Hey people! Over the last week or so I've been going out on a number of mini-adventures around Hobart - with varying success. I'm often a bit nervous about sharing some of my less successful work on Instagram and Facebook, but I feel like my blog is a great place to share them, as I can tell you a bit about what worked and what didn't. Let's get to it.

Derwent Bridge at Sunset - 20sec @ f11 - ISO400

While this shot could arguably be considered 'overdone' in terms of colour, I'm actually fairly pleased with it when I compare it to the original dull image. I arrived on the scene quite late into the sunset, and was disappointed by the large grey cloud you can see, darkening the left side of the image. Regardless, I shot through the remainder of the sunset and the blue hour, until the lights on the bridge came on. This image is actually a blend of the sunset and blue hour, which you can probably tell from the lack of bridge light reflected in the water. By the time the lights came on, the water was moving in a different manner, so I was unable to blend in the reflected light. I'll include a later image to show what I mean, and give you a typical lightroom style edit to compare.

Tasman Bridge Blue Hour - 15sec @ f11 - ISO100

Up next is a shoot from this morning! I'll often spend quite a bit of time considering locations I could shoot that are within about 10-15 minutes drive from my house, as getting up just before sunrise is hard enough already without having to drive an hour to somewhere like tessellated pavement (which I totally have to do again soon). This morning's planned location was meant to be the small bay in Clarence where a number of yachts are just chilling, but instead I decided to reshoot a location I spent some time at a few days ago. That shoot was as sunset rather than sunrise, so I was keen to compare the shoots. Turns out sunrise is much better.

I went through a few different edits before settling on this one. I think it's a much more subtly vibrant image than some other shots I've edited over the last few days, and it's one I took the time to tidy up in photoshop as well - primarily by working on the colour tone of the jetty and structure in the foreground. Ultimately it proves that I should be treating each of my images with care, and not simply quick-editing them in lightroom.

While the previous Jetty is an example of what can happen when I take the time to edit an image in photoshop as well as lightroom, the next image is an example of a straight lightroom edit. It's also an example of going too far with long exposure photography. I could have easily achieved the same effect in the water with a 30-45 second exposure, but instead did a 105 second exposure, resulting in semi-streaky clouds. I think if it was a particularly windy day with fast-moving clouds overhead, a fully streaky should could have worked alright, but the best way to handle this particular image would have been to take multiple exposures at varying exposure lengths, as well as one shot without the Lee Filters Big Stopper I used to achieve the 105 second exposure. I'd love to see what this image could have been with static clouds rather than the streaks.

Battery Point Jetty at Sunset - 105sec @ f11 - ISO200

Finally we've got the semi-famous Sandy Bay boatshed. This was the first Jetty style photo I took this week, and one I still quite like. There's a few different elements in this composition - the sky, the boatshed, the ramp leading to the shed, the sky and the water. Just looking at this images makes me consider how I might want to redo a similar composition, but photograph each of these elements with slightly different camera settings, and blend the 3 or 4 images together to create the final image. Look out for something like this in the near future!