Choose the right Path

Posted on by

Damn, I have heard that a few times in my youth 😉

I have walked down many paths (not metaphorically now!) at all hours of the day and night and sometimes its nice to come across a path after bush-bashing through the scrub, gives oneself some feeling of comfort that your heading int the right direction 🙂 well at least were someone else has traveled, you know… less chance of shakey snakes etc 🙁

These particular paths I suspect are pretty well worn by fisherman and local walkers, one of which I bumped into quite unexpectedly in the wee hours of the morning, I think she was as surprised as me to see someone else was crazy enough to be out.

I never planned these to be a triptych, however after reviewing the images it seemed like the appropriate means to present them, however I do like the first image and think it could work nicely on its own (wih that cool 'S'' curve and all), however thats for a rainy day processing session 🙂 The trick with triptyches is to get the images to flow and match, which, is easy to say, much harder to do, one day I will go out with the specific purpose for this to make sure the horizons line up and the bits on the left and right of the frames are complimentary, rather then juggling and cropping them after the fact.

Exif love (typical for each image):
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/5s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and some paths 🙂

https://blog.avernus.com.au/choose-the-right-path/

Its wicked world

Posted on by

and there's tiger striped rock hiding behind the bushes out to get you 🙂

view large

I originally started with 5 landscape orientation images stitched together, this got cropped pretty ruthlessly down to what you can see now, which is probably only about 3 or 4 images overlapped 50%
I was not quite sure what composition I wanted when i took the shots, all I knew I wanted to included the element of the tiger rock, the foliage/bushes and the spooky star trek Enterprise shaped island in it 🙂

Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 30mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

Glass Lake

Posted on by

don't slip over the leaf or trip on the broken plank

I always love a good cliche jetty shot, couple this with a long exposure and for some reason the scene turns into something out of a dream. Maybe its the vanishing point, maybe its the lack of a boat or lack of a person, or the softness.. i dunno …

To be honest, its pretty well a lazy man's style of shot, not really pushing the envelope at all, but I still love seeing these scenes and they seem to never grow old in my head. I did try and include the leaf to provide a little catch ya attention and really spring that eye back from the vanishing jetty 🙂 .

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 192.2s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and the Lee bigstopper filter

https://blog.avernus.com.au/glass-lake/

Contemplation

Posted on by

no fear of rock pools and no fear of pulling out shells, periwinkles and whatever else lays within them.. 🙂 gonna need to watch this one!

I just wish i could know what she was thinking, there was some very serious concentration going on here 🙂

ya like how we roll at the beach, singlet and all ? 😉

My little Angel

Posted on by

After attending a Funeral for a bloke who died way too early, myself and tickles went for a little walk in a greenspace to contemplate life.

Every leaf that falls is important and does not go unnoticed.

rest in peace hobbo (Steve)

All paths lead to

Posted on by

the land of fairies, mushrooms and elves

Chaos has volunteered to don the fairy wings and pose for the fairy and elves scene, so hopefully the the next iteration will include a real life fairy 😉

Exif/setup love:
5 Landscape orientation images stitched together in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 26mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 30s
out front – Hoya Circular Polariser

https://blog.avernus.com.au/all-paths-lead-to/

Its a long way to the bottom if ya wanna

Posted on by

walk

a mere 160 metres of free falling water which for a drop of water takes only seconds to get to the bottom… me on the other hand….holy slippery ass steps batman! all 600 of them! and when you get to the bottom its like being in a shower anyway, hence turn around and walk right back up.

If i did that everyday I would be as buff as +Vin Diesel Club , well i suppose at the least my legs would like his arms :–/

In all seriousness, its a very nice waterfall, one of the highest in Australia and the best part about it…wait for it .. there is a Cafe at the top which has the best cheesecake…ever..
trust me, after you walk to the bottom and back again then eat a piece of Cheesecake and you will be in heaven 🙂 and they are generous sized ones too, not like the crap you get in sydney where its the size of your little finger, another reason why the country rocks (compared to the city)

Exif Data ('cause i know your hanging out for it 🙂 ):
2 frames (had 3 but only used 2) manually blended together to get the dynamic range.
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/30s
ISO 200
out front – circular polariser (Hoya CPL)

https://blog.avernus.com.au/its-a-long-way-to-the-bottom-if-ya-wanna/

Cheeky

Posted on by

there is no happier moment than a child laughing uncontrollably

So here we are brushing our teeth, in the middle of the day of course 🙂 it was just myself and tickles (her sister was at school) and someone thought it would be a great idea to grab a spoon and drink water from the bathroom sink. Normally i would stop this, however tickles has had a pretty fierce set of teeth coming thru and suffering from some bad fevers as a result so I thought I would let it slide, especially since she seemed to do a better job getting the water on the spoon and into her mouth than say.. her breakfast or dinner ;).

The first image is after me saying stop.. you can see the thoughts in her head "why eh ?"
The second image is.. well … I can't put it any other way.. blatant disrespect for authority (i wonder where she got that from ? mum 😉 ? )
The third image… in adult terms is "haha screw you dad i just did it 😉 whatcha gonna do?"

