Cathedral Cove (Photo of the Day August 9 2013)

This Cathedral Cove is located in Hahei coast, about 2 hours drive

from Auckland towards south east direction. Arriving in this place

before 4.30am, I looked into the beautiful sky through this natural

window. Thanks for viewing this image.

Beautiful landscape. Great composition and lighting. A very nice place to be there. Congrats.

A stunning landscape that really draws you into the scene through your excellent composition. The lighting is spot on. Very well seen and executed to produce a shot that I shall add to my favourites. Best wishes William.

Lovely image. Nice use of light and shadow to create interest. Good dynamic line and depth. Well captured reflection. Well seen and well executed.

that's a great shot Yan and nice post work as well

So beautiful!  

Superb! Well worth a 7.

Regards,

Alain

Marvelous landscape!

Hi Yan,

This is a magnificent picture. Composition is perfect, colors are stunning and the stars add an extra dimension. You can be very proud of this picture.

Best regards Per.

Great composition!Compliments!

A stunning image. Wonderful light and composition

The result is stunning and I will rate it 6. Of course this is not reality to get that kind of light under the rock and get those stars at the same time unless they were taken at different times and then several images blended. 

Beautifully lighted and composed.  I assume the stars were an after thought well executed.  Great work, Yan.

Extraordinaria imagen. best regards

Nice...nice!

Excellent composite image. Very well composed and processed.

Superb work!

Regards! Hanan

Your efforts to reach this place to catch this light is very well rewarded. This image conveys the serene feel of the place and the early morning. The stars add an icing to this image. Well composed and executed.

excellent composition and light, an outstanding image in every way. i don't wanna seek for mistakes, but my eyes can not pass the fact that the reflection down in the wet sand is way more highlighted and have different color than the sky, like it is obviously from a daytime photo ( or blue hour). in practice, the reflection is always darker than the original sky. i would definitely correct that portion, from the same photo from which the sky is resulting. but the image is very good, even so you can have my vote.

It certainly appears to have been a blended image. I really don't care. The end result is stunning. I particularly like the surf line and the "Slow" water. I also like the fact that although blended, it's not overdone

The success of processing is measured by many by the extent to which it stands out in the finished photograph. If the work that was done on a computer stands out and is so obvious, that is considered by many (including me) to be a shortcoming of the work.

One of the best attributes of excellent processing is that it can't be seen, and it can't be seen because it so closely mimics natural conditions that would be seen by the eye.

I think we're inclined to forgive less than optimal processing if the scene and/or light is relative dynamic or eye-catching. In Yan's photograph, the variation in light, with some reflecting off the wall of the arch and the foreground and with additional light on the horizon with interesting clouds, is quite appealing and a reason perhaps to overlook other aspects that we might consider to be shortcomings.

BTW, I too thought that a reflection is always at least a bit darker than the source. However, I've recently seen a couple of examples in my own photography in which this was not the case. I now think there are some special circumstances that will allow a reflection to be lighter than the source, and I no longer can assume that a lighter reflection is a result of inadequate processing. I'd want to ask Yan if he indeed did blend the foreground that had been made lighter (or the sky darker) by his processing or if, instead, this is an accurate rendition of what he saw.

In saying all of this, I know that not everyone will agree with my criterion of transparency as an attribute of successful processing. Other viewers may look for other aspects to pass judgement on the processing.

I want to add that the conditions I think might produce the light seen in the reflection is when the source (the standing rock in the background) is shaded (most likely by a cloud on the horizon to the right) while the reflection area is not shaded and is receiving some direct sunlight.  That could possibly make this a single exposure rather than a blended image, but I think only Yan Zhang will know for sure.

Hi everyone, thanks very much for your comments on this photo. Let me explain how I made this image briefly (a full detailed tutorial will be written and published in my photography blog soon):

(1) this image was a result of blending of two shots, one was made in the time of per-dawn, that captured some stars in the sky, where everything else was almost completely in the dark; one was made in the time about 30-40 minutes before sun came out of horizon;

(2) the water reflection and light shading on the rock walls were captured in one single shot. Noted that in this later shot, couple of stars were still visible, but not impressive. So I decided using the previous shot. Both shots were taken at the same position with any change.

People have asked me how the rock became shining while the sun wasn't above horizon? Well, if you have been in a similar situation, you should notice that quite often, rocks would start to shine even if no sunlight directly shades on them. They were just illuminated that usually not been seen by our naked eyes, but my D800E +14-24mm f/2,8 captured that clearly.

I also need to stress that the foreground water reflection was not blend separately, it was just there in the 2nd shot, and I didn't change its light in the process.

Thanks again for your interest in this image. Cheers, Yan

A lovely image, but obviously manipulated and combined with another image, as the photographer admits.

So it's real, but not real.  Is it an accurate represention of the scene.  I'd say no.  Nice...but in the end, another computer enhanced image.