Sunset on the Zambezi

Gallery: LandscapePosted April 11, 2016122 views8 comments

A sunset shot from the "Mana Mouth" viewpoint in Mana Pools, overlooking the Zambezi river upstream and the Zambian escarpment on the other side.
In hindsight I would have paid more attention to include all of the tree on the left. I was helping clients with their compositions and therefore had set up my tripod to just keep clicking on one composition as the sun set.

The animals grazing are waterbuck. There were also hippos and fish eagles calling vividly.

I processed this last night in Lightroom's auto HDR workflow and was once again very pleased with how it renders these blends naturally.

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 16mm
f11 | ISO-100 | Blend of 3 exposures to control dynamic range.

Comments

8 comments

Comment posted by Roel Wijtmans on April 11, 2016 at 11:46 AM

Beautiful sunrise, and the HDR software indeed did a great job to make it look natural. The foreground to the left is a bit uninteresting, so I think I would go for a slight crop from the bottom. But that is not a big deal, this is really nice!

Registered on September 30, 2012, 116 Posts, 2257 Comments

Comment posted by Harley Goldman on April 11, 2016 at 5:50 PM

Beautiful sky and the exposure blend looks very natural. Sweet evening.

Registered on November 19, 2003, 586 Posts, 11271 Comments

Comment posted by Stephen Stanton on April 11, 2016 at 10:57 PM

A terrific sky nice HDR blend.

Registered on March 1, 2015, 54 Posts, 453 Comments

Comment posted by Igor Doncov on April 12, 2016 at 4:32 PM

I love everything about this image. The fact that the tree is not showing completely on the left doesn't bother me at all because of all the other foliage on the left. Backing away to get the full tree would change the perspective on the river which I think is really good. The sharp detail in the foreground grasses is very pleasing and adds a lot. Nice job.

Registered on November 22, 2014, 189 Posts, 2733 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Overacker on April 12, 2016 at 7:43 PM

Morkel,

Beautiful sunset image. I'm with Igor that I don't think including more of the left by backing up or going wider would have improved this. I'm enjoying just perfectly fine as presented.

Can't go wrong with this gorgeous sunset sky, clouds and color. Great job on processing as well.

Lon

Registered on November 24, 2006, 521 Posts, 19147 Comments

Comment posted by Jean C Cajolet on April 12, 2016 at 9:05 PM

A very nice sunset as well as a nice work with the HDR. Very natural and interesting details, in fact, the full tree on the left would have added something more to this already good composition.

Registered on April 28, 2014, 53 Posts, 532 Comments

Comment posted by Dan Kearl on April 14, 2016 at 7:09 PM

I would not have known this was HDR if you had not mentioned...
Very natural looking, maybe tone down the extreme brights a tad, but very nice..

Registered on September 2, 2013, 209 Posts, 1514 Comments

Comment posted by Morkel Erasmus on April 19, 2016 at 2:53 PM

Thanks for the feedback, folks!

Registered on March 22, 2011, 385 Posts, 2068 Comments