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This was one of my final frames during the sunset shoot at the Pinnacles. Although I prefer the photograph below for the lovely bit of warm light in the foreground this shot does actually show the Pinnacles in all their glory – they truly are remarkable. Technically, it was a very difficult photograph to make because the sun was setting directly behind the rock formations silhouetting the Pinnacles. There was very little in the way of overhead cloud to reflect light back onto the rocks; which meant deep dark shadows. I used a 3-stop soft graduated neutral density filter to pull back the sky and exposed the scene for the secondary highlights allowing the shadows to fall where they may. I let the very brightest part of the setting sun clip and then pulled it back in Lightroom with the recovery slider. I new I would be able to get away with this as it would only clip in the red channel making recovery a cinch. This approach allowed me to capture pretty much the entire dynamic range on the Canon 1DS MK3. I used a cable release with mirror lock-up and timed my shots to the incoming waves. Post processing in Lightroom allowed me to add some fill light and tone curve adjustments to brighten up the dark shadows and otherwise correct the image. The end result is a photograph I am very pleased with. A higher resolution version is on my website at www.jholko.com in the Australian Portfolio.