Kuto, Isle of Pines

Nearing sunset, I decided to head down to the beach to find a potential photo. Hoping for some colour in the sky even though the beach faces east. No colours or dramatic skies but I came away with this photo as I was trying out my filters before the sun set.

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The beach at Atchu Camping is small, about 50 metres long, and has a lot of seaweed and algae on it’s powdery white sand. Though secluded and isolated, it’s only seconds away for users of the campsite. We were there for five days and rarely saw someone on the beach let alone in the water. I have to admit, we didn’t swim there either but did stroll along a few times. The beach faces east, great for sunrise or front lit scenes like this one. And the two isles in the distance just add to this paradise scene. Isle Adventure is largest of the two and spans from the right to behind Isle Duroc, which is small, round and in front of it’s big brother. I’m on the far north end of the beach here and like the southern end, it’s dead coral. You can only get here by sea or through Atchu Camping.

I got here half hour before sunset and stayed almost half hour afterward. This was the best shot I came away with. It’s actually a blend of two images to get sharpness throughout the image. One focused on the foreground and the other on the islands in the background. To get the long exposure of 15 seconds, I had to use my Little Stopper (6-stop filter) because it’s always windy here so the water is a little choppy. I also added a 3-stop ND soft grad. filter to control the bright sky and a polariser filter to cut the glare on the water’s surface. It also adds a bit of saturation to the water and sky. Editing was done in Lightroom except for the blending of the two images which was done in Photoshop. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the Calibration panel in Lightroom can do wonders to images when used right. There’s a small learning curve but once you get it, you’ll use it often. Especially on landscapes images. Try it out.

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SONY a7 III

full-frame mirrorless camera (body only)

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TAMRON E 28-75mm ƒ/2.8 Di III RXD

standard zoom, E-mount lens

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VANGUARD TRIPOD

VEO 235AB Tripod with TBH-50 Ball Head

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LEE FILTER HOLDER

100mm filter holder system

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LEE POLARISER

100mm polariser filter for LEE 100mm filter holders system

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LEE GRADUATED FILTER

ND.9 (3-stop) neutral density soft graduated filter

So from where the photo was taken on my last post, this view would be about thirty-five/forty metres behind me. From this photo, the Camping de Némo is on the left, Poé Beach on the right and I’m standing in the middle of the road that runs through the Camping de Poé along the beach.

I wanted to use this road as a leading line to a night sky with billions of stars and use the full moon to illuminate the foreground but this was the best I could do. I experimented with different settings but all the images were either too noisy or too dark and all had a lot of speckles. As with this one and another similar photo that I will share on my next post. My entry level camera isn’t very good in low light and I haven’t got any experience in this genre either. But I had lots of fun and will definitely give it another go.

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480 sec (8 mins) @ ƒ/11, 18 mm, ISO 100

Back in April a friend of mine had friends visiting from France. They were going to tour around the island for a couple weeks. Their first stopover was the Sheraton Deva Spa & Golf Resort (Bourail, New Caledonia). It fell on a long weekend for us and my friend wanted to head up and spend some time with them. We didn’t stay at the resort as we are both saving money for an upcoming vacation. So we decided to try a camp site we had never been to called Camping de Némo.

It’s located just behind Camping de Poé and only a five minute drive to the resort. I must admit, upon arrival, I wasn’t to thrilled about the camp site. Though it’s limited to twenty or so tents, the area is quite small. Poé Beach is only fifty metres away, which is great, but you have to cross Camping de Poé to get to it. I would have preferred to camp closer to the beach but my friend had her two girls with her and the camping de Némo is family oriented. In the end it was a better choice. Not only because her kids met and played with other kids but because they have a fantastic bar/snack. Including the friends from France, we all ended up dining there that night and I think I speak for all of us when I say we highly recommend it. They have a nice variety of dishes to choose from that are well presented with a good serving and scrumptiously delicious. The service was good and so was the price. Well worth a try.

And talking about trying, I tried to take a photo of the camp site without annoying or disrupting anyone and this was the best I could do. You can see the elevated bar/snack in the background. I stayed up late trying to snap some photos of the night sky and though I’m not too thrilled about the images, I will share them with you in upcoming posts. Just to show you what wasn’t too far away.

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120 sec (2 mins) @ ƒ/11, 18 mm, ISO 100