Beam of Light at Turimetta Beach

[iceman (Mike)]

On the 11th April I met with David, an ex-work colleague from RP Data, for a dawn photography session. We had decided to go to Turimetta Beach on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I hadn’t been there before, but it’s certainly now made an impression on me.

It’s a fantastic secluded location near Narabeen, with no horrible sodium lights, nice and dark (for so close to the city) and some beautiful rock structures and formations that give amazing opportunities for seascapes with an interesting foreground. It’s also the type of place you could visit time and time again, as different tide heights and different moon phase open up new and different photographic opportunities.

We had an uninspiring mixed dawn early on, with some heavy low clouds preventing any dawn colours from breaking through. It was getting close to the time to call it a day so I could head to work, but as the Sun crept further above the horizon a break in the clouds out over the ocean gave us our money shot. A magnificent beam of light shone through the clouds into the ocean and finally gave us a focal point to compose around.

After not much to inspire us early on, all of a sudden David and I were frantically running from shot to shot looking for the best composition, knowing that this shaft of light was fleeting and could disappear at any time.

I’ve got a few more shots from the morning which I’ll post soon. Turimetta Beach is definitely a place I’ll head back to again soon.

All of the above are single shots with a Canon 5D Mark II and 24-105mm lens. I used a Lee .9 GND filter too. Processed using Lightroom 4.1RC2 (extremely slow pain in the arse to use!) and Photoshop.

- Large 1
- Large 2
- Large 3
- Large 4
- Blog


Thanks for looking – comments always welcome.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Damn. Our secret spot, discovered. Now the crowds will come. We'd kept it a tight secret until now... LOL

Nice shots though Mike It is quite spectacular all of a sudden at times. We've rarely been disappointed.

[Octane (Humayun)]

D'oh!

What's with the flat cyan and cyan highlights in the foam?

Might see you there.

H

[gregbradley]

Great framing but the colour is off on some. The last pano has the best colour.

Has the ND thrown off colour?

My first shot with a .6 grad had the clouds looking too dramatic. They are supposed to be neutral but who knows.

Greg.

[iceman (Mike)]

Yeh I struggled with the colour. I used daylight WB I think, with the GND. I tried to get the cyans closer to white but failed. Probably pushed saturation too far.

Might have to go back to the start and try again.

[iceman (Mike)]

It was a much bluer morning than that because of the heavy low cloud.

I use LR so adjusting WB is easy in that too.