Rainbow Upon the Cliff – Lough Tay, Wicklow, Ireland

Posted on September 16, 2010 under Landscape, Photography, The Land | 283 Views

The sun peaks above the mountains to throw a shaft of early morning light upon the the rain soaked cliffs that stand guard around Lough Tay in Wicklow, Ireland.

A 5am rise, now that we are heading into winter I get to have a lie in for my sunrise excursions, unlike to ungodly hour of 3 a.m. during the summer months. I visited Lough Tay for a sunset shoot in June of last year and knew it was a place I wanted to return too. The weather was, how shall I put it – wet. Apart from some brief respite at times it was a fairly constant drizzle as only Ireland knows how to do. The positive in all of this was of course when the sun did manage to peak over the surrounding mountains, and briefly break through the dense cloud cover it made for some dramatic light kissing the tips of the cliff above Lough Tay. Oh and God can you chuck in a beautiful rainbow on those cliffs just for kicks :)

This image is a panoramic made of 3 separate images stitched together. Actually to be more process this image is 3 sets of 3 exposures stitched together for a HDR image. I have promised myself for some time now to try HDR. I have done a huge amount of reading around the subject and was intrigued. While the web seems to be full of horrible (IMO) ‘overcooked’ whizz-bang-wow HDR images there are a number of talented photographers such as Richard Carpenter at Airstream Chronicles who are using it as a ‘light touch’ to help draw out the original artistic intent of the image. When I viewed these series of images on my computer I realised I had a set that could really gain from applying a HDR workflow.

Was I successful, what do you think?


Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
Exposure: 1.3 secs, 2 secs, 3.2 secs
Aperture: f/16
Focal Length: 36mm
ISO Speed: 100

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