DAM BLUE HOUR

Yate Dam, Yate

For the life of me, I can’t remember why I didn’t participate at the photo contest for which I took this photo for. I like this image quite a lot though it did take me a long time to find the right edit for it to be so. That’s probably the reason why I didn’t participate.

Canon EOS 1300D + EF-S 18-55 ƒ/3.5-5.6 IS II | 21 mm, 2 seconds @ ƒ/11, ISO 100

The hydroelectric power generated Yate Dam isn’t the largest, tallest, the most power generating nor the most beautiful dam in the world but I still find it very impressive. Probably because I haven’t seen many dams in my life. Still though, for a small island like New Caledonia, it is quite an impressive achievement. And I do find it quite beautiful lit up with Yate Lake behind.

I was quite lucky to get this shot as those dark clouds rolled in pretty quick and it started to rain. It actually rained all night and through the next morning. There were a couple of clear occasions but not long nor good enough for a nice photo. This image dates back to 2018 when I was using the Canon EOS 1300D/Rebel T6 with the kit lens. An Entry level, crop sensor DSLR that I had won from a local photo contest. And very happy that I did because at the time I was borrowing a couple of friend’s cameras. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of my Nikon D7100 (which got stolen a year or two before) but it did the job well enough. Of course it does have it’s limitations and I did have a problem with the auto-focus not being on point but when manually focusing at 100%, I couldn’t go wrong. Which is what I did with this long exposure shot. Very little editing on it but what made all the difference was adjusting the Hue of the dam lights. That alone added a more appealing colour contrast to the image. It took me a long time to figure that out but that slight adjustment changed everything.

I’d love to photograph the dam when they open the spillway. I don’t know if they publish times and dates for the occasion though. I’ll try to find out.