New Zealand: My Journey Back to Paradise (2) – Aoraki / Mount Cook

Aoraki/Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand and Australia combined, reaching 3,754 metres. Probably it is also the most famous landmark of New Zealand, a place for so many photographers and artists to produce great works.

I went to Mount Cook in 2011 and made one of my best images there. Personally I will never be tied of going to this wonderful place and taking photographs. Mount Cook was identified as one major focus and also the second location in our this journey. Our plan was to stay three nights in Mount Cook, so that we would have sufficient opportunities to explore the area and take both sunrise and sunset photographs.

We left Queenstown in the morning of 28 August 2012, and would expect to arrive Mount Cook around lunch time. Nevertheless, this day turned to be the longest day for our entire trip. We made a careless mistake and drove all the way down to West Coast. By the time we found out, we had to drove another six hours to get back to Mount Cook. Fortunately, things were not too bad, in fact with some extra time, we enjoyed the wonderful scenery along the road so much. We arrived in Mount Cook after 6pm, and directly headed to Tasman River for night photography.

Crystal Giants

This photo was taken on the first night we spent in Mount Cook, it showed a special night in Tasman River, Mount Cook: these icebergs floated on the river surface while the moonlight shedding on them illuminated such beautiful color.

Hooker Lake

To make photographs in Mount Cook, it is hardly not to go to Hooker Lake, which probably is the closest ground location to view the peak of Mount Cook without doing a serious mountain climbing, though hiking three hours for this trip may not be an easy task for everyone. The lake looks not very big, but its one side ends with giant glaciers directly connecting to Mount Cook. On a clear and calm day, the reflection of Mount Cook in the lake provides an interesting highlight of this scenery.

We three photographers went to Hooker Lake on 29 August 2012. The sunset light was pretty flat with a cloudless sky. We were a bit disappointment for such a result after spending more than five hours on this trip. The next day, without knowing what the weather would be in late afternoon, I and another photographer decided to try our luck one more time. On 30 August 2012, after lunch time we hiked 90 minutes to arrive in Hooker Lake again, and patiently waited for our last chance. Finally, we witnessed that the peak of Mount Cook was lighten by the setting sun while beautiful clouds were moving across the sky. This photo recorded what we got on that day.

 

New Zealand: My Journey Back to Paradise (1) – Kawarau River

New Zealand has been my dream land for many years. Since I had my first photography experience in New Zealand in 2011 (see my blog “Making the Image “Moonlight”), I have planned to return to New Zealand at least once a year to fulfill my photography dreams. In August 2012, after a long time preparation, I finally returned to this beautiful land with several other photographers.

Our first stop was Queenstown – a town in Otago in the South Island of New Zealand. Although this was my second time to this small town and we mainly traveled along the previous paths that I had in 2011, there were still plenty of new and exciting photography experiences during our four days stay in Queenstown, and one such experience was shooting at Kawarau River.

Kawarau River is well known as the site of the world’s first commercial bungy jump. The river starts from Lake Wakatipu, and flows generally eastwards for about 60 km until it reaches Lake Dunstan near Cromwell. We stayed in a hotel just at the west end of Kawarau River connecting to Lake Wakatipu. One our team member found a position on a cliff above the river that provided a nice viewpoint of the river with the snowing mountains background. The scene was just magnificent!

I had two chances to make photographs at this location, both in early morning. For the first time, the sunrise light was wonderful, but its direction was not quite right and I did not want to comprise the composition. On the day we were leaving Queenstown, I decided to take the last chance. I went up before 5am, and came to this place in the darkness. It was surprising that the Milky Way was still clearly hung on the sky and the twilight was about to illuminate the surroundings, while two strips of red clouds were just across in the sky. This was my first to witness such a wonderful Milky Way when the sky started to change its colors.

Karawau River

I took a number of shots with ISO 1600 to focus on the sky that captured such beautiful Milky Way and clouds. But the foreground river and the right side mountains were completely under exposed. As I did want to have the river as the foreground in my final image, I had to wait until the sky was bright enough so that I could make proper shoots to capture the river and mountain details. Furthermore, the composition had to also be changed by lowering my camera body down slightly so that the frame contained all interesting elements around the river.

The post process was not too difficult. The final image was from combining three shots together – each with different exposure times: one focusing on the Milky Way (ISO 1600), one focusing on the right side mountains details, and one focusing on the river. The last two shots had the same composition containing a small portion of the sky. The blend was made in two steps. Firstly, the last two shots were blended together to reveal sufficient details of the mountains as well as river. Then this blended image was stitched with the first shot so that a square frame was finally produced to contain both sufficient sky and foreground.

