On my previous photography trip to Australia, I had a chance to visit this hidden gem for sunset. A big THANK YOU to Anthony Lee (a photographer and a fellow drone pilot) for voluntarily bringing me to this lookout.
As we reached the Woolamai Surf Beach parking around late evening, we hurried ourselves to a 20-25 minutes walk to the Pinnacles Lookout.
Once we reached the site, the sun was about to set below the horizon. With no time to lose, we unpacked our drones and started flying and shooting photos and videos like madmen. Here is one the photos I’ve shot with my Mini 3 Pro.
This is also the first time I used the Mastershots mode… not bad for a “one button click” and everything is automated. Perfect for lazy pilots like me. After the Mastershots is done, all I have to do is just launch the DJI Fly app and download the footage into my cellphone. From here, I’ll just choose my favourite template to be applied onto my footage… and it’s done! The only setback for this approach is we cannot adjust the video exposure and change or add any color and contrast. Check out my maiden Mastershots below.
And below is one of Anthony’s FPV video below (using the Avata) in case you wanna see the “fast action paced” style.
After the Mastershots is done, I stopped flying and continued with my “ground” photography. At first, we thought of going all the way down and very close to the rocks and sea stacks. So, down we went, setup tripod… just to realized that it’s not the angle we wanted. Here’s a look how it looked like below.
Not sure why, but this bottom view didn’t exactly looked exciting to me. Could be the extreme dynamic range or sea waves weren’t strong enough or just me being anal about the “plain look”. After some discussion with Anthony, we made a quick decision to climb back up again to try to take the shots from higher ground angle.
For me, I think this higher ground angle looks so much nicer… took a few bracketed exposure shots. FYI, here’s how extreme the dynamic range of the whole scene is like… take a look at the 3 bracketed shots below.
After merging them together in HDR mode, it’s amazing how all the details in the highlight and shadow areas are well balanced. Here’s the merged outcome below.
Next, the file will be sent to Photoshop to further process (exposure, contrast & color adjustments, smothered the sea and getting rid of unwanted dusts and such). After all that is done, here’s the final result below.
So, there you go folks… if you happen to be in Phillip Island in Australia, pop by to Cape Woolamai at sunset to capture this glorious sea stacks while it’s still there.
