Photos

The Robe Obelisk, on Guichen Bay, was erected and placed at Cape Dombey in 1852. It was used to navigate the entrance at Guichen Bay and to store rocket lifesaving equipment. The firing of rockets, carrying baskets to distressed ships to bring passengers ashore saved many lives. It’s height, at 12 m makes it highly visible out to sea. An early problem with this structure was that it was originally painted white. Sailors complained that by the time they saw the white structure they were already too close to the rocks which extend out 2 km from the base of the cliffs. You can see some of these rocks at the base of the cliff, and around the Doorway Rock. This complaint resulted in the red and white structure seen today. This was the only navigation aid available in Robe until a lighthouse was built down shore in 1973. The land around this structure is quickly eroding. There is ongoing discussion even now about maintaining this site, for when the Obelisk is left stranded on an island.

The whole shoreline around this point is made up of this rugged eroding limestone rock. I didn’t have a lot of time in Robe, but given the right conditions (storm and or sunset) there are some very interesting shots here waiting for someone. There is even a very large population of Feral Pigeons, seen as black dots against the rock. Not the most interesting bird, until you get decent flocks of them.

Much of this from:
http://www.seasidelights.com.au/au/sa/robe.asp?fState=SA and http://walkabout.com.au/locations/SARobe.shtml and http://www.abc.net.au/southeastsa/stories/s428464.htm

Workflow was as follow:
Shot in Raw - NEF files adjusted for exposure and shadow maximums
Filtered for lens correction – Distortion and Horizontal Perspective (on horizon)
Adjusted levels
Adjusted curves with an emphasis on the sky
Added saturation +15 to master
Dodged and burned with overlay layer (5% opacity brush)
Added a layer for sharpening (excluding sky) and “over-sharpened” with USM
Modified sharpening with a layer mask (15% opacity black brush)
Saved as a tiff
For this post, further sharpened with Sharpen Edges on the “USM” layer, framed, and saved as a jpeg

I received a critique from Linas Kardasevicius (linask) where he suggested this looked a little over exposed and that I might darken the sky and water to give it more of an overcast look (which it was). Sounded like a good idea, so I have done this in a workshop. Works for me, let me know what you think. Thanks