Swimming with the Clouds

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life in the blue
After another fairly cloudless sunrise with very little colour, it was best to continue the series of blue long exposures, this particular image was taken on the way home from a Sunrise session at Newport where +Rodney Campbell had turned me into a lumberjack to adjust the composition of some overly large size bits of wood 😉
The surf was fairly pumping by this time and it was well and truly high tide.

3 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 55mm – Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 68 seconds
out front – LEE 0.9 Graduated Filter and Hoya CPL.

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

Clive for the win

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Australian Parliament in quadtych glory
View large to find clive.. i mean the dude cleaning the pond..
Politics is actually quite interesting to watch now that old Clive is invloved, just imagine if Gina was in the house too, being a political reporter would be a barrel of laughs!

Nicely done Clive, Canberra stays cold for at least another week before we can start heating things up:)

Its been awhile since I have squeezed out a quadtych, this one had next to zero thought and never were any of the shots intended as a triptych or anything, hence the lack of flow – however I do like the colour mishmash that is created between the frames.

Basically four shots over the space of 30 odd minutes, form the left is a predawn to the right where the sun is just about to peek over.

4 shot Portrait orientation quadtych..
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ varying mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: less than 1 second
out front – LEE 0.6 Graduated Filter

Pony Rides

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Here is another rant from me – pony rides are great, kids who don't have access to the country and horse etc absolutely love them, its great to go to a fair or markets and be able to get a pony ride (for the kids not me:) ), now, how much should a pony ride cost ya? well, i think its probably not even the actual cost more the value for money, this particular Pony ride cost me 15 bucks , now thats a bit steep I reckon, but hey.. for a good ride and to see a smile on my girls face makes it worth while..but…and a big but..the ride lasted for a couple of minutes at best..one lap of the shed, if it had been two laps and 5 minutes, i would be hey thats cool.. but one lap sheesh man…I barely had time to snap a few shots..
Ok.. to give them the benefit of the doubt it could have been busy time or they did not have many ponies..but nope, not busy and lots of friendly ponies parked ready to roll. :-/

All that said.. they probably have public insurance which takes up $13.95 of each ride 🙁 and on the flip side its probably very expensive to run a riding school.

and..chaos did enjoy it, your worth it beautiful girl.

(ponies identity hidden to protect the innocent;) )

Holy softness and the stick of death

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welcome to the cotton-wool ball

I will be back for you little stick out in the ocean, i'll be back for my selfie 🙂 and its gonna be epic (unless i get washed off, then not so epic, just tragic 🙂 ) I need soem pole dancing moves, anyone know any good pole dancers that could give me some tips 😉

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 256.5s
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.

The Stuttering Trail

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don't stare into the vortex
Damn I hate equipment malfunctions, well it was probably a operator error, however it does feell better to blame it on the equipment…on the topic on things that crap me off, writing a post on gplus and to only have it disappear by pressing the backspace button a few times or something, very irritating, you would think that google in therr wisdom (like in gmail or docs) would have an auto save function when writing a 21 billion word post, cause it gets a bit annoying having to rewrite it… 😉 oh also while I am at it, how about a input box that your can resize ? its like typing on your mobile phone when your actually in front of a bazillion inch screen lol.
rant end.

Star Trails are actually pretty easy to create, simply find a nice dark spot out on a moonless night and plonk ya camera down on a tripod. Point it somewhere in the vicinity of south and take a few shots every now and then, best to leave it and come back a few hours later, or better still come back the next and hope your camera is still there and some clown has not pinched it 😉

Adobe PS CC makes it pretty easy to create the image from the 14.5 billion images you took while the camera was sitting out waiting to be stolen, CC now has the Statistics function built in, simply load your images up in file>scripts>statistics and using the maximum option zap them together for some trail fun.
Alternatively just use the load files into stack option and zap(blend) them together using the lighten mode, don't forget to whack in your nice foreground shot.

