Can't see the forest for the trees

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I walked past this standing of trees, stopped and walked back and forth about 5 times – such a awesome view with the super contrasting whites of the tree trunks with the greens and earths of the surrounds, a bit hard to portray the real view, but I think the panoramic option helps. I needed a pair of sunnies it was soo white, even tho it was overcast 🙂

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 @ 44mm Aperture: f9 and Shutter Speed: 1/30s
ISO: 400
out front: a Hoya CPL and a bunch of funny white trees 🙂

Terrace Falls and Salote Pool

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Salote Pool - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Salote Pool – (c) Gerard Blacklock

Its been a few years since I have done this walk down to Terrace Falls, its a great little spot and quite accessible (especially when you have busted foot) without too many people, unlike some spots further up towards wennie falls and katoomba. Not much water running, however all the pools down to Picnic point have absolutely crystal clear water and lots of freshwater crayfish.

I would say view this large and zoom in, however google in their infinite wisdom have removed the ability to zoom in the newer version of google plus. So, at the very least, view it full screen 🙂

This image is an absolute bundle of shots, 21 shot panorama, its basically a 7 frame (portrait orientation) image with each frame bracketed (under, normal and over)
Now, one might wonder, why not just take a shot at 16mm and get it all in one frame ? yes you can do that, however one significant disadvantage (ignoring the resolution thing) is that when in wide angle things in distance look really small, hence in this case the small falls would have been represented as tiny tiny falls 🙂 Thats a big thing for panos, it does change the perspective alot (and for the better).
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 62mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 10s for normal exp, 1.3s for the underexposed one and 30 sec for the over exposed, this is the one that gets the detail in those dark rock cavities 🙂
ISO: 100
out front: Hoya CPL

The Landing Pad

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Photography for me is often a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, in any given scene (no matter how crap it looks 🙂 ) there are a bunch of pieces ready to be assembled into some kind of coherent scene that is hopefully pleasing to the eye.

Now if were as simple as the average jigsaw puzzle where you can spread all the bits over the table and work out what goes where then it would be all too easy. Nature and scenes like this image mean you are constrained by where you can physically get to, where you can set your tripod up (without it falling and smashing everything 😉 – thats bad ) and finally the limitations on your gear, ie lens focal range etc.

There is one other point to make, unlike a jigsaw puzzle, real life scenes can have infinite number of solutions and consequently infinite final framings, I guess this is one of the driving factors for me and something which keeps me at photography, bit like golf 😉 . A whole bunch of people can go to the same spot with different gear and all come away with a different 'jigsaw' solution, some better than others (depending on your perspective).

This particular scene is buried down below Horseshoe Falls and is a great example, there is a bunch of really cool elements (rocks, falls, vegetation, ponds etc) which you can include in your scene/frame, but its how you assembly these items together which determines if the final image is alright and pleasing to the eye. I quite like this composition (at the moment anyway) and I took a long time moving around and adjusting the position slightly to get what I felt was the right combination of bits. I positioned the at big rock in front so that it dominated the scene (hence the landing pad title), the falls and flow of water down to the little pond in the foreground were positioned so it has that nice 'S' curve to lure the viewer up and flow thru the image, the little bit of brightness up the top was included to subtly pull the eyes up and away from the dominant rock in the foreground help them travel thru the image. The lines on the foreground rocks all lead in towards the centre of the image, again leaving that poor viewer with nothing but the option of getting drawn in 🙂

The image is created using three exposures, the over exposed and under exposed frames were only needed for a few small sections of the image (the top bright bit and the super dark areas (under the falls and rocks).

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 5s (normal exp) 1/1.6s (under exp) 30s (over exp)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL

Tasty Crayfish

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what a feed 😉

Well something had a very nice dinner on this freshwater crayfish, you gotta zoom in a bit to see it in all its… well gutted detail, but its there and its a pretty big one at that.

I knew there was freshwater crayfish in the mountains, but geez, never knew they could get this big.. this one, which had been cleaned out completely (except for the claw), was at least the length of my shoe.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL & ND