Dave Arnold's Blog  

Each year I try and photograph New Years Eve Sunset, and then New Years Day Sunrise.

First we will start with the New Years Eve Sunset – everything worked for this shot, the light, the colour/the camera settings – and instead of processing the ‘Raw’ image as I normally would this is a Jpeg straight from the camera, besides a border and a Water Mark totally untouched.

OK, woke up at 3.30am – was concerned with the low tide, heavy cloud moving in and high winds from previous day if it was worth going or not – thinking going back to bed a good option – looked outside – little tree movement – winds had dropped – see a few stars – ok, so looking promising, although the bed was also looking very tempting still. So where could I go where the low tide would not overly unfluence the type of photos I could take – only option realy was Manly Boat Harbour – as no rocky headlands within driveable distance in the time I had before sunrise at 4.55am.

I get there, ok not too bad, still alot of heavy cloud on horizon, but little wind.

Took a few predawn shots, but nothing exciting and closer to sunrise we see a bit of colour and then it is gone.

The two following images were taken in that brief period of colour.

Ok, this one required quite a bit of work, and was created through a HDR style merging of two images, with a little colour enhancement.

The second one taken a few minutes later looking back to the left of the previous one, the colour is starting to fade, so again a little enhancement in photoshop to get some of the colour back.

Hope you enjoy them, and a Happy New Year to everyone.

Cheers Dave