“ngumbi Jodi” thats hello in language of the Dharawal people.
Gotta learn something new everyday – and for another fun fact – did you know that alot of the names in the Illarawarra are derived from aboriginal names – mostly mispronounced tho :)
Madden Falls
Thelma Point. I visited this little spot some years and have always wanted to get back with the right conditions, its a fine balance between too much water flowing over the rockshelf and not enough to create a nice cascade.
Its also a good reminder to watch the sea and never assume that just cause there has not been any waves come across for 5 or 10 minutes that its all sweet. This spot, on this morning, had some odd rhythms to it, it would go almost 12 or 15 minutes without a wave making it over the shelf, then you get a whole bunch, like 5 or 6 waves that would nail it.. and when those bunker busters are pounding the pavement its hard to hold your own
Taken with the very nice KaseFilters 1.2 grey graduated filter for a shutter speed of 1/4s
Balls of Steel
..and no wet toes
Funnel
Sense of Scale – (C) 2020 Gerard Blacklock, all rights reserved
Not often you see surfers turn around and come back from a spot (Themla Head) they have just walked 20 minutes to get to. They all ended up on this little section on the northern end of Garie Beach still pretty hairy I reckon.
I think I am pretty impressed with this 20mm f1.4 lens, being able to shoot at iso 1250 or 1600 and 15 seconds and still get so much light in is just great – now lens manufacturer’s.. all i really want now is 14mm f1.4
This image actually quite simple, its 7 shots stitched together to create the vertical panorama, there is no composite foreground, no stacking for the milkyway and its pretty much what you see with the naked eye, well probably a bit brighter…
Evans Head Marina
6 images @ 20mm f1.6 iso 200 and 15 sec.
I learnt from my last image with this lens, lower frame focused on the ferny bush in the foreground, then the remaining frames at the pandanus at F1.6, a little more dof.
Be like the Pandanus… a good listener who knows when to be quiet 
Seascape
I think I have forgotten how to take seascape shots – i sat here for 20 minutes waiting for decent wave to come up this channel, then sure enough, 2 minutes after I packed up and moved over to another spot, the swell was right and the wave came …
Midnight Bangers.
Trying out the Kase Filters Australia Night Pollution 2mm slide in filter.
Midnight Bangers.
Starry Boats
– I think if more people went outside and stared at the stars for a while the world would be a better place. Remember, your just a collection molecules floating thru space and one day they will be returned.. lifes too short to argue with dicks on the internet..(but sure as hell its fun )
challen
ge soooo accepted.
and done.
ta dad for all those hair clips, things can go pear shaped if there is stray hair about and cinos being deployed.
Last time I was here the building on the left was but a bunch of electronic lines in some ex dubai’s architects computer – now its the dominator on the Sydney skyline.
Whilst it has some nice curves, it really seems to lack any real pizzazz, something to make you go, wow that looks awesome or standout amoungst the rest of the glass and concrete sitting around. Maybe I am alittle harsh on my civil brethren, the world of aviation has not really set things alight in terms of revolutionally design’s, (other than saving a bunch of weight and pretty displays)
Barangaroo at Dusk.
#kasefilters
First shot with my very own set of Kase Filters Australia / Tiffany KaseFilters – Graduated filter (3 stop) with K100 series holder.
In addition to all the other benefits of these filters, I can add – easy to clean rain off
Thanks to the fongster (aka Cameron K. Fong) for dragging me outta bed probably would not have gone otherwise.
watch out, bad case puns coming up.
First Kase
Cheeky
when you get your way and have some porridge with your bowl of brown sugar..
Me and this Pandanus go way back, over the years we have chilled out, shot some sunrises, shot some sunsets, watched some stars, lamented world issues and solved world issues. We are available for consulting and problem solving ;)
No matter how many times I head out into the night there is always that slight trepidation that comes with it – I got thinking about this, particularly so since my middle daughter is going thru a time when she is quite afraid of the dark. It does appear that the fear of the dark is actually hardwired into humans, only in recent times have humans had little need to be afraid of the dark since we have pretty well become the apex predator on the planet, mainly due to the eradication of most animal species. This turn has really only occured late in our evolution cycle and hence we still have that fear , which drives the fight or flight response, this was so key for us since not too many generations ago becoming a snack for the next hungry lion was a real reality. So, if your like me and occasionally look over your shoulder as you trudge down that lonely dark path, remember… there could be a lion there :) if not, all good, systems working normally.
Sitting out here watching the stars and taking a few photos requires quite a bit of time sitting in the dark, it’s actually pretty neat to see how much your eyes do adapt and what you can see with no torch light. That said when a f-off big wallaby came to hang out with me i don’t think I could get that headlamp back on fast enough :)
This shot is taken with a 20mm f1.4 lens that I won the other year, it’s pretty well the first time I have really used it in anger, its pretty amazing to be able to shoot at f1.4 with the milkyway since you can suck in so much light in a short exposure with a low ISO which means the noise is really reduced. On the flip side, as you can see in this image, focus is super critical, i messed up the frames on the left side and they were slightly out of focus, enough to be really annoying. At f1.4 when the foreground, (tree) is in focus the sky is pretty well slightly out of focus and the rocks on the ground in front of the camera definitely blurry. This image is a panorama using 3 rows of 6 images, noting that I could probably get away with just 2 rows and still get the top of the milkyway in the frame, i do find having plenty of sky above the milkway arch helps in reducing that effect of a flattened top of the milkyway. The shot covers 180 degree field of view (horizontal) and probably about 90 degrees vertically.
(C) 2020 Gerard Blacklock, all rights reserved
Pirates.
Deep sea fishing on a boat called the Pirate?…hmm maybe not.
7 images @ 20mm f1.4 iso 1250 and 15 sec.
(C) 2020 Gerard Blacklock, all rights reserved