Capturing My First Prints

The first time I headed to 'the Alley' was for a surf lesson from my wife Amanda and brother-in-law Pete. I made a promise that I wouldn't take any cameras with me, not even a GoPro so I could focus on the surfing. After catching a few white wash waves I looked to my right and saw an amazing sunrise peaking over the rocks. It looked beautiful and I immediately wanted to be out on the rocks taking photos of the surfers. 

A few days and some bad weather later, I was up at 4.30am to catch the sunrise. I didn't really go with any plan, but knew I wanted to take some photos on my Sony a6300 first and then as the sun rose a bit higher, fly my Mavic 2 Pro. I'd seen some photographers on instagram getting slower shutter photos of surfers so I decided to give it a go. It took me a few attempts to dial into the right speed, but that's when I snapped one of my favourite photos to date. The graceful Wano Liao was cruising past on her 9.5ft Eagle at just the right moment and so, inspired, I called that print simply, 'Wano'.
Currumbin Alley is a great location to shoot photos because of the Gold Coast city backdrop. If you can capture it at the right moment, you can see the light from the sun reflecting off the buildings in the distance. It's pretty magical. 

After an hour of shooting on the Sony, I swapped over to the drone and got a number of good photos that went into these first prints. By this time the sun was mostly behind the clouds but It was creating some cool light rays onto the ocean. It's hard to tell exactly what you've got on the DJI monitor, so I was excited to get home and edit the photos on Lightroom. Like with the capturing process, I don't really have much of a plan with the editing either. I like to play around with colours and see what looks best to me. I think I probably edited Candy Floss Skies a hundred times until I was happy with it. It was either too pink or not pink enough!  

Overall I couldn't be happier with my first morning at Currumbin Alley and I think I captured some really nice photos that I am proud of. Hopefully there is something in this collection that you also like and think would look great on your wall. Please tag me on insta @abovebyjack and show me where my prints end up!