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Sunset on St Kilda Beach

St Kilda Beach makes up the south-east boundary between Dunedin City and the Pacific Ocean. Dunedin's climate doesn't allow too many water-based activities but there is often a group of surfers (with a wet suit for insulation) around somewhere.

This photo is nice because the colours are subtle and the cool blues are partly balanced by the warm yellows. This fits in particularly well because the official colours of Otago (the province this photo is from) are blue and gold! From a technical point of view this photo presented two challenges: one to capture the extremes of lighting from the full sun to the shadows in the rocks and two, to keep the horizon straight! Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get a crooked horizon! Really annoying!

Anyway, the Fujichrome 50D professional slide film did the job and I must have metered on the right part of the frame. I almost always use spot metering and lock on the part of the frame I want to expose on. This allows deliberate over and under- exposure without having to twiddle extra knobs on the camera!