The Photographer

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I think all togs have been in this positions at some stage, no not the dude out there, but me, dealing with the crowds of people 😉 ok ok, maybe just the one dude and admittingly he was there first! Turimetta is one of those location in Sydney which has just become synonymous with photography and as a result on any given sunrise or sunset I reckon you would have tog out there bent over a tripod striking a blow for photography freedom 😉

Anyway, when all else fails, use what is presented to you to make the best shot you can, I did as such 🙂 Cheers dude for standing still for over a minute 🙂

Usually its +Suren J or +Rodney Campbell in my shot, but this time rodney was playing on the muddy cliffs and Suren was finding solace in the waves:)

Single frame, there was a dabbling of lightpainting from the left side of the scene, just to give some extra illumination to those sweet textures in the pipeline.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @12mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 73.9s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 and screw in circular polariser

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Where did that baby go?

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We now have crawling and the ability to pull one self up onto just about anything, plenty of bumps along the way a but when Tickles (aka Mayhem) gets put down she will be gone within a flash, the nearest chair, table, leg anything she's on it 🙂

I swear I had a good couple more months of being able to plonk her down and not having to chase after her every minute 😉 well at least she is now also terrorising her big sister 🙂

# chaos # mayhem

Pastel Paradise

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A prelude to the image within this post :
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/9JtSDbseytS
This shot was the first one from the evening and when the pinks of the sun going down over my left shoulder were most intense.

This was certainly a tricky image to process, 3 shot panorama with each shot bracketed, there were no filters used and as such the dynamic range was still fairly high and I really wanted to preserve the shadows on the mud yet maintain that pastel pink, which is exceptionally easy to lose even when the frame correctly exposed (hence why i often use minus0.5 bais on the exposure).

However fun only started when trying to stitch this bracketed shot, even with some good overlap between images it always resulted in some serious mismatch in the tree resulting in multiple tree trunks ;( Thus an alternative method was needed, I loaded each bracketed shot into a stack and manually blended the frames, this had to be carefully done to maintain a nice even exposure over the three frames of the panorama this was then flattened and then pano merged with PS photomerge, alas some parts of the horizon were a bit wonky, luckily in PS with the photomerge it lets you adjust the actual parts of the photomerge blends, consequently after some manual blending of the panorama frames it was looking better, ie straight horizon etc 🙂

from then on, a simple matter to preserve the tones and process per my usual style.

Manually blended and manually stitched 🙂 nothing like doing it all ya self 🙂

Next time I'll be sure to simply use the Lee Graduated filter to save using multiple bracketed frames 🙂

3 frame (bracketed) panorama
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 20mm- Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 1/10, 1/45 & 1/3 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing but gerry madly wiping the lens to get the condensation off it 😉

I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

The shelf that got away

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welcome to the morning
I was just saying to +Suren J before I took this shot that i really needed another wave like the awesome one that crashed over before to make anything of this spot, well the sea won this time, i did not have the patience to wait for the next big wave set to roll thru .:)

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 0.5s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 + 0.6 and screw in circular polariser

Capturing the Channel

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buy your ticket from ticketek 😉

A pretty famous spot just off Narabeen behind the pool, you need a ticket to shoot this place, even on a quiet day or a day with mediorce conditions you will be assured to find a photographer out trying to nail the next best shot.

It is a pretty photogenic channel and there is a conveniently placed pool inflow/outflow pipe for which one could only imagine designed and placed with the photographer in mind!

I had to clone all the other photographers out 🙂

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @13mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 74s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 and screw in circular polariser

The Tailor that got away

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This dude was fighting a big fish (Tailor apparently) just before this image

Cheers for the company +Suren J and +Rodney Campbell.

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @18mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 3s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 & 0.6 and screw in circular polariser

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Muted Fantasy

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by the pole of death
I did want to take a selfie next to that pole of death out there (bit of pole work and all)…. but i did not want to get my toes wet 🙂 next time.

Heavy cloud on the horizon muted most of the sunrise and most of the Focus crew packed up early and headed for the cafe.

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 256.9s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Legit?

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crocs vs helicopter
Its not often I post a image that is not mine and as such full disclosure, I did not take this – however I do know the source of the image but that's as far as it goes 🙂

Fishing

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View Large and fill that 16:9 screen with what its meant to be filled with – panorama love 🙂

Fishermen have featured pretty heavily in my images recently, I guess its just about them being in the right place at the right time 🙂

In this instance it was a lone fisherman on the edge of the rocks, whilst it may look somewhat dangerous, the place where he is standing is quite sheltered and at this tide level does not get too hectic 🙂 I really wanted to convey that sense of small-ness against the sunrise and sea, probably the real point is that I could not be arsed changing to a longer focal length lens 🙂 I did also want to get down lower to get him more silhouetted against the sky, however time did not permit it.

Techie data:
4 shot panorama (2 brackets per shot)
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 16mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 4seconds & ?
out front – Hoya screw-in Circular Polariser (CPL) and LEE Graduated filter (0.9)

I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

Fishing the Little Bay

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Whilst it was a beautiful morning, these fishermen only had meagre luck, a few smallish barely legal size bream, after a short discussion, we were agreed it did not matter on a such a beautiful morning

Similar to a previous shot (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/MG2VGyeN62n), however of a panoramic view, I prefer my vertical composition, mainly since its was quicker to process than this 5 shot one 🙂

Techie data:
5 shot bracketed panorama (5 sets of 3 images, manually blended together)
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 16mm- Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 01/3s, 1/10s & 1.5s
out front – LEE Graduated filter (0.9)

I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

The Shelly Culprit

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Beachmere
A variation on the recent subject tree, in this case I really wanted to portray what I had just spent the last 15 minutes walking over, a mix shells delicately placed in the mud by the recently receding tide.

3 shot manually blended image
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 17mm- Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 4, 8 &15 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Golf anyone?

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View Large and fill that 16:9 screen with what its meant to be filled with – panorama love 🙂

Just as the storm rolled over, well not quite a storm but certainly enough rain to make it uncomfortable – I noticed a dinky little glow on the horizon and madly setup a shot with my back to rain to try and get something without covering the camera in rain.

Oddly enough 2 minutes later the sun poked its head thru the clouds for a brief moment, standby by for that shot 🙂

I only had to clone out about 15 million water droplet marks on my filter when processing this one 🙂

Techie data:
5 shot panorama
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 13mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 2seconds
out front – LEE 0.6 (0.9 was soaked with rain by this point) Graduated filter and Screw in HOYA circular polariser