Digging out some past photo for landscape shots, I found this shot that was taken last November 2021 when I joined the short getaway trip organized by Photojam group. This jetty/platform which sits above above Pantai Bersih on the map, is also a few hundred meters away from Butterworth town in Penang. It has quite a scenic view of the whole Penang Island in sunset.
Here’s the location I’ve included in case you guys are interested to visit there.
As I reached there, the sun was about to set. Quickly took out my stuff and setup my camera, snapped a shot. Didn’t quite like the harsh sunlight. Also, the dynamic range between the sun and the surrounding was too much for my camera to handle. Here’s how it looked like straight out from the camera.
So, I waited… not for long though. Just a little over 10 minutes later, the sun went down behind the mountain and the scene suddenly changed. Slapped on my 10-stops ND filter and did a 2 minutes exposure… and here’s the result straight out from the camera.
In Lightroom, I changed the white balance to a slightly warmer tone (I recalled it was waaaay warmer than the pic above). After that, I ramped up the shadows to 100% to reveal all details in the dark area while reducing the highlight to preserve those details in the sky. Here’s the “after LR edit” before exporting it to Photoshop.
Not bad for a rough edit before sending it to Photoshop. Just with highlight and shadow sliders in Lightroom, I was able to recover soooo much data.
In Photoshop, there’s quite fair bit of cloning & spot healing to be done as I’ve removed those tripods and people moving around on the jetty. I also removed those distracting “floating balls” in the sea. After that, I did some contrast and saturation enhancement. I also did some dodge & burn on the foreground rocks. When all that is done, I will do the sharpening in my final touch back in Lightroom. And here’s the final result.
Shot with XT4 + XF 10-24mm F4 (10mm, 120sec at F16, ISO 160)
