Cook Islands

by Gavin Dohnt
(South Australia)

This photo is looking back at the main island and the photo is half under water and half out.



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This is an unusual photo. Half in the water, and half out. Clearly Gavin has a waterproof camera up his sleeve!

The fact that the camera was half in and half out has had one immediate benefit – we can see through the water, straight down to the ripples in the sand on the sea bed.

Due to the reflections at sea, this can only usually be achieved using a polarising filter. So well done there!

Now, I’m sure most people will be drawn to the lens flare in the right of the photo. Looks almost like some sort of UFO has just touched down!

Lens flare can be difficult to avoid. If you are photographing into the sun, unless you shade the end of your lens (using your hand will work) you will inevitably get lens flare.

It manifests itself in two ways – first, an overall haze in the photo, and second, as bright lights across the image.

There are two choices here, either work to remove the flare (by shading the lens), or work to include it. Gavin has chosen the second option, and I think it has worked well. The flare has caused a definite point of interest over on that right hand side. Even if it is a little futuristic looking!

There is another aspect of this photo that I am drawn to – the clouds. The cloud on the right suffers from blown highlights, and all detail is lost in them. It would have been good (though perhaps not possible) to have underexposed the photo a little, in order to retain some detail in those clouds, and then brightened the scene up a little using software afterwards.

All in all, I like this photo. It’s different, and interesting. Well done Gavin, and thanks for the submission!


Ed.
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