I was lucky the rain had stopped so that I could photograph sunrise and if you look back at my last post, I think I captured a nice image. Overhead though the rain had come back and I quickly packed up my gear, as it’s not weather sealed, and took cover under a nearby tree. I was hoping the rain would stop long enough for me to head back to the camp site for hot coffee and breakfast. I was starting to get very hungry. The rain had almost stopped and I was about to make a run for it when this beautiful rainbow appeared. With the dark clouds and the sun hitting the top of them it made for quite a dramatic scene.

I had to try to capture it. I hurried back to the water and quickly setup my gear in fear the rainbow would disappear. With the top of the image and the foreground very bright, and the bottom of the clouds and background quite dark, I thought the contrast might be too much for a single exposure. I told myself to just take the shot so I at least have something and if I have the time, to capture two different exposures. One for the bright areas, the other for the dark areas so that I can blend them together later. I timed the shots to capture movement in the water as it was retreating over the coral/rock. I only caught the end of the rainbow as it was already fading by the time I had setup. Everything happened quickly but I’m glad I was able to get my three exposures.

So this photo is the result of blending the highlight and shadow exposures. The blending and edits were very quick and the photo is fairly accurate to what I saw. I did edit the single exposure as well but I wasn’t able to reproduce the same results. Well not in the same time frame anyway.

 Anyway, another souvenir of Poe Beach (Bourail, New Caledonia) captured and a unique one at that.

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1/16th @ ƒ/11, 18 mm, ISO 100

Following on from my last post, I walked over to Poe Beach (Bourail, New Caledonia) and tried to capture stars above the seascape. In this scene I really wanted to avoid trailing stars and try to capture pin sharp ones and lots of them. To do that I needed a faster shutter speed than my last photo Poe Trail, that is an eight minutes exposure and bring that down to eight seconds or round about. Doing that meant I needed to bump up my ISO and I thought about opening up the aperture but I wasn’t sure I could get the foreground and the stars in focus if I did. So I left it at ƒ/11 but even now I’m not sure if that I a good idea or not. Unfortunately the higher ISO introduce too much noise, the faster shutter speed gave me a dark exposure and a slower one, star trails.

So this photo is the best (of the worst) that I was able to capture. Again, a super long exposure of eight minutes and yes, star trails too. I light painted the foreground though in this photo. The image was a little flat and I wanted to give it a little more depth and hope it would balance the foreground with the billions of stars in the sky… yeah, that didn’t quite happen. I think the slow passing clouds prevented the capture of all those beautiful stars I could see. I like the light painting though. Not too much, not too little. It seems natural, no?!

Well, though I had a lot of fun trying to capture the night sky, there was tomorrow’s sunrise to photograph so back to the tent I went.

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

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