I do not want people to forget that I am a landscape photographer. Sure, my work is increasingly focused on wildlife and underwater images, but that does not mean that I have stopped trying to photograph spectacular landscape scenes. As an example, consider this beautiful sunrise that I photographed while visiting the US National Park of American Samoa on remote Ofu Island last December. This ledge was not too far from the Vaoto Lodge where I stayed for one very memorable week. I like how the small waves occasionally washed over the ledge during the brief golden light of the tropical sunrise. Man, what’s not to love about secluded tropical beaches? Though I am headed back to Alaska for most of July, I have to admit that I am really looking forward to being back in the South Pacific when I visit Tonga as part of my humpback whale tour in August. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, 17-40mm f4 lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer, and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter. This image is a single-exposure which required minimal processing using Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS6. I also recently picked up Nik Software as my newest sponsor. I applied my new Nik filters including Dfine 2.0 to remove noise and the White Neutralizer in Color Efex 4. What do you think of my results?
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Jon,
Lovely photo. Colors are great, composition is really nice and I think you picked the perfect length of exposure to highlight the movement in the water on the edge of the rock. About 1/2 second I would guess? Great shot.