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Description
This is taken north of Kailua Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. I really love the interesting lava rock formations of the island. It's like watching a constant fight between the land and sea. The sea eventually wins but the land holds its own for thousands of years. Now that's drama!

This was a interesting hike out to this location. It's not very far from the sandy beach which is like 400 yards behind me and to the north but it's very broken and rough lava rock. The tide was low or it would not have been possible to get out this far. It was wet, slippery and footing was very tricky and difficult. I almost slipped a few times and then when I got out there, in my zeal, I set up a bit to close and was almost knocked into a huge tide pool when a wave nailed me about knee high. There was spray all over my filters as well so I had to keep dabbing that off to.

As soon as I got set up in my new spot I was ready to wait for a great sunset. That's when this scene presented itself. I thought a faster shutter would work better but wanted to get a little movement so I hit the shutter right as a nice wave hit the rocks in front of me for the first exposure.

This is actually 2 images put together in CS2. I use a Cokin P series filter set and with my wide angle lens I can only hold 1 filter at a time at 10mm. The light difference from the rocks and the sky was about a good 12+ stops. The strongest ND grad I had was 4 stops. I took 2 shots. the first I used the 4 stop nd grad over the water and used a spot meter off the rocks. The 2nd shot was spot metered from the blue sky. I then used Photoshop and put them each on a layer and used a heavy feathered mask to make the single exposure. Add in some other adj layers and presto.

Hope you enjoy. Comments welcome!

Description
This is taken north of Kailua Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. I really love the interesting lava rock formations of the island. It's like watching a constant fight between the land and sea. The sea eventually wins but the land holds its own for thousands of years. Now that's drama!

This was a interesting hike out to this location. It's not very far from the sandy beach which is like 400 yards behind me and to the north but it's very broken and rough lava rock. The tide was low or it would not have been possible to get out this far. It was wet, slippery and footing was very tricky and difficult. I almost slipped a few times and then when I got out there, in my zeal, I set up a bit to close and was almost knocked into a huge tide pool when a wave nailed me about knee high. There was spray all over my filters as well so I had to keep dabbing that off to.

As soon as I got set up in my new spot I was ready to wait for a great sunset. That's when this scene presented itself. I thought a faster shutter would work better but wanted to get a little movement so I hit the shutter right as a nice wave hit the rocks in front of me for the first exposure.

This is actually 2 images put together in CS2. I use a Cokin P series filter set and with my wide angle lens I can only hold 1 filter at a time at 10mm. The light difference from the rocks and the sky was about a good 12+ stops. The strongest ND grad I had was 4 stops. I took 2 shots. the first I used the 4 stop nd grad over the water and used a spot meter off the rocks. The 2nd shot was spot metered from the blue sky. I then used Photoshop and put them each on a layer and used a heavy feathered mask to make the single exposure. Add in some other adj layers and presto.

Hope you enjoy. Comments welcome!