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A panorama of tumultuous clouds rolling off the Remarkables onto Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown on the South island of New Zealand.
A panorama of tumultuous clouds rolling off the Remarkables onto Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown on the South island of New Zealand.
The different image sizes, Nook, Feature and Mural, shown to scale against a human figure. This comparison is for

Clearing from the West

$200.00
899
899
249
249
59
59

A panorama of tumultuous clouds rolling off the Remarkables onto Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown on the South island of New Zealand. Taken in late summer from a lookout on the road to the snowfields at Mount Alta.

NookFeatureMural
Dimensions
  • Story
  • Planning
  • Technical

How this shot came about.

A trip to New Zealand always provides a target rich environment for the photographer and this is especially true for the South island. The mountains seem to spring up out of the ground with a youthful enthusiasm and walking amongst them is a truly uplifting experience.

We had based ourselves in Queenstown and had already tried our hand at climbing Ben Lomond and had spent a very pleasant day walking in and around Lake Moke, both to the NW of the town. We thought it would be interesting to head up to Lake Alta in the Remarkables Ski Area to see whether the Summer vistas of shattered rock would make for interesting images. As it turned out it was more difficult than I thought to capture such rocky terrain as there is little upon which to base a sense of scale - but that's a story for another day.

As we headed up the switchback from Kawarau Falls a glance back revealed a clearing sky and patchy sunlight illuminating the valley floor below. I set up on the side of the road taking shots as the clouds and light moved and shifted across the landscape. I took several panoramas of this view but this one was by far my favourite. Clearer skies had started to give way to the darker roiling clouds in the distance which were pushing over the tops of the far hills as if trying to toboggan down the slopes and into the lake but yet the foreground remained lit by beams of sunlight cresting the peaks of the Remarkables range to the West. These contrasting lighting conditions really lent themselves to the HDR technique with which I was experimenting.

I love the clouds in this image and the intense green on the valley floor but I am especially drawn to the dappled light and detail on the mountain peaks to the East.

Shot Location

This Shot

We planned a trip up to Lake Alta in the ski-fields above Queenstown and I knew we would be climbing up the side of The Remarkables to reach our destination.

Using the The Photographer's Ephemeris allowed me to know where the sun would break out above the mountains and thus provide me with the opportunity to potentially capture the valley and the hills lit with interesting light. Timing the trip allowed me to get into position about half way up the range to the vantage point from where this shot was taken


The Photographer's Ephemeris showing the shot location

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is a trademark of Crookneck Consulting LLC, registered in the United States.
Please visit their website at https://photoephemeris.com for more details
All other trademarks and logos remain the property of their respective owners

Gear

Camera: Canon EOS 7D

Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS

Storage: SanDisk Extreme Pro CF UDMA 7 64Gb

Ballhead: Manfrotto 498RC2

Tripod: Manfrotto 055XPROB

Cable Release: Promote

ND Filter: None

Exposures

Count: 42

HDR Count: 7 exposures per shot

Aperture: f11

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 55 mm

EV values: -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3

Shutter: 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15

Filters

ND Filter: Not used

Gradient Filter: false

Polarizer: false

Image

Rows: 1

Shots: 0

HDR Shots: 6

Aspect: Portrait

Arrangement: 1x6

Post Production

Basic Workflow

  • I used Lightroom to stitch the 42 HDR exposures together into a 6 image mosaic
  • I passed the image through Photoshop's denoising filter
    • removing CCD artifacts from the image
    • particularly in the clouds and the clear areas of the sky
  • I used Photoshop's spot healing tool to remove quite a few sensor artifacts from the image

Image Adjustment

  • The image was masked in Photoshop into several areas
    • clouds
    • mountains
    • mists
    • lake
    • foreground
  • Each area was processed in Photoshop to achieve an optimum result
    • clouds had a contrast and clarity adjustment to accentuate the difference between the darker and lighter portions
    • mountains were sharpened
    • mists were reduced slightly in intensity
    • the lake was dehazed
    • the foreground was sharpened 
  • I spent quite a bit of time masking the mountain slopes on the left of the image and then improving the contrast of the slopes
  • Cropping was performed to capture the trees on the bottom right and the bushes on the bottom left

A graphic of the shot's layout structure

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