just back from Semporna, Sabah… a beautiful place where I think all photographer will love it ….
thanks our Bintulu friends share this outing with us and my gang to make this happen .. a wonderful trip even not much pictures but a trips with many good and fantastic memories …
we looking for opportunity to shoot the nightscape and sunrise on the island and managed to arrange one on 3rd day of our trip .. we decide to go to a small Island (recommended by the boatman) to have beautiful Milkyway and sunrise shot …. so we have to start leaving from ground 330am … and with small boat (that carry max 6ppl) toward a “small Island” that took us ~1hr ++ to reach … and it is almost TOTAL DARK while we travel … !!!! and it was rain too … it was so scary while we traveling to the island .. … and no one is dare to repeat 2nd trip on next 2 days … … think back .. how could we manage to travel with small boat 1-1.5hr at total darkness … with strong wave !!!!!
and the 1st picture I capture …
Millky way under the dream house ?
still remember how dark when we travel to the Island … SCARY !!!!
we are keep looking for possible angle to get the reflection but too bad we fail to capture it ….
... looking for reflection ...
by the way … how many of us .. actually know it is a black and white while we shooting or convert it after it do not look good on the computer screen ? … and we should know what/how we edit our picture before press the shutter ….?
Night-scape we normally refer shooting in dark … or under bright moon light. But then the light source still very limit…. we can always make use of other light source to make our picture more dynamic
here are few samples , I try to make use of some other light sources …
1.
1. Camera LCD
2.
2. Highway and buildings …
3.
3. City & Camera LCD
4.
4. torch light
5.
5. city light on right
6.
6. moving torchlight
and e.g. of picture remove the additional external light source
same view as #6 but without the moving torchlight
As everyone say, photography is all about light ….. so observe carefully what other light you can make use in your frame to make better photo ……
not too long ago, me and my gang (shunfa) still struggle to find and capture the
Milky way … think we went to wrong places and wasted a lot of time .. but
recently , with the help of Iphone/Ipad tools (star chart) we can easily locate
the Milky way and capture it easily (as long as we choose low pollution light
area)… sharing some experience how I shoot star previously
While we shoot landscape, to get right exposures for both foreground and background (sky) .. it is just not too simple … as discussed previously , we can either
I actually want to share this “black card” quite some time ago .. but I always forget and not really able to get some good result to share … and while I am doing this , one of my gang actually notice me shaking my finger around the front len .. and she did ask what was I doing … 😀 and here you go ….
what is black card method and when will we use it ?
when we having different exposures, I normally do GND filter, exposures blending, black card, HDR …(we not going to discuss all here but share some sample)
A. GND filter
this is just like GND filter, most of the time we have big dynamic range/different between sky and foreground.. it normally have different from 2-9 stops …. e.g. for standard sunrise/sunset/magic hour environment, we face 2-4 stops different between foreground – sky… to resolve this we normally use GND to single frame picture have the correct exposure among foreground and sky e.g.
1. without GND
Magical moment - no GND
2. GND
... the magical moment ...
– the sky is ~4 stops different from the foreground…
– I use GND.9s for above picture and do some PP trick to make the right exposure
B. HDR (seldom do this …but think we still good to know this)
Cold Reflection
– why I choose HDR … this was shoot use my SIGMA12-24mm which cannot fit any filter
– it was too cold to think which method to choose so I simply shoot 7 exposures back 😀
3. black card
– seldom use this as I am not really experience
– filter much easy
– need a lot of try and error but the good light could be disappear any time
original shot without any filter, blending, black card
– why I choose black card, the environment was dark, not sure how/where to apply GND
– multiple exposures will take double or even more times for single shot
– the exposure different >3 stops
for me I know the area that make me concern as below
the over expose portion
– so what I did was, use my fingers block the over expose area
– allow only ~2-3 seconds exposure over 30 seconds exposure, so I block it until last few seconds and I remove my finger
so I get
... another milky way ...
most of the time we just need try and error, where some fail sample .. think only expose for ~1s
wrong timing to shake the black card/finger
I will discuss more on other method in future … but let’s try and error on black card 😀
since last year July till now, I had travel to Malaysia East coast for 4-5 times but it never slow me down to make another visit but it rather make me feel I should visit there more often as a Landscape photographer .. it is a “heaven”, I would say I only explore <5% location up to Kuala Terengganu from Kuantan…. 31 March – 4 April 2011, me with other 8 friends decided to make a quick trip from Kuantan –> Pantai Kemasik (sunrise) –> Kuala Terengganu (Pantai Pandak & Masjid Tengku Tengah Zaharah) –> Kota Bahru (meeting www.photomalaysia.com event, Sri Tujuh…) –> Dungun (star, sunrise ….)
short 5d4n trip, we traveled ~1500KM, managed to capture beautiful sunrise, sunset, reflection, stars …. and Milky way from 2 places …
it going to be slow to share all pictures .. but let’s start this thread and I will be slowly post up the pictures into Terengganu series.
but let’s me start with 1st capture at Pantai Kemasik …
... under the Starry sky ...
and another after sunrise shot before we continue our journey …
... different interest ...
stay tune for more update pictures from beautiful East Coast, Malaysia
Update 6 April 2011 – everyone seem success capture the Milky way … congraz …
Me and my gang was crazy with nightscape with stars since last year but too bad year end is not a good season for stars photography due to weather … so we stop for months and now we are back with full actions where we are thinking, dreaming of stars every moment .. and we also try to plan as much as possible stars chasing outing 😀
