Lanikai Sunrise and the Topaz Labs Plug-In Bundle

This was the 4th weekend that I've joined Kenway Kua for his sunrise photos and this time he wanted to go to Lanikai Beach in Kailua. I've never been there before and was eager to see where it was and what kind of scenery was available. It was drizzling by my place and I was hoping that the weather wouldn't get much worse as the morning progressed.

The sky was beginning to lighten when we got to Lanikai and we could see it was very overcast but at least it wasn't raining. As we made our way to the beach we noticed a few people were already there...some were walking their dogs, some were just sitting on the sand and there was also a photographer there waiting for the sunrise.

We set up our tripods and waited for the sun to rise, but the morning remained very overcast and grey. The sun did peek through the clouds a few times, but there wasn't much color available.

The Mokulua Twin Islets or "The Mokes". SOOC with crop and straighten.

There were a lot of people on the beach that morning, apparently it's a popular spot to catch the sunrise from. We even met another photographer who said he came here every weekend to shoot the sunrise. He was a Nikon shooter and had really nice gear with him. Maybe we'll see him there again in the future.

Many people were at Lanikai that morning.  SOOC with crop and straighten.

The clouds never went away but at least we didn't get rained on. I wasn't too happy with the pictures I took, but I couldn't complain...I was out shooting and enjoying Kenway's company. Plus this gave me a chance to be more adventureous with my post processing once I got home.

I recently purchased the Topaz Labs Plug-In Bundle and decided to play around with it to see what it could do for my pictures. The plug-ins are known for their ability to give your images more "pop" and I was eager to see what they would do for my dull pictures. I did initial adjustment in LR2 and then I tried some presets in Topaz Adjust 5 before doing final adjustments in CS3.




I was amazed at how much color Topaz Adjust 5 could pull out of my dull grey images. And I thought the tone mapped look was kinda interesting too. Topaz was definitely able to give my pictures more "pop", but this wasn't really my style. I did have fun experimenting and playing with the look of my images, but I think I'll probably tone down the effect the next time I use Topaz.

I had another fun morning with Kenway even if the sunrise wasn't what we were hoping for. There will always be other sunrises in our future.