The Floating Torii Gate | Lightroom + Luminar 3

ISO 100, f13, 10sec

Deep within Kyushu island in the Ariake Sea of Japan are these cool Torii gates that get flooded twice a day with the high tide.

The official name for this spot is The Floating Torii Gate of Oouo Shrine.

Not sure what the story is with these, every time I read up on them the story seems slightly different and it never makes any sense. Something about blessing the waters for better fishing, or there is something about some giant fish. That’s usually how it goes with historical sites in Japan. A giant catfish, a giant fish, a mountain god, etc. Fun stuff.

Shooting The Floating Torii Gates

If you ever happen to go to southern Japan to the prefecture of Saga, this is a must go spot if you’re a landscape photographer or just want to see something very unique and cool.

There are a few unique and interesting angles you can shoot these gates at, and there are tons of different and unique looks depending on the tide. There is a 6-meter tide difference in the Ariake sea so a lot can happen. I manage to catch this location perfectly when the tide was coming up during the sunset. As the tide was rising, the water was completely still. It’s actually kind of creepy.

We didn’t get a great sunset, but the blue hour was absolutely magical.

Bring a 10-stop ND filter. You’ll probably be fine with a 24-70mm lens but a 16-35mm is probably better and that is what I used. The Zeiss Sony 16-35mm f4.

ISO 100, f8, 30sec

Getting The Shots

There was nothing too complicated when processing these photos. It was blue hour and I was using a Firecrest 10-stop ND filter.

I use the Formatt Hitech Firecrest Elia Locardi 100mm Signature Edition ( BHphoto ), which works great with my Sony 16-35mm f4, and my Canon 24-105 f4. There is a touch of vignetting at the 16mm end but that’s not a huge deal since I often crop a little anyway. I like to shoot a little wider to get a little more of the scene than what I think I might need just in case I need to do some distortion correction, warp corrections or slight recomposing in post.

I probably could have bought a bigger filter set, but this kit was very affordable, small and works fine for me for now. It’s probably the best bang for the buck right now as well.

Being that I’m in Japan, if I do upgrade I’ll probably go with the Nisi filters. I’ve seen a few photographers around here using them and it seems like their kit is a bit higher in quality compared to my Formatt Hitech filters that I constantly have to forcefully pry, push and pull in and out of the filter holders.

However, Firecrest filters are very good in that they don’t have much of a cast and they don’t vignette much either.

One other note, when using 10-stop ND filters, they will significantly reduce the micro-contrast of your images, so I would recommend using them on f4 zoom lenses which usually have much better micro-contrast than f2.8 lenses that people automatically assume are better.

ISO 100, f14, 30sec

Processing 

Processing these shots wasn’t too complicated because the ND filters and long exposures do a nice job in smoothing everything out. Getting the colors and tones right sometimes was a little more difficult and required a bit of noodling.

I’m still using Lightroom to catalog all my photos since my one giant catalog goes back 10 years now, plus I’m a career editor that needs Premiere and After Effects among other applications so I end up just subscribing to the whole suite. 

So basically Adobe has got me hooked in and I can’t really switch to anything else right now, but I do use other software constantly. Luminar, AuroraHDR, Define 2. I eventually want to try editing video in Resolve, we’ve been talking about that at the agency I work at because of its superior support for multiple editors working on the same project.

Floating Torii Gates Workflow

This was my workflow for this series, but it’s kind of my general workflow for all my landscape shots unless I’m doing HDR, where I usually use Aurora or Lightroom. If the shot is very complicated and requires a ton of dodging and burning or manipulation, then I do most of the work in Photoshop with some effects in Luminar.

When importing into Lightroom, the first thing I do is change the camera profile. Either Camera Neutral or Deep Clear, with this series anyway. There is a lot of bias with Sony color science, but their camera profiles can actually do a lot of good things if you use the right profile in the right situation. It helps me tremendously compared to starting with Lightroom defaults.

For this series of the Floating Torii Gate, it was all Luminar and Lightroom, but one image I shot with a focus stack so I had to use Photoshop to blend them together.

ISO 100, f13, 30sec

I mostly noodle the white balance and general colors in Lightroom with some spot removal, then import into Luminar 3 where I usually do the rest of the work.

In Luminar, I do some dodging and burning with a few more tonal adjustments and color adjustments that you just can’t do in Lightroom. Luminar is kind of like Photoshop in that you have almost unlimited options with how you can adjust things because of their layering and filter system. It makes it really easy to polish your photos to perfection. It’s kind of crazy to think about how far they’ve come in such a short amount of time.

The last thing I usually do is add sharpening and detail enhancements then top it off with some effects. 

I usually do some light Orton Effect, Soft Focus or Sunrays on my landscape photos. Sometimes all three effects together with a very low opacity to the layer, sometimes I just use one. For these photos, I was using a very light Orton Effect with the Amount slider set to about 10 for most shots with all the other settings noodled for each individual shot.

Finally, I always go back to Lightroom where I organize everything and program in all the metadata before exporting.

For this blog, I post everything at 3000px across, I use an OSX Automator with ImageOptim, so all I have to do is bulk drop photos into a folder, and they automatically get resized and compressed to about 89%.

For my Instagram, everything is exported to a Dropbox folder so I can download what I need to my phone and upload it to Instagram from there. I also have an Android virtual machine install on my Mac which I can use sometimes as well, but honestly, it’s kind of easier to use a phone.

Check out the Luminar if you get a chance. A lot of people are leaving Lightroom and now that Luminar 3 has a catalog, it’s a nice option. I personally use it all the time as a plugin.

Luminar 3 – See It Here

You can also use code Griffin for 10% off.

ISO 100, f6.3, 30sec