Wild Coast Morning

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi everyone...

Well, I am back from an awesome road-trip that took us across 6 of South Africa's 9 provinces, covering about 3,500km in 9 days.

Haven't had time to process much but worked through this one on the road. This shot was taken VERY early one morning on South Africa's "Wild Coast". My attempts at capturing the Milky Way were thwarted by a persistently lingering full moon, so I tried something different. This was the view from a hill over the ocean as a bank of clouds was rolling in from the Indian Ocean before dawn, with the full moon behind me. I used my torch to add a little bit more illumination to the little acacia tree which was shorter than my waist-height.

Techs:
Canon 7D with 10-22mm USM @ 10mm
f5.6 @ 30s @ ISO-1250

[Dave Mills]

Hi Morkel, great light with the stars adding interest.I like the feeling of remoteness along with the rear cloudbank. You did a good job lighting the tree which appears natural.
In a perfect world I would have liked a more interesting tree....

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Morkel,
Now you know why I do most of my night photography w/o the moon! I think yo handled this very well.....for my tastes I may go a bit darker....feels too much like daylight for me.....but well composed and as Dave mentioned....yeah....a better looking tree would have ehlped....but placed very well and the stars add a great deal of interest along with the clouds!

[Robert Amoruso]

Ditto, not the best of trees but still pretty cool looking. I like the deep blue color.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks a lot Robert, Roman & Dave...

this little tree is very typical of the area (along with aloes - one of which wasn't around on this particular hill), and of the lot this one was the only one looking out over the ocean without getting a large cellular tower to the right into view or the dim lights from the coastal town on the left.