Roving-Eye Gallery update and newsletter #32 for November 2025

Hello to everyone and thank you to the new subscribers.. welcome aboard!

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With the latest update just uploaded head to https://www.roving-eye.com/whatsnew-2025-11 and you can scroll back month by month for an easy catch up for previous months too!

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I’m sorry for the unexpected now 12 months(!) delay since the last newsletter.. I didn’t mean that to be the case.. it’s just that “life” got in the way and many things just fell by the wayside and got affected for the duration.

 

 

 

I’ll try to make up for it a little with a slightly longer newsletter touching on some diverse topics so I hope you find something of interest in there!

 

 

At least shooting didn’t stop over that time and the galleries have been filled month by month and there is plenty to see if you use the link above to go straight to the latest update and work back from there!

 

 

One thing is for sure the content of the galleries and image count varies considerably!

 

 

I’ve deliberately kept my options wide open and so in peak whale migration months some galleries get full of whale shots right alongside the more traditional landscape shots.

 

 

That also means a lot of video is now captured in parallel to the images too.. and lots of interest from such as the TV channels in the video content being captured so with now 500+ videos on my personal channel I’ve had to organise it to make things way more accessible and easier to find.

 

 

In fact it came to a surprising 23 different play lists when I divided it all up into such as “Whales”, “In the news”, “Art In An Hour” etc.. head over to https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMcNaught/playlists to check them out!

 

 

Just recently I’ve also launched an entirely new image gallery, called somewhat optimistically, “Fine Art”.

 

I’ve set the criteria for inclusion in this gallery very specifically for images that combine aesthetics with fine detail so they can be printed to a very large size with perfect reproduction and also represent some special content that makes them stand out too.

 

 

The launch edition has just 21 images out of several thousand I’ve added to the portfolio and represents only 0.5% of total images that made the cut and I intend to keep the selection very tight without unnecessary duplicates which means more might have qualified but are too similar to something already selected so I keep the diversity interesting and compelling.. well that’s the aim anyway!

 

 

With my policy of a capturing a growing and diverse portfolio and regular inclusion of video to reach the widest possible audience I still very much want to grow the “Fine Art” gallery an image at a time each if it meets the criteria!

 

 

I hope you like what you see what I’ve done there!

 

 

Head over to https://www.roving-eye.com/fineartgallery to check them all out!

 

 

An interesting thing to note over the past couple of years alone is not only my steady progression in refined photo editing but particularly the increasing cleverness of the software used to perform the edits.

 

 

While there are many good packages out there I have used and stuck with the stalwarts of the industry being Lightroom and Photoshop, both from Adobe. While some balk at their subscription model of monthly payments I don’t mind if they also deliver an ongoing stream of updates and refinements, which they certainly have!

 

 

This has given me both great time saving tools as well as higher image quality tools.

 

 

As an example of the latter a recent client order for a particularly large print sized forced me to confront an image they selected from the already published portfolio that wouldn’t hold up quality wise if printed beyond a certain point, which it certainly was going to be.

 

 

So I went back to the raw original file and edited it again from scratch, but using my now better methods combined with the now better tools.

 

 

Not only was I less heavy handed in some aspects the tools themselves also eliminated the distracting artefacts present in the originally published image.. the nett result was a perfect crisp image that I was happy in letting out the door at this much larger size!

 

 

As an example of the former, being a time saver, there is a method called “masking” which is where you nominate an area of the image you want to specifically modify on it’s own.

 

 

Why you want to do that is because you want to create focus and differentiation in the image.

 

 

It almost goes without saying you would think that there is even a “point” in taking an image, yet I see some images posted online and I wonder what the photographer’s point was.. what was I supposed to be seeing here.

 

 

It is something of a failure if a viewer can’t quickly see the point or appreciate the content of an image.

 

 

Firstly it comes down to composition then it comes down to exposure and lighting.

 

 

For some images the subject is obvious, it might be a whale leaping, or a lightning bolt.. so a singular obvious subject.

 

 

For some landscapes it can be less obvious, unless you edit it carefully to bring the most out of it and that’s where “masking” comes into play.

 

 

For example you may have the lighthouse on the headland as part of the image but not necessarily large enough to be a single subject because you also have the beach in the foreground, also next to vegetation on one side, and the ocean on the other.. and the sky above it all,, but none of them being particularly prominent in terms of image proportions.

 

 

So what to do? There was a point in taking the image but how to make it pleasant viewing?

 

 

Well assuming it was a reasonable composition in the first place and assuming there was some beneficial lighting of some type you drill down to separating the components of the image to make things stand out more and you very definitely want to avoid everything looking the same or similar!

 

 

That’s where “masking” comes in.. you would then typically use the mouse to brush over parts of the image to be separately edited, bringing out the shadows in the vegetation for example, enhancing any structure in the clouds in the sky, making the water appear brighter, or darker as may suit.. etc.. so in other words creating visual differentiation all from a single base exposure shared by all elements.

 

 

All very good so far but where the updates and steady advance in the software has really helped is to automate the masking process which has had huge reductions in the time to manually do the same.. just so you can get to the actual editing part faster and less time doing the masking up.

