Seascape @ Punggol End

Punggol End.

It's almost 2 years now since I last visited the location. Even longer than I estimated I think. Anyway I woke up real early at 5:00 AM, grab my camera bag and tripod and moved out. Two of my friends have joined me in this organized outing. We rreached there on time before the sun starts to rise. After we found our own vantage spot, tripods were set up, cameras were mounted and everyone was ready for the golden hour to arrive...

The morning air was fresh by the sea, the sky was gradually illuminated by the rising sunlight casting a beautiful red-yellowish color on the clouds. Clouds formation was spread out like a giant soft curtain across the blue-hued sky. Creating such dramatic effect to the whole seascape.

I've managed to find my own vantage spots and here's the first exposure I did.

At Dawn

This was taken before the sun rise up right from the back of the hill on the left side of the horizon. In my usual practice. I make black & white photographs exclusively and there's no exception in this case even I was using my DSLR. Well of course I exposed it in color and got them converted in the digital darkroom. I've always think black & white works best in the way I wanted to express or show about the environment, creating a atmospheric mood wherever possible.

In this next exposure I made, I spotted this lonely small tree and decided to compose it as my foreground subject. As I did not want to make plain sunrise photographs, I was looking out for shapes, lines and textures to make a more interesting photographs.

Well, this small tree is not really flattering good as a subject, but I hope it can contribute to the overall peacefulness appeal.

Peacefulness

And finally the sun rises up.

Rise of the Sun

I liked the clouds as if like feathers scattering around. Frankly speaking I don't really like to make such sunrise or sunset photographs as it seems too mundane, boring and cliche to me, even this was my very first time making such photographs. There are things that are best to see with one's own eyes and enjoy the climax.

OK here's one last exposure I made, which isn't my ideal of minimalism but I like to show the nice misty effect that covered the row of trees, giving this soft gentle morning touch. As the morning mist was heavy, floating on the sea water surface, color was almost flushed out except the yellowish soil from the construction ground. So I decided to convert the image to black & white which looks pretty good to me.

Gentle Touch

All photographs were made in RAW with a Tamron 17-35mm lens on Nikon D300. COKIN 'P' filter system with a Warm-up Filter (81C) and Neutral Density filters.

Photograph courtesy of Randall Kok.

© 2010 Randall Kok.

This was where I positioned my tripod and made the above photograph. This shot was made by a fellow photographer and a long-time friend. Well, Thanks alot Randall.