Camel Rock, NSW South Coast
Fujifilm X-H2, 8-16mm, 2 seconds @ f16, ISO 64
I'm not complaining for one minute! After a month travelling through India and Bhutan, within a couple of days I was down the NSW South Coast with Len Metcalf running a 5 day photography workshop in Narooma. And what I love about this particular workshop is the location (lots of photo opps to choose from), the great food (can't beat the local cafe for breakfast and there are several excellent restaurants), the conference room in the Amooran Motel (great views, perfect for teaching and sharing), working with Len (hard to find two photographers who are more different in their approaches, yet in sync with their passion for teaching) - and most of all, a great group of students prepared to put up with my jokes and follow us out into some sketchy weather conditions to take some great photos.
For Len and me, the locations are always a re-visit, but as I've written in my blogs many times before, I really do enjoy revisiting locations, learning more about them, experiencing them more fully. With 10 visits to Antarctica, 8 to Bhutan and so on, I sometimes wonder if I should be going to new locations. On the other hand, India last month was a first and Uganda next month will also be new for me. So I'm hoping I have the balance more or less right because as much as I enjoy discovering new locations, I really enjoy revisiting locations as well.
Which brings me to Camel Rock. I must have shot this 20 times before! Normally I shoot this in the morning, waiting for the autumn sun to pick up the left side of the rocks. On this trip, we were balancing weather conditions and also a great restaurant in Bermagui, so we visited the Rock in the late afternoon. I think we might do this more often as the late afternoon light was wonderful - along with that cloud you see behind. A little while later, that cloud turned into a drenching squall as we all made a run for our cars!
In post-production, I've attempted to keep the contrast quite soft as I liked the way a couple of our students had interpretted their images. (Yes, it's true, photo workshop leaders get as much out of a session as the students do.) I've also warmed up the colour balance on the rocks a touch, using the new subject selection tool (found in both Lightroom and Capture One). Subject selection really is a great time saver, but I do find I need to be careful not to over-do the adjustments as the result can look 'stuck in place'. One approach I use is to make a subject selection, do 50% of the adjustment, then make a second subject selection for the other 50%, but this time I soften down the edges of the mask with a feathered brush so the subject sits more naturally into its background. Hopefully this makes sense and might be a useful approach for your own editing.