Honey Moon Bay

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where babies love happens

This is where everyone went in the 90s and early 2000's for their honeymoons.. ya know how i know that? 'cause now everyone that visits this place has kids around the same age 😉

A quick grab shot as we drove out of the place from our few nights camping there (chaos, tickles and da boss). This image is 4 landscape orientation shots stitched together, it was taken pretty well in the middle of the day hence the light is somewhat flat, however with the use of the Polariser the sky and the greens get a great kick to give it a little more to combat that overhead sun and the life of a mediocre image :).

This place is perfect for families with kids, the swimming , snorkeling etc is excellent, the sheltered bay means the water is particular calm, even more so than the water from the bay a few hundred metres out, which is pretty calm anyway. Perfect for a clever hungry shark too methinks 😉

Here you can see a typical day in the life of the holidays at Honeymoon bay, 30 odd degrees Celsius and the routine consists of a quick dip followed by a lazy lay on the beach, in the shade of the overhanging trees or in the sun, whichever you prefer, you can also sprawl out on the grassy knoll at one of the beach if your not a fan of the sand 🙂 This is repeated through the day with intermittent breaks for food and beverages 🙂

I hope all you northern hemisphere inhabitants in the grip of the cold winter enjoy this one 😉

Exif/setup love:
4 Landscape orientation images stitched together in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 42mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 1/320s
ISO 100
EV -0.7 (just to protect those highlights
out front – Hoya Circular Polariser

https://blog.avernus.com.au/honey-moon-bay/

Life Past 16mm

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old vs new

Sitting back in the campsite at Honeymoon Bay i spent some time studying the google earth / map of this lighthouse situated out atop some thumping great cliffs, I had never visited the place before, nor seen any images, however from the satellite view I was scoping out a panorama view with the lighthouse as the key feature.

I had a few images in my head of what I thought i could capture, as as with most images ideas in my head it all changed when i hit the location 😉 firstly, what clown went and built that fugly scaffold tower with a dinky light on top right smack in front of the prestigious and majestic old lighthouse? planning fail moment, right there 🙂 secondly… well, i think that fugly tower is deserving of second place too!

anywhos .. I spent quite a considerable amount of time circling the lighthouse looking for that nice pano shot with complimentary light, i did cave and take a few portrait orientation shots at 16mm (standby for those), after a few circuits and a couple of half baked panos i stopped and thought about what I wanted to portray in a panorama format…. i loved the old house and the line of the path and fence, I loved the warm light on the lighthouse, i didn't like the new scaffold structure, however I had accepted by that point it was now part of history, hence it needed to be included. It was just a matter of how to join these elements into a panorama that did not suffer from empty foreground or a flat view or whatever other pano fail feature 🙂

The light was not that wonderful, however, one must always make the best with what there is, by this stage it was lucky no one was around since I was wandering around like a nutter with the camera partially attached to my head trying to find that angle, that line and composition…

finally this popped out.. now if I had found this about 45 minutes earlier it would be covered in pastel pink tones and much nicer… but thats life 🙂

This light house sits on top of the cliffs at Point Perpendicular with a height of about 80 metres… thats base jumping material 😉 what I will say is that it is a dizzy height, one which I momentarily looked at before retreating to the safety of the fence.

Exif/setup love:
5 Landscape orientation images stitched together in +Adobe Photoshop​
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 24mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 1/25s
out front – nothing, the graduated filter was causing havoc here 😉 there was a few rabbits around though…

https://blog.avernus.com.au/life-past-16mm/

Escapee

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screw you punks I am outta here

Once seen never forgotten, even at 14 months tickles memory is disturbingly good, after one visit out this gate it was stuck in her head and was very determined to revisit the outside world 😉

6 images, assembled into a x-tych
Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 85 f1.4 @85mm Aperture: f/2.0 and Shutter Speed: Typically 1/250s
ISO 400
out front – escapee

The Shoe Horn

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or whatever shape you think it looks like
As with alot of the hot summer days on the north coast of NSW, a storm was brewing inland during the day which then turned into one crazy looking storm cell and consequently dumped a whole bucket load of rain, most days like this mean the sunsets get muted by the heavy cloud on the inland hills, however today was different 🙂

After visiting Byron Bay…and being very thankful to be able to leave the place 😉 (i like my solitude some-days;) ) I noticed some breaks in the storms armour, letting thru some light and promising the potential of some colour, so with a leave pass from the boss and promises to Chaos that yes I will take her sunsetting soon… just not today cause it was late, wet, slippery and I was heading into tiger country 😉 ok.. maybe not the tiger (four legs man eating etc) that most think of, but more the tiger snake kind 🙂 anyway thats irrelevant. A quick visit to the local lookout to see if there that potential for colour was still there and low and behold, I met another tog who had been chasing the storm, seems they are everywhere nowadays 😉 after a quick gear chat I donned the spray jacket and headed into the scrub bound for the rocks that form the base of Goanna Head.

After some scrambling, slipping and plenty of cursing I found a new little rocky outcropping which had all the potential of awesome selfie location – enter the Shoe Horn, the sun had just dissapeared over the headland and things were gonna get dark real quick. The problem with sunset is the longer you stay the darker it gets (well derrr i hear ya say 😉 ) but consequently the harder the walk out becomes, unfortunately all the sweet light really occurs as the sunset has disappeared over the horizon which means in the shadow of a headland things are getting pretty dark…

So, that little bit of rock sitting out there in the ocean… I was gonna stand on that for my selfie, however, responsibility got the better of me, half an hour from anywhere and if I slip off there there is probably only one outcome ;(

So, to the picture..without me in it, probably better that way 🙂

Vertical Pano style
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 10s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL, lots of spray, slippery ass rocks and sweet colour.

