Post-Processing in Lightroom, Sunset at Watermans Bay

With the afternoon free and the weather looking pretty good, I thought I’d go down to Watermans Bay on the coast and shoot the sunset. Just a short walk from the carpark I came across this small bay with steps leading down to the water. The base of the steps were in a perfect position to set of the camera. In front of me was a collection of rocks that were covered with green sea moss. This was providing an interesting scene that had a moody feel.

Luckily I was there with plenty of time before the sun actually set, so I didn’t feel rushed. As the sun moved closer to the horizon, the warm orange light started to catch some of the cloud over head. I noticed some cloud close to the horizon and it started to look like the sunset I was hoping for was going to happen. There just before the sun was going to disappear, it shone through a small gap in the clouds.

I noticed the scene in front of me change as the sun sunk below the horizon and the light varied. For the next 45 minutes, I stayed in the same spot with the same composition. I simply changed my shutter speed to adapt to the changing light. I already had a 0.9 hard graduated ND filter on the camera to darken the sky. At one point however, I added a second graduated filter (0.6 this time) as the range of light from the sky to the rocks in the foreground could not be fully captured by the camera.

As the light faded, I increased my exposure until it was at 30 seconds. As I took my last shot, a larger than normal wave came through and disturbed the water around the rocks, creating a misty feel to the image. It was a great addition to an already moody setting.

In response to a few requests, record the approach I took to editing the first image shown in the video. As I walk through the edit, I point out some of the tips and tricks I use to help me enhance the image easily. I cover cropping, exposure, sharpening, lens correction, as well as a few other simple effects. I keep and natural look to the shot by slow building the image using the adjustments.

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