Rod on the edge

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sneaky sunrise shots
+Rodney Campbell working the edge at Kurnell and this was what he was looking at:
https://plus.google.com/102418874970398612673/posts/BnjQ5rbnuXA
Thanks for the company +Rodney Campbell and we will have to head back and do that potter point area with all those nice rock – remember low tide is a must there.

Single frame shot
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.5s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9 and screw in circular polariser

Chef with Style

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Whilst cooking with kids does result in lots of mess, excessive intake of sugar from over licking the spoon and bowl it is still a great activity and usually out the end pops a tasty cake 🙂

We have recently taken to improving the style of our chef outfit which is no linger complete without 1) a nice hair clip and 2) a grin to match.

Way to go Chaos 🙂 great pose and sweet smile, I can never stay cranky at you for long (for sticking your finger in the mixture and taste testing every 30 seconds).

Life on the Edge

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a pastel window into the world below and the world up on the cliffs
View large or go home 😉
The pod of whales (and the elusive seals which I only heard but never saw) did not hang around to complete the panoramic scene 😉

Just about every time I have visited Kurnell and and walked along these cliffs I have spotted a whale or two, maybe its just that I only come here in the winter months 🙂 nonetheless, if you are in sydney, Kurnell is a great spot to whale watch, not only is the actual clifftop scenery awesome the whales typically come quite close to the cliffs, as they did this morning, close enough that I could hear there blow holes going, rest assured its along way down too.

Still in the forefront of my mind was the French guy (Fabien Ardoin)
who fell to his death a few weeks back whilst taking a photo in the Royal National Park (south of here), always a timely reminder to take care near heights, particularly the very crumbly sandstone that Sydney is built on. RIP buddy.

3 frame (non-bracketed) panorama 🙂
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 17mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 6 seconds
out front – LEE 0.9 Graduated filter and Screw in HOYA circular polariser

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 horn of Kurnell

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the faces of the cliffs
Apparently, according to chaos, if you tilt your head the right way there is a chicken in there 😉 I can see a eagle with a beard, but it is late 😉

The cliffs that adorn the sydney coastline are always full of surprises and unique subjects for a photographer and it is this that draws me back every time. The pools of water are always a great subject and when coupled with predawn light can really come alive.

One would never guess that only a few kilometres away are some serious industrial plants, the Sydney Desalination plant (aka we need a nuke plant to run it 😉 ) and of course the Kurnell refinery. I am not sure whether its absolutely amazing that these two environments co-exist or just down right depressing.

2 frame Manual Blend.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11.5 mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 152.1s (foreground) and 22.3 seconds (mid-sky)
out front – LEE 0.9 Graduated filter and Screw in HOYA circular polariser

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

Man Rays

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and the path travelled
(truth be told I was looking at the whales 20 metres below 😉 )
A follow-on from my angelic halo 😉
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/bGYy5uJE1L8
Somewhere along the Kurnell coast line with the first of the whales heading north to the warmer waters for some sweet loving.

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11 mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 3seconds
out front – LEE 0.9 Graduated filter and Screw in HOYA circular polariser

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

Sweetness and light

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Wisps of souls lost and the path to..
Last shot of the morning, no clouds, mid morning and the sun was climbing – another example of transforming the seascape into something that the human eye just cannot observe.

I really wanted a isolated rock in the ocean, however things were getting a bit hectic down there on the green, hence I had to make do with what I had.

This is Kurnell, adjacent to the outflow pipes 😉

Single frame – i think i better clean my sensor, when the clone tool starts putting in dust spots you know its getting a bit crowded in there 🙂
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/19 and Shutter Speed: 182.4s
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.

History

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Some falls in Mt Field National Park, Tasmania
I was browsing though some of +Matt Glastonbury's great imagery of Tasmania, in particular this one https://plus.google.com/100022806374728014874/posts/LAw9K8vV3L2 when it jogged my memory of trip down there several years ago.