Great to see you smile tickles, i love it when you laugh (even if you don't listen to me 🙂 )

Exif/setup:
D750 coupled with 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm Aperture: f/2.0 and Shutter Speed: 1/250s
ISO 400

https://blog.avernus.com.au/cheeky/

Drop Lizard

Posted on by

Its funny when you get those moments when your alone in the bush and all is still and then you notice something which causes you to go 'holy crap batman' (well thats the PG version anyway). It was funny afterwards, but I almost walked face first into this dude who was cruising on a low lying branch at my head height, I think we were equally surprised 🙂
So, after several expletives I pulled the camera out and like a true star, he sat there for a few minutes while I could get a shot of him.. cheers cheeky lizard…

Exif love:
4 landscape orientation frames stitched together
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO 1000
EV -0.3
out front – drop lizard 😉

The push back

Posted on by

After a pretty stunning landing where the Captain dropped this aircraft on the centreline, literally a nosewheel either side of the centreline, (thats pretty good btw 🙂 ) It was a wait of several minutes to make sure the brakes were not gonna go up in a puff of smoke 😉 – they had used pretty heavy braking to avoid the use of thrust reversers. Finally it was then time for the push back into the temporary resting spot, I guess they will drop the good engines out of it and then put in some time X ones and then push it into its final resting place.

3 Landscape orientation images stitched together

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 290mm Aperture: f/7.1 and Shutter Speed: 1/800s
ISO 640
out front – 747-400

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-push-back/

Time in the making

Posted on by

I love the texture in the leaves and undergrowth when its wet, its time in the making with fresh leaves falling on old partially decomposed leaves and sticks. All the while a little fungi makes hay while the sun shines, so to speak, and grips hold of damp prime leaf and reaches for the sun…

Exif/setup:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.6s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL and bunch of leaves in various states of decay..

https://blog.avernus.com.au/time-in-the-making/

Industrial Nation

Posted on by

I initially drove up this hill and saw this view in the rear view mirror and thought, that looks mad with the layers of residential housing then the steel works and finally the hills.

I then spent 15 minutes trying to get the right view without powerlines and trees etc in the way, even so, I had to clone out a bunch of power lines in the way.. 🙁

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 340mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000s
ISO 200

https://blog.avernus.com.au/industrial-nation/

Retirement Roll

Posted on by

the retirement home for planes… including VH-OJA
view large and check out all those people up there!

So I thought, how a little sunday drive down to see some little plane get parked at Wollongong Airport, can't be that bad surely 😉 Well it ain't little I suppose, prolly one of the largest aircraft to drop into Illawarra Airport (also referred to as Wollongong Airport ).

So i ditched the sneaky sunday sunrise session in favour of seeing VH-OJA plonk down at Wollongong, on that note the sunrise was of course damn fine with some sweet pinks etc…Cruising down the M1 at some stupid hour it took me awhile to realise that there was a crapload of traffic.. maybe it's all those Mardi gras revelers heading home back to Wollongong I thought, surely its not people heading down to see this 747-400 take its final flight..

But, I should not be surprised.. driving past the airfield in the dark it was very apparent there were thousands of peeps out to watch this plane land – I almost kept driving down to Bombo after seeing all those people on the Northern side of the airfield, but I did have a plan to hit the southern side for that shot of the jumbo thundering down the runway on its final touchdown, so i battled on and parked around near the sports centre on the southern side, its was packed already and it was only 6:15am! and wow it only got more packed from then on.. and you know what that means.. traffic jam on the way out, thankfully I spied the coffee van and made note to hit that whilst everyone made their exodus.

I tracked down a spot on the fence line, which actually was pretty good and prepared, like many others for the wait, some had been here since 5 am when the gates opened, others from 3am up on the other side…crazy stuff..

+Flightradar24 still functioned with the 14 billion people all searching for QF7474 (VH-OJA) and we (me and the 14 billion other people with cameras to watch it) tracked its takeoff from YSSY and its very very short flight…like 17 minutes short to the northern approach of runway 16 (16/34). It was all over in the space of a few minutes and the sound of camera shutters drowned out any sound of the +Qantas 747-400 coming to a halt on the runway 😉 It did look pretty good on the runway though, the dust it kicked up and runway overhang really made for a great sight, not to mention all those people up there on the northern side… they were on buildings, trucks, hanging off the fence… everywhere man!

On an aside, the Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 is a surprisingly nice lens, very sharp for the range and nice contrast, it takes a bit to get used to the fact that the zoom ring rotates in the opposite way to most nikkors… but 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 500mm (courtesy of +Rodney Campbell) Aperture: f/7.1 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000s
ISO 800
out front – 747-400, lots of people and one dinky, dirty little runway

https://blog.avernus.com.au/retirement-roll/

Vertical

Posted on by

Following on from my first composition (https://blog.avernus.com.au/fair-weather-photographer/) of the these falls this was the second in my limited 5 compositions, I was looking for a panorama image, but just could not quite see the landscape version at this point, I did eventually find a landscape version after this one.
I really liked the rocks and the little ferns and wanted to include this with the classic scene that is Somersby falls, at 16mm I could not get it in, hence I opted for a vertical panorama 🙂

This was 3 portrait orientation images stitched together, strangely enough adobe PS could not stitch them, so I had to use PTGUI, which I really like, however I only use for bracketed panos etc since it adds another step and program to the process. That said, I can almost guarantee if PTGUI can’t stitch it…. and (this is important) provide good perspective control then it just ain’t gonna work 🙂 h/t +PTGui , love your work.

Exif love:
3 vertical shots stitched each as follows:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL