend the day, starting by taking photos in the dark as the sun rose and taking photos in light as the sun went down and it became dark. Here are some of my favourites from Arve Falls.

Arve Waterfall
Arve Waterfall
Arve Falls
Arve Falls
Standing on top of Arve Falls looking down the huge drop
Standing on top of Arve Falls looking down the huge drop
Arve Falls, Hartz Mountains National Park
Arve Falls, Hartz Mountains National Park

Bicheno

After checking the forecast and it expected to be patchy rain for the following morning, we decided to give the sunrise a miss and slowly make our way up the Tasmanian east coast to Bicheno. After making many a trips to St Helen’s to explore the Bay of Fires I’ve never really stopped and properly spent some time in Bicheno other than to enjoy a quick chicken and camembert pie (amazing I might add).

En-route to Bicheno with a quick stop at one of my favourite parts of the drive
En-route to Bicheno with a quick stop at one of my favourite parts of the drive

I’d been meaning to spend some time in Bicheno for a while so we decided to call it home for a night with the intention of taking photos along Harvey Farm Road and Redbill Beach with the hope of getting a clear sky to capture the milky way. Unfortunately for us, the plan for milky way photos wasn’t meant to be with the sky clouding over and then later dispersing to bring out the full moon. But we made the most of it and had some fun shooting until late into the early morning and then getting up early to shoot the sunrise.

Sunset and a full moon

Waves crashing on sunset at Bicheno, Tasmania
Waves crashing on sunset at Bicheno, Tasmania
Jon taking a photo as the light quickly disappeared. May have resulted in very wet feet after this photo...
Jon taking a photo as the light quickly disappeared. May have resulted in very wet feet after this photo…
Sunset at Harvey Farm Road, Bicheno
Sunset at Harvey Farm Road, Bicheno
My dream house - Such a beautiful location.
My dream house – Such a beautiful location.
Staring at the sky wondering where my milky way is?
Staring at the sky wondering where my milky way is?

Amazing the difference a few hours can make. We decided to head back to our accomodation and watch the World Cup for a couple of hours. Having pretty much resigned ourselves that the cloud had set in for the night, I stuck my head out the door and joked to Jon would we go out if the cloud magically disappeared? What do you know? They disappeared so we put on our wet shoes and went for another stroll down the beach, shooting photos until around 3am or so and then getting back up a few hours later for sunrise. Good times.

The cloud quickly dispersed so we couldn't resist a team moon lit photo
The cloud quickly dispersed so we couldn’t resist a team moon lit photo

Up early for the sunrise at Redbill Beach, Bicheno

Up and early for sunrise at Redbill Beach, Bicheno
Up and early for sunrise at Redbill Beach, Bicheno
Light hitting the dunes at Red Bill Beach, Bicheno
Light hitting the dunes at Red Bill Beach, Bicheno
Getting my feet wet. I'm not sure if my shoes remained dry all trip...
Getting my feet wet. I’m not sure if my shoes remained dry all trip…

Thanks

We had a great time and I’d highly recommend a trip to Tassie that gives you a bit of everything. It was nice to be enjoying a hike through beautiful foggy landscape one day and then be knee deep in water the next. I’m also excited to announce that Jon has finally launched a website/portfolio under the name of Drift and Wander. Check it out. He will be using it to release photo series from Patagonia adventures and upcoming trips. Drift and Wander Just in case you’re curious – Definitely going to give Reynold’s Falls a go in summer when there’s more light. Can’t wait. Thanks for reading! – Alex PS – If you enjoyed this post and want to receive an email of future posts, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter or jump on an follow me on Facebook.

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