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-shoe-horn/

The rough side of town

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Smoothign out the rough bits - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 189.1s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL. and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x (3 stops) and Lee bigstopper

smoothing out the rough bits

Single frame, long exposure
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 189.1s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL. and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x (3 stops) and Lee bigstopper

Silent Sentinel

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Silent Sentinel - (c) 2015 Gerard Blacklock

Silent Sentinel – (c) 2015 Gerard Blacklock
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 210.3s
out front – Lee bigstopper

holding the fort against the fuzzies

After a failed attempt at sunrise this morning (due to rain and lack of sleepage), which involved a few mad text messages with Rod  at some ungodly hour…. I had a some time to burn and was nearby this marine navigational aid (which was the failed location of the sunrise session), so myself and Chaos made the decision to brave the drizzle and take a look, having never been there I thought a reccy would be worthwhile, so after a few minutes walking we came to this steel rung ladder leading down the small headland, hmmm probably not so appropriate for a 5 year old….. so I said to Chaos
‘are you brave enough to try and climb down there with me?”
to which she responded
‘not sure dad…its a long way down’
now, just some perspective, this is the girl that climbs on those crazy looking jungle gyms in the park and scares the the living daylights outta dad 😉 ohh and those climbing gyms are probably a bit higher than this ladder…
‘ I’ll spot you as you go down?’ to which she said very indignantly , ‘no i don’t need you to spot me i can do it by myself!’
🙂
anyway i did insist on me spotting her as we went down, rung by rung in the wet 🙂
After which we recc’ed the joint and took two long exposures, Chaos insisted on cleaning up all the rubbish on the shoreline at the small outcropping with exclamations of ‘oh my gosh, these naughty people who drop their rubbish… don’t they know a pelican could swallow that! ‘
gotta love kids…

Single frame, long exposure
Cremorne Navigational aid
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 210.3s
out front – Lee bigstopper

 

Softness is

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Softness is - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 15s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL and a barrel load of sea spray.

sea spray on your filter / lens

Its always a battle when there is a onshore breeze, for every wave its a continuous cycle of shoot, and then wipe the filter down… on this particular day I felt like that bird trying to crack a nut on the rock, only have it roll down into the creek after each crack at it. Unlike the bird, which learnt and moved to a new rock, I did not, I simply kept doing the same thing…shoot then wipe 😉

Anyway after much filter cleaning and post processing clonage, I got to a point where I was somewhat happy with the result.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 15s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL and a barrel load of sea spray.

Escape while you can

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Escape while you can - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

I suffered for this image, i was eaten alive by mosquito’s, I got soaked by the rain waited ages for a couple of cars to go by (no other fool was silly enough to be out in this weather) and missed all the sweet lightning – however knowing my luck it would have belted me if I hung around 😉 and to make things worse, half my shots where outta focus – damn technical issues 🙁

This image was mean to be panoramic image of the scene, but only one of the frames was salvageable, this one. I still like it, its got all the key elements from the session, the warm disappearing sunset from around the hill, the car light trails and the thunderous clouds (excluding my epic lighting bolt right on top of the hill 🙂 )

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

Future tog

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Future Tog - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

(C) 2014 Taressa Joy, all rights reserved

(C) 2014 Taressa Joy, all rights reserved

I must admit I have had trepidation about letting my daughter wander off with my camera, however I am learning to relax, it has come back unscathed each time and she does a remarkable job in holding it since its quite a heavy bit of kit.

We still need to work on the concept of being still when taking pictures, that said, she does slow down to about 50 % madness speed when taking pictures.. that still makes blurry photos even at 1/1000 second shutter speed 😉

Here’s one of the images, there was no prompting or coaching to achieve the composition, I merely processed it in Lightroom for her, since shes not allowed on my computer ;).. yet..

nice job chaos, i love the patterns and also your composition (and its sharp 🙂 )

 

 

Parting

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you don't need to stand tall to make a difference, just stand strong

'Dad, that must be a really happy rock, 'cause it got a big smile'

Chaos, my 4 yro, probably the best critic i have 😉 this ones for you pumpkin.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 17mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1s – the golden shutter speed for rocks and water…
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. and a 🙂 rock

No amount of processing will fix poor composition

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I think this image is a good example of the statement, more so the composition side of things, whilst the processing is pretty minimal, the image lacks impact, direction which can be found in good compositions. The long exposure gives it some interest and the poles add a bit…. however without that it would be on the trash heap.

Single frame, long exposure
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 24mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 272.1s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x (3 stops) and Lee bigstopper

* /_\ Triangular Flow /_\ *

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Triangular Flow - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/20 and Shutter Speed: 6s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. and a funky /_\ rock

truth be known i am a bit of a ascii art fan 😉

I am trying a little to shake my addiction to vertical/portrait orientation shots 😉 well ok, i could not fit it in using a portrait frame 🙂 but really, i am working on it, honest.

This was one cool rock with some very interesting channels around it, as the waves washed thru I was surprised in the way the water circulated around the rock in a triangular manner, which was a pleasant surprise, since I expected to get wet shoes again.

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/20 and Shutter Speed: 6s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. and a funky /_\  rock