The foregound shot can simply be a shot taken at dusk to get the scene nicely illuminated or you can get you torch out for some funky light painting. But, and a big but, if you do light paint (and this is very important and error that many make) be sure to do it off the camera position (at least a dozen steps away) and get low, this will help create texture in the scene (see here https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/d5z6TCzuzRj) and give your scene depth.

techie stuff
D7000 coupled with a pre sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 40 seconds
ISO: 1250
out front – absolutely nothing buts lots of wind and plenty of sand.
to the left – white coloured LED torch.

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – 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.

Natural Death

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After looking at the remains of many of the trees in this part of the Stockton Dunes, it did dawn on me that there was at some time human intervention on alot of the trees, most trees had been sawn off – maybe that's why they banned camping on the dunes? people cutting down the nearest tree for some firewood 🙂

4 frame (non-bracketed) panorama 🙂
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 13mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.5s
out front – absolutely nothing but fresh air

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.

Climate Change

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view large in great parliament panoramic glory 😉
Ya'all will be relieved to know that I have completely sussed out why the Australian Government is winding back all the renewable targets and ensuring some form of climate change happens, in the form of global warming 🙂
You see Canberra, which is where the larger chunks of… our political members spend a large portion of time is..well, lets say it bluntly f@$#ing cold.. like ball hugging, white finger tear inducing cold, hence with a little extra global warming in a few years Canberra with be a relatively pleasant place to visit (well on a climate point of view anyway).

Anyway enough giggles, hopefully it will also give the AFP something better to do than follow around photographers at Parliament house, like shit man.. yeah I am gonna photograph the parliament with a tripod, DSLR and filters at dawn when there is absolutely no one else around for some suspicious reason 😉 damn, i mean google have already street viewed the shit out the place, I wonder if the AFP followed the google van around.? 🙂 anyway rantage over, it was fun having my chaperone there to keep me company 🙂

4 shot panorama view.
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 45mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 3 seconds
out front – LEE 0.6 Graduated Filter

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.

Cygnets

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the ugly duckling

I dunno how many times I have read the childrens fable about the ugly duckling that was found by a regular duck mum and raised but finally found his way home, but I do know its a lovely story and hence I could pass up the opportunity for a few shots of these beautiful birds – and also 'cause chaos insisted on several images, most of which were taken by her 🙂

The lighted Gerry Tree

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After the storm

I would never of guessed that less than a hour after this shot was taken https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/iNhPV4DsepV
that sky could turn up another display of colour and twilight brilliance.

With alittle helping hand from an additional light source to give the some depth and light we have quite a nice scene

D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 165 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing but fresh air and plenty of sand.
to the left and subsequently the right right – white coloured LED torch.

Spiral vs Spiral

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The natural vs the unatural
The old steelwool is getting pretty cliche nowadays, however its still fun to bring it out to jazz up a landscape. It was only a afterthought to bring along the gear and pack a ciggy lighter, which by the way really should have gotten lost, that darn thing with the safety lock means you could not burn down a gas station, i think i wore off all my skin on my thumb just trying to get a freakin' spark.

Well there was no chance of burning nuttin' down out there, with the recent rain, like 1 hour before hand and teh well.. serious lack of fuel the only thing burning was my thumb.
Although, if +Rodney Campbell had his way i reckon he woulda burnt the tree down 😉
Anyway, enough whingeing, here ya have it, the spiraling galaxy vs the spiraling of three nutters out on a freezing winters night in the middle of some sandy sand dunes.

Single frame – +Gerard Blacklock on da wool, +Rodney Campbell on the colours and +Suren J on the white fill.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/6.7 and Shutter Speed: 376.8s
out front – nada, yep nothing
to the left and right was Suren and in the tree was Rod.

btw +Rodney Campbell this would have been a perfect place for star trails – the centre of rootation is in the perfect spot in this frame..

oh well, have to go back now 🙂

The gerry tree

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Finally after years of flying over this spot I found this tree perched on the side of sandy sand dune on Stockton Beach, thanks to +Rodney Campbell and +Suren J for the company, it would have been a miserable walk in and out by myself 🙂 and I hope ya's had fun.

