Slippery Crossing

choose your path carefully

3 frame manually blended image
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 8s (mid frame) 2s (bright area) 30s shadows and under rocks 🙂
out front – screw in circular polariser

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

Spacemen

ready to launch

A pair of spacemen wearing yellow pants and white helmets 😉
Slipper Orchids, these are quite amazing flowers, the level of detail and texture in them astounds me.

Nicely done mother nature could not have done it better myself. Its always a challenge to capture the full depth of field when macro'ing, focus stacking is one technique, but time consuming and often (for me) does not give the desired results, in this case I use a couple of images manually blended to achieve my depth of field and also maintain some nice smooth, soft background. The other challenge posed by these flowers is the red tone, very hard to replicate and convey in a image such that it looks like what it does in real life. The red is a real deep dark red encased in areas of soft pink and spotty white. The yellow bits are .. well bloody bright yellow, i guess to attract the pollinators 🙂

2 frames Blended
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 55mm f2.8 @55mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/3s
ISO 100
out front – Slipper Orchid

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

Family

and there were 4 in the dunes and the little one said.. where to now?

This scene with the grass clumps reminds me of my own family, my beautiful partner (wifey) front row centre, mayhem off to the left (and as always.. heading off to explore with no fear), me , i am the big clump off to the right with chaos close by keeping a eye on me 🙂

Its a big world out there 🙂

Whilst our dune-age here in NSW Australia does not compare to the stuff in the middle of the county or even some the awesome ones over in other countries, I still love getting out there and trying to capture that expansive, bleak and textured scenes – i hope I have acheived it here and gotten you lost in the scale of the vanishing horizon and classic big blue aussie sky.

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 1/20s
ISO 100
out front – Screw in Hoya Filter – circular polariser

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

Softeness is

Campcove
From a recent sunset session with +Rodney Campbell , i had set up on the beach only to find the ever increasing waves encroaching on my position (that would be those darn ferries), this was the third attempt and finally got a result that did not have from the sand disappearing from underneath 🙂

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/6.7 and Shutter Speed: 299s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser
out to the right – Rodney Campbell

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

Layered

A variation from another very large panorama (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/AA4LF9J1m34) This is merely a slice from the larger pano, but I think it captures the layers within the scene better and portrays finer details like the dunes and sea mist better.
I am keen to know what you think? better or worse?

Techie data:
4 (about there) shot panorama (each frame bracketed)
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm – Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/8s 1/30s 1/3s (bracketed)
ISO 100

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

Record

I think this is officially a record for me, the same location 3 times in the space of 18 or so months 🙂

I am becoming more partial to returning to the same location, but there is always that hesitation about whether I will come away with a better shot than last time 🙂 Conditions are always different and also the time of the visit can vary how good the location is, this is a the same location from the last two visits, noting each time I have forced myself to try and take a different composition, angle or perspective.

03FEB2013
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/NBmEciaobfS

02DEC2013
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/JnWJVhjQCmZ

Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 6s
out front – screw in circular polariser

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

Old Wood

Darn hard shot to compose – I was squatted down under some very wet branches trying to get a enough perspective on the falls to eliminate that bright sky, camera was nearly on the ground and in the end I had to crop some off the top to remove the blown out mass of white up there anyway. Even with a bracketed exposure there was too much dynamic range in the light so I let it go free 😉

In anycase it does leave the opportunity for the log so shine and be the star actor in the image, nicely done loggy 🙂 and fully supported by a team of orange leaves

3 frame manually blended image
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 8s (mid frame) 2s (the upper falls and bright area) 30s shadows and under rocks 🙂
out front – screw in circular polariser and hard wood.

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

Blue and White

This will be the next star trail location for sure, just gotta get the time and the weather to line up 🙂

3 minutes in the life of a dutiful lighthouse, another in my quest to conquer midday images 🙂

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 182.5s
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

Eyelashes

..really serious eyelashes at that!

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @52mm Aperture: f/3.3
ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: damn fast 😉
out front – tall thing with 4 legs.

It's a jungle out there

and a complex one , no straight lines or an order simply millions of years to just randomly arrange stuff. The lower portion of National Falls can be seen in the top left of the image and whilst its probably less than a 100 metrees away as the crow flies, it felt like a lifetime away given the boulders and vines between us and it.

I included +O. Sydney straddling the slippery ass rocks whilst composing the 'Heart falls' (as coined by +O. Sydney) to give an idea of the scale of the scene – otherwise it simply loses perspective.

Techie love:
4 frame panorama (single images)
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/11 ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 4s
Out front: Circular Polariser, vines and bigass boulders…

Lushness

is the under side of the National Falls

with my bum balanced on one rock and feet planted somewhat precariously on moss covered slippery ass rocks either side – I tried to capture this journey the water takes after death defying ride over the cliff edge 😉

3 frame manually blended image
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 8s (mid frame) 2s (the upper falls and bright area) 30s shadows and under rocks 🙂
out front – screw in circular polariser
down below – slippery ass rocks.

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

Silver splatter

the return to Wattamola
Very different conditions from the last time I was here:
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/T6j8Ymj9xxT

Cheers to +O. Sydney for the invite and company, perfect day for some waterfall chasing, this little spot up on the jumping spot was perfect and after seeing +O. Sydney jump about with glee at the composition and falls I had to check it out 🙂

It was getting close to twilight, well as much as you could see with all that cloud and occasional rain shower coming thru 🙂 but the light was divine for a whiles 🙂

3 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 23mm – Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 30 seconds

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

Float on

Even if things get heavy we'll all float on alright

I dared not step out further to isolate that little levitating rock for risk of 1) getting wet 2) sliding on my arse on sharp rocks 🙂

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/9.5
ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 175.3s
out front – LEE Graduated Filter 0.9x ,LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser and… a the magical levitating rock.

Can't see the forest for the trees

paperbarks
What really caught my attention with these trees, common paperbark trees (which are not actually that common 'cause all the bush has been cut down 🙁 ) was the fact on this side of the road there had been a bushfire which had gone thru blackening the trunks, but on the other side were virgin untouched trees, it was a real cool contrast, guess ya had to be there huh 🙂

One thing which was very neat, there was nobody around for miles 🙂 the quiet, the serenity.. simply put.. awesome

9 shot Panorama (vertical composition)
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 17mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/90s seconds
out front – HoyaFilters CPL and lots of dry paperbark trees.