This was back when I was pretty clueless on how to use a camera but one thing I did know what to do was take pano's and vertical ones featured every now and then, more often than not they would not stitch correctly 🙁 however, step forward a few years and I now have the knowledge (and software) to beat them over the head a bit more to achieve what I originally saw 🙂

This image was simply two images stitched vertically, originally never even processed, much like quite a few images that sit in my library unfortunately.

Anyway, i remember this trip well, I had just bought myself a new lens (the Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8) and a circular Polarizer to go with it – both of which I still use and abuse regularly 🙂 In hindsight a UWA lens would have been more helpful, but hey thats life.

2 frame Vertical Panorama.
Exif/setup data:
D80 (yep thats right..my trusty old D80) coupled with the Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @17mm
Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 8 seconds for the top part and 10 seconds for the bottom part
Out front : HOYA screw in circular polariser
Probably lucky it was taken in RAW, i mixed and matched during this trip 🙂

Pool of Reflection

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4 shot (bracketed) panorama view processed in by +Nik Collection by Google
Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 12mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: multiple ( 3 brackets) 4, 1 & 15 seconds
out front -Hoya screw in circular polariser and LEE Graduated filter (ND) 0.90

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.

Deer Pool

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View Large and fill that 16:9 screen with what its meant to be filled with – panorama love 🙂 – if you can find a deer in there you win a prize 😉
Its very interesting story how deer ended up in the Royal National Park and their subsequent survival, decline and then expansion over the last 100 odd years. I would never had though it that difficult to eradicate the relatively small number from what is, really a pretty small park – I guess logistics, process and bureaucracy have played an important role here.

Anyway, whatever the case with the deer, there is still one place named after them, that is, Deer Pool, a nice serene pool with a small waterfall and beach, btw that waterfall looks like it would make a mad waterslide, pity about the big rock at the bottom to take your tailbone out 😉

It was quite a difficult set of falls to shoot for me, the size of the falls within the frame is quite small and I needed to zoom in quite a bit to really fill the frame, as such, when all else fails, pano it 🙂

3 shot panorama view.
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 45mm – Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: multiple ( 3 brackets) – however I did only end up using one image – the lighting was diffused and even enough that a single raw file had all the required dynamic range needed (for me)
out front -Hoya screw in circular polariser and Hoya ND8 Neutral Density 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.

Lead me to

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After nearly getting rick-rolled by a freak wave I was determined to wait for the next one so i could nail a sweet waterfall off this little rock face.. well, i wait… and waited…and waited, in the end the sea won, i gave up and took what I had and tried something else 😉

The waves did (well one of them) breach the rock face and flow over the edge into the channel which was very cool, nicely shaped a 'S' – well, next time i will get it.

On another side note – RIP for the French bloke (Fabien Ardoin) who died just north of here (cheese rock) the other week, very sad to see a young man with lots of potential have his life cut short.

As with all shots this morning, taken under the protection of a umbrella, with a barrel load of water on the filters and camera.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 1.5s
out front – a very wet 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.

Smoothness is

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Little Marley on Saturday morning 😉

I love the way a long exposure transforms a scene, it is the greatest tool to a tog for simplifying a seascape. Not only can it transform a raging sea into a mellow bed of fluff it can also create mad effects with the sky (not so much in this image)

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 134.6s
out front – wet and miserable 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.

Little Marley

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Wet feet, unpredictable waves and deer

yep, you read that correctly, deer, whole herd of them in fact – I have been the to the Royal National Park a number of times and never seen a deer, however on this morning I saw a whole bunch of them, what does that have to do with this photo? nothing:) they where on the other side of the lagoon keeping a very safe distance from me 😉 well out of photographic reach.

A little channel leading down into the relatively sheltered beach that is Little Marley, a great spot and only a a relatively short walk (4.3 kms) from the carpark. This morning with the Focus group, or should a say a small fraction thereof, was a excellent reccy trip to really check the place out. The place is littered with excellent seascape compositions and you could go back a dozen times and visit a different portion of the seaside. I guess thats a pretty true statement for any of the main features in the Royal National Park.

Single frame, under the protection of a umbrella, sheesh that makes composing hard 😉 had a mess of spray on the filters anyway 🙁
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/3 and Shutter Speed: 2s
out front – a very wet 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.

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.