Sunset at Motukiekie Beach

Taking a Dangerous Risk

This wonderful location is one of the main reasons I came to New Zealand. For years I’ve wanted to capture a dynamic seascape with those lovely starfish (I’m not sure if these are starfish, so apologies if I’m wrong), and water cutting through the narrow gullies.

It took 7 days for the conditions to be right, for the tide to recede enough, and for the sky/light to become favourable. This sunset lasted a huge 5 minutes, and I managed just one photo – this one, and I took a big, irresponsible risk in getting it.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday would have been prime shooting on Mutkiekie beach. The tide was just right on these three days. The weather, however, wasn’t in the mood to help a photographer out.

On Sunday, although the sunset was non-existent, the blue hour was workable. Another photographer was already there when I arrived, by the name of Luke. And as chance would have it, he is a Raya Pro user! Sadly there wasn’t time to chat though. And although the light wasn’t great, I have one image from right inside one of these tight little gullies that I may publish later.

Monday night was my final chance this month to shoot this location, but it was touch and go. The tide needs to recede a lot in order for these rocks to appear. On Monday, however, as the sun was setting nicely with 30 minutes to go until sunset, the tide simply wasn’t receding enough.

I stood waste high inching my way towards these rocks every few minutes. And every few seconds large wave after large wave crashed against and over the rocks. The light was beautiful and all I could do was watch. I could have tried my hand with a different composition but I’d travelled to New Zealand for this specific shot.

Ten minutes before sunset I was about 7 meters away from the first rock, as its head began to pop out of the water. The beginning of these rocks are about waist height. It took another 15 minutes before the powerful waves became less frequent and I inched my way slightly closer to the rock. By this point the sun had sank 5 minutes ago and I was starting to get a bit desperate.

I should point out here that I don’t think we should risk our lives for a photo. To do so would be irresponsible, so I’m not encouraging any reckless behaviour here.

I waited until the very last minute to climb onto the rocks, until I was fairly confident I would be safe. Having said that, when it comes to big waves we are always taking a risk. Nevertheless, I pulled myself up onto the rock, tripod in hand. The waves came crashing almost instantly. I thought I’d made a big mistake. But for a minute or so they calmed slightly. Knowing there were literally minutes left before the light would bid me goodnight, I jumped from rock to rock looking for a composition.

I spotted a little starfish sitting nicely on the edge of a gully. The composition I could build around this allowed me to point directly towards the beautiful light and sea stacks, while water cut through the scene, and lead towards the sunset.

I set up the camera and fired off a set of brackets. As soon as the brackets finished, a wave came bowling towards me. I grabbed the tripod and steadied myself. Once it passed I attempted more compositions but the strong waves kept knocking my tripod and the light was seriously fading.

Within minutes the colours had faded and night time started to make an introduction. Given that the surface of these rocks were so uneven, the tide so unpredictable, and the light drastically disappearing, I started to feel very vulnerable. All it would take was one violent wave and I would be in trouble. I decided to bank what I had and leave. I scrambled down the rocks and plodded my way back to the beach, wiping off some blood on my legs, from a cut I don’t remember getting.

I came out of the situation fine, but I have no idea what I was thinking, looking back now. It was senseless, really and I’m not so sure I would act the same way if faced with a similar situation in the future.

From what I can see, I came away with just this image. But as sheer good luck would have it, this is exactly what I was looking for. I had planned to come back in April, and then May if I still hadn’t go the shot. But I got very fortunate on Monday and can now call an end to the 7-day wait at Motukiekie.

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How I Created The Image – Before/After Post-Processing

 

Workflow Explanation – Motukiekie Sunset

This image was created using Raya Pro – The Photoshop Plugin.

Using Apply Image in Raya Pro, I quickly blended the two exposures that went into this image. I refined the mask created by Apply Image by dodging directly onto it (if you followed my Mastering Raya Pro course, this is the same process I used in the Advanced Secrets videos).

I added a Curves layer as clipping mask to the darker exposure to add some lovely contrast to the sky. You can see an example of this in The Importance of Triple/Double Processing in Photoshop & Exposure Blending

Once blended, I added some warm colours to the scene with a simple Hue/Saturation layer. I decided to add some local contrast selectively by using the Tonal Contrast filter in Nik Color Efex. I slid Shadows down to ‘0’ and moved Highlights and Midtones to ’10’. This give me some nice added contrast.

I dodged along the water which cuts through the image, just to brighten it up. I also dodged other parts of the foreground to brighten them up and add a touch of colour.

I added a very soft Orton Effect from Raya Pro just to the foreground. Then I created a curves layer and brought the midtones right down to really darken the mood and create a ‘closer’ feel. I softened the shadows by adding a Darks 4 luminosity mask from Raya Pro to a curves layer and pulling the curve up.

I painted some soft colours into the sunset using this light bleeding method: Quick Photoshop Secrets 14: Light Bleeding For Warmer Images

I finished by creating a custom vignette that you can learn to do here: Quick Photoshop Secrets 9: Awesome Vignette For a Moodier Scene.

Finally, the image was sharpened and resized using my free sharpening tools, which you can download here: Quick Photoshop Secrets 16: Perfect Sharpening & Resize for the Web

As always, I hope you found this useful.

Jimmy