The following photographs were taken whilst I was hosting my last photography class for the year 2014. An introduction … here is my class.
The location – Skyhigh, Mt. Dandenong. For those of you familiar with this location know what a spectacular view of the city awaits.
For sure I am always thinking about the weather conditions as hosting a class on top of the mountain is risky as the weather can be unpredictable. Keeping this in mind, the best time to shoot landscapes is when the weather is ever changing ! I can tell you all, we were in for a show!
A light show, there was a storm brewing over Melbourne, which we could see from our point of view
Lucky enough it was not raining where we were. As we were also witnessing a spectacular sunset ! These photographs have NOT been re touched, I used techniques like white balance to really draw out the spectrum of light waves that are not visible to us, until we can capture it …
As we all had our tripods, the class was all about LANDSCAPES! What a show we had before us, as we all had to be quick with our camera skills as I gave guidance as well as capturing the skies myself to determine the best camera settings. Then, I hear my participants all saying ‘Wow .. look at this photo’ this rings bells of relief as they are very happy with their results ! Yes, I have equipped them with the skills they need!
The sunset was sublime
slight adjustments with exposure
and wow, check out these skies
I was quick to learn that this was in fact a very popular spot that night, lots of people and tourists arriving for the light show !
As we were all set up , ACTION!!
And in reflection
Well, it is an Observatory ! I was also observing our reflections. Can you see me doing the peace sign?
and the moon!
and the view ..
This is where it gets interesting
As we could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance we begun to witness a hell of a storm ! The storm was still in the distance which was perfect for us keen photographers, braving it ! BOOM! Electricity in the air, as I was jumping up and down with excitement! I could not have asked for better conditions to send off my class with.
Look! FORK LIGHTNING! My first ever fork lightning shot. What a Buzz!! Although its small there on the right hand side of the image, I was still very excited as I tick it off the bucket list!
And… Sheet Lightning ! I can tell you, it was very dark, until the skies lit up ! I was taking 30 second exposures here, pointing and shooting, hoping for the best ….! It seemed just where I moved my camera I would miss it, until I got this image below, even in comparison with the above image, you can see how much the skies lit up ! BOOM!!
The excitement was certainly all happening as we were at the observatory for a total of 3 hours , and all these weather systems! I am truly blessed, its a reminder that I am dong the right thing, intuitively as I take risks!
In Reflection – I would certainly do this again!
AS ABOVE SO BELOW
So, as I begun to download my images, I saw that processing was not needed, as the shots were truly beautiful already. All I needed to do was resize the images and add my watermark. Oh, a photographers dream !
Then I get ‘the itch ..’ to do something creative and abstract with my set of images. Below is what I came up with in Photoshop. Seeing I used to do this sort of thing in the ‘darkroom’ , creating double exposures, has always been a favorite of mine.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this post as I have been looking forward to showing you all.
flutterbycreative 