 

 

I’ve had images in the past where I’ve zoomed in to a prominent tree and individually mouse brushed over it branch by branch just to have the fine control I wanted but it is a tedious and VERY slow process but there was no choice.

 

 

Fast forward to today and now I can nominate such as “Sky” or “Water” etc to be masked up and voila I can be ready to go in a few seconds!

 

 

It’s not always 100% but it’s close and any extraneous additions or omissions are quickly and easily fixed up and definitely way faster than doing by hand from scratch in the first place.

 

 

For extra bonus points you can get a bit clever and get it to mask up “sky” but then that leaves you in a perfect position to auto mask again but tell it now to do “not sky” which is everything else!

 

 

Remember that tedious branch by branch edit mentioned before? Now those hours go down to minutes to seconds to get to the same starting point and ready to work.. now that’s what I call progress that really helps me out!

 

 

I’m more than happy to pay for a subscription to see such quality improvements and time savings all in one package!

 

 

A recent amazing natural phenomenon called the Aurora Australis reached up as far as Port Macquarie and it also lined up with perfect skies and weather too!

 

 

Normally our latitude is rarely reached but a particularly strong interaction of the sun’s stream of charged particles with the Earth’s geomagnetic field happened and we got to see the show here in Port!

 

 

We are at a solar maximum of the 11 year sunspot cycle and we actually did have another event like this in the past 12 months and I missed it by an hour and thought I will never see it here again.. only for it to line again up this past week and so I wasn’t going to miss it a second time!

 

 

The capture of an Aurora brings up an interesting topic.. when does Photography stay “real” and when does it not?

 

A particularly pertinent question in the era of easy AI tools to both manipulate and outright manufacture.

 

I pose the question because our eyes are weak at picking up colour at low light levels whereas a camera sensor does it perfectly!

 

 

That’s why you may see many bright Aurora pics posted online whereas the personal experience doesn’t match it as much!

 

 

I regard the typical captured Aurora image as still “real” even if it was better in the camera than your eyes perceived it, but I very much balk at some images where both saturation and brightness levels have been edited and sliders dragged out to the maximum.

 

 

Of course photography is at it’s heart a creative medium but I like to keep my personal style “natural” as it were and an Aurora is the only time I will play with selective brightness and gentle enhancement to make a pleasing image of what is genuinely captured in-camera but I will never step over a personal line to become “garish” just for social media likes and such.

 

 

Amazingly I will soon have another opportunity, weather and sun activity depending, of capturing even more Auroras, but only by going far north in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, Iceland specifically!

 

Auroras there typically have more green in them and can sometimes be decently bright even to the naked eye so I’m very much hoping for some great in-camera shots I can edit to taste!

 

 

The colours you see are based on the height distribution of such as molecular oxygen.. green sits “low” and red sits “high”.

 

 

At most Australian latitudes you are seeing the tops (hence red) over the horizon but for regions closer to each pole you get to see the entire column from more of an “underneath” perspective so you get from greens upwards to red in the image.. can but hope gaps in the cloud and also sun activity lines up to see that one!

 

 

I’m also hopeful of some special additions to the “Fine Art” gallery such as large lumps of ice sitting on a black volcanic beach and being washed with some white foamy wave.

 

 

That would certainly qualify as being unique and diverse for my portfolio content thus far so you can be sure I will be laser focused on getting everything technically right for a compelling capture.. otherwise you may just hear me cry from the other side of the planet!

 

 

Another interesting aspect to shooting in the cold there (mid-winter Iceland after all!) is the detrimental effect on battery life.

 

 

I could expect up to a halving of normal capacity so when flying the drone and also maybe in stiff winds I very much have to bear that in mind as to how far to go and especially over water!

 

 

So I will have a lot on my plate such as forming composition decisions on the spot for stills, video, 360, topdown shots, panoramas, sideways panning etc etc and then battery life and range and challenging and highly variable weather conditions all happening at once.. pretty sure I will be sweating enough doing all that when flying to counter any cold winds!

 

 

I don’t usually have much to worry about when flying drones typically but here I might be pushing it since I will also kick myself for not squeezing every drop from it too!

 

 

There’s one more “hopeful” for this trip.. and that is active lava flow!

 

 

There have been several decent long lasting and spectacular events in the past 18 months and while it has been relatively quiet lately the geological reports show things are building up again.. so could be days, weeks or months.. no-one knows for sure.. so I can only hope!

 

 

Assuming the long suffering drone has lasted this long I will send it over the lava fields to any eruption for sure since walking over it is a definite no-no even if it looks solid.

 

 

I’ve done all the map and road access research based on previous eruptions and posted drone videos so I will keep my hopes up right to the day we must board the plane to leave!

 

 

All the images and video will take some time to edit when returning in mid-December so it’s possible I will not have a December gallery update in time for the actual end of December but will see.

 

 

Of course most people will be focused on other things at that time so I will pop up with a gallery update when it gets done.

 

 

I’d also like to think I can return to a more regular newsletter update than has been possible for the past year so perhaps I can pump another note out then with such a special event as Iceland having just been done and ready to view!

 

 

Take care and thank you for reading this far and sharing the journey!