I spotted a number of trees a few years back while flogging over the beach into Williamtown in the back of a Lear35 after a recent flight earlier this year in the front of a smash-8 i had a nice clear view of the dunes and spotted, what I have now dubbed, the "gerry tree". It did look quite different from up there, however it met my criteria for lonely and interesting, thus the quest for a photo of it started 🙂

+Rodney Campbell, +Suren J and myself spent quite sometime photographing the tree from various angles and using multiple techniques (see one of rods version here: https://plus.google.com/102418874970398612673/posts/7pZCMjNudd4)
one of the shots was a result of some funky light painting on the tree while at high isos to capture the sweet milkyway view and hence the first of a few images of the gerry tree

D7000 with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 20 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing but fresh air and plenty of sand.
to the right – blue coloured LED torch.

Death by a slow moving sand invasion

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much like what is probably gonna happen to my camera and lens 🙂
Sand, not so glorious sand.. and camera stuff, just just don't mix very well. Nonetheless, out at Stockton there are some wonderful spots where you can venture into the dunes and find many interesting compositions and subject matter. +Suren J and +Rodney Campbell joined me in search of a long lost tree perched on the side of dune which I spotted several months ago whilst flying over the dunes. Whilst a 4wd would be handy and probably much quicker, it was good to walk in, sometimes limiting oneself can help achieve the best in a location and photography session.

This shot was taken only a few hundred metres from the tree, which is fairly distinct, (more images of this later), the rain was just setting in here and it was a mad dash for cover after it was completed.

Single frame- even at 3 seconds the clouds do have some motion blur which conveys the speed at which teh clouds were moving in.
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 3 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing but fresh air and plenty of sand.

The frozen world below

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Along the Zenith Line
Continuing a fine tradition of cloudless sunrise's with very little colour means one must work a bit harder to achieve that shot that gets a few star rating.
What I really liked about this spot was that at the time the rock behind me created a shadow across the gulley and it meant I could turn that foreground into some a bit more interesting – with a long exposure of course 🙂
I pulled the graduated filter all the way down to the shadow line to preserve the highlights in the bright sun drenched rock and also the hill beyond, I then exposed the frame during some of the rare swells which washed up over the finger rock creating some nice blue and surreal colours.
This was in the same train of thought as a recent image from kurnell (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/5GBrbgqpp2n)

Single frame – glad to say all the dust bunnies are gone sine the last long exposure at Kurnell.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 184.8s
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.

gerry vs storm

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Storm 1, gerry 0

I don't mind the odd selfie here and there, to mix it up alittle I made this one a pano, this was quickly bashed while scurring over some dunes to the next spot and being chased by some very menacing clouds, which did eventually bring some rain. What made things pretty funky was the sunset glow which was peeking out from below the rain clouds creating a very eerie glow which can be seen in the centre of the frame.

About 7 minutes after this shot it rained 🙁

7 frame (non-bracketed) panorama 🙂
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 20mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/2 seconds
out front – absolutely nothing but fresh air and plenty of sand.
It was a bit out of focus, the focus point was on the foreground very close to the camera (from the last shot) this coupled with the fact the clouds moved very fast meant it all, except for the rock solid model 😉 was a bit soft.

Cheers for the company +Rodney Campbell and +Suren J

Pink vs Blue vs the Lichen

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living on the edge
View large in full res goodness.
This was as close as I dared to get to the edge – its bizarre, i fly in large, small and weird aircraft, and never have a issue, but put me 20 metres on up on a cliff and something makes me lean the other way with a vengeance 🙂

This was taken during the height of the pastel display in the sky, these tones are often found on those cloudless morning when you look in the opposite direction to where the sun rises.

Two frames stitched together, mainly to get just a fraction more height – this is a good example where not to use a CPL, since it resulted in some discontinuity in the colour in the sky.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 15s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 and screw in circular polariser