Last week we had a fair few hots days in a row here in South West Victoria, and with storms starting to come up in the next few days, it was getting quite cloudy.

I use cloudfreenight.com to check what the clouds are doing, and they looked perfect for a sunset on the coast, and at about 7:30pm when I was driving down the sky looked amazing, I was ready for an amazing display, however the clouds decided to not quite cooperate with no gap on the horizon.

I had found a spot using my drone, which was a lone apostle really close to the beach, but when I took the track by foot, I realised that the beach couldn't be accessed with a drop that was probably about 10m down.

I decided to visit one of the most underrated spots which was at the next turn off ~ The Bay Of Islands.

Taken in June 2021

I visited back in June, 2021 and got a stormy image with a cool foreground, however it looked a bit unbalanced. I used the same foreground for sunset, and realised that a horizontal image made for a much nicer image.

Nikon Z5 + 14-24Z F2.8

Here was the final image I ended up with. The image was focus stacked and exposure bracketed to get the golden foreground and not an overexposed sky.

I was really happy with how this image turned out, and am glad that I was able to find a composition that would work with conditions that weren't quite ideal.

Thanks for reading!

Ben Wickenton
Landscape and Astrophotography
South West Victoria, Australia