On the night of the Smiley Face Conjunction, before the sun set and the conjunction was visible, I was able to capture some dramatic sunset scenes over Brisbane Water, from Yattalunga and Green Point on the Central Coast of NSW.

I captured and processed these using HDR techniques – a way of representing a greater dynamic range in a single photo by using multiple exposures of the same scene (under exposed, correct exposure, over exposed).

It’s a fairly new technique for me and not everyone is a fan of the type of images it can produce – sometimes producing unrealistic fairytale type images, or with halo artefacts, depending on the extent of the processing. 

Escape With Me

Please check out the rest of the photos and I’d love to hear what you think. I need more practise in both capturing and processing HDR images like these, so bare with me

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Wow, well last night certainly proved to be more stressful than was expected! After a beautiful and clear practise run on Sunday night, it was supposed to be crystal clear on Monday night too but high cloud and then thick low cloud came in during Monday afternoon which threatened to spoil the whole event for me.

News of the rare celestial alignment had made it to all the media outlets and it got quite a bit of coverage yesterday. I gave a short interview for the local Star 104.5FM radio station, and I saw it mentioned on news.com.au, and the TV news as well.

It did clear for me, just! Here’s the first of the many images I captured. 

Smiley Face Conjunction at Sunset (HDR)

The picture above is available for purchase as a print, matted and framed, or even as a greeting card at RedBubble. Please read on to see more..

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