As a final note, this image probably not only shows a very unique viewpoint of Kawarau River, but also presents a very special moment at this place.

 

Li River Sunrise

For many years, Li River has been viewed as an iconic symbol of oriental beauty. It is one of those a few places of China that is so popular by attracting lots of tourists every year but still remains its natural purity.

 

Li River Sunrise

This photo was taken in Xingping County along Li River on 11 October 2011. The local photographer said that it was not an ideal time to make pictures of Li River from October to April of the next year because an overcast weather over Li River was very common during this period. But there was an exception this time. I was told that it had been continuously raining for an entire week but just stopped on that day when I arrived in Xingping. Then I knew I probably would be lucky enough to witness some beautiful sunrise and sunset moments during my this trip. Indeed, on the third day, I encountered a spectacular sunrise over the beautiful Li River.

The image was taken with my Canon 5D Mark II camera and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens. I used tripod Gitzo GT2531EX CF6X Explorer 2 (BH-55 Ballhead) to support the camera and lens, and a RC-1 canon remote release to trigger the shutter.

To balance the light between the sky and foreground (river), a Lee .6 GND soft filter and a Lee .3 GND hard were used. I found that this filter combination provided the best effect without causing any visible grey line between the water and mountains.

This image was also a result from blending three successive shots within 15 minutes. When the sky was getting to dance, I made a shot with aperture f/22, focal length 29mm, ISO 50 and shutter speed 20 seconds. This long exposure made the river have a peaceful and tranquil feeling, where the cloud reflection was also showed in the water. Soon after this shot, I found the clouds became even more dramatic, so I made the second shot focusing on the sky with aperture f/10, focal length 29mm, ISO 100 and shutter speed 1.3 second. Then a few minutes later, something interesting happened: a fisherman suddenly rowed into my frame – this was completely out of my expectation! I quickly made the third shot: aperture f/8.0, focal length 29mm, ISO 100 and shutter speed 1/13 second.

The first two shots were well planned, but the third shot was by chance, which eventually played the most significant role to produce the final image.

I opened three images raw files in Camera Raw 6.3, made a small adjustment for each of these files by just filling a bit light for the first two images increasing both clarity and vibrance to 12. Then I loaded them into Photoshop CS5.

In Photoshop CS5, I first blended the first two images together: the intermediate resulting image combined the first image’s water reflection (lower part) and the rest parts of the second image. Then I further blended this intermediate resulting image with the third image by carefully painting the fisherman and the associated water reflection into the earlier combined image. In this step, localizing the fisherman and his reflection was critical. Paint opacity should be not more than 5%, and gradually painting was carried on until the fisherman (reflection) smoothly appearing and merged with the rest part of the image.

After three images were carefully merged, a standard Photoshop processing was carried out. As an additional yet important stage, I further applied Tony Kuper’s mask luminosity technique to select “Expended Mid-tones Pixels” in Channels, and then select Curve to create a Curve layer. By adjusting this curve I could further enhance the contrast on expended mid-tones pixels, which made the overall image pop out nicely.

I was satisfied with the final image after processing. I think blending three images together was an important step to make an image illustrating such a beautiful scene of Li River that I have had in my mind for a long time.

On that day early morning, I traveled by a small boat for one hour to get to this location when the sky was still very dark, so I had plenty of time to set up my tripod and considered various compositions. From the dawn to sunrise, the light changed dramatically, and also local people started to work on their boats in the river. Under this situation, the first shot was critical to capture the stillness of the water when no one was there. To me, the impressive sky and its reflection in the water were the primary feature I wanted to capture, while the unexpected fisherman captured in the third shot just added an exceptional highlight to this image.

Overall, I believe that the following three things are important to make a good landscape photograph:

– Persistence. If you find a wonderful place to photograph, you probably have to visit there many times. In the last five years, I visited Xingping four times, and went to this specific location seven times. Only this last time I got the wonderful light. Visiting Li River also meant that I have to travel far enough each time (from Australia to China).

– Patience. In that morning, I thought I already made the best photos after the first two shots, while two photographers nearby started to move to another location. Luckily, I stood there a bit longer without moving my tripod, so that I could capture the third image with the fisherman coming to the right spot with the same composition.

– Always try different compositions if you have time. I believe that this is quite critical to achieve the best outcome. In that morning, after I made these three shots, I also took several landscape-oriented shots. It appeared to me that both compositions were equally impressive.

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