Mount Solitary Hike.

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Mount Solitary Hike.

I have wanted to do this hike for quite some years but it all never seemed to line up between back burning, land slides and closures and it has been recently closed for aerial pest control (and still landslide) but as luck would have it the eastern side access to Mount Solitary was opened again on the 1st November. So I gave it a crack, whilst walking from the eastern side is certainly not my preferred option, sometimes you just gotta take what you can get.

I think I really need to sum it up in a few words…and if you see the track profile it will give you a understanding on this…basically its a 22km walk which varies from f-ing hard downhill, to f-ing hard uphill walking and not much in between, couple this with one very fundamental ball tearer.. once you get to the top of this plateau its still not flat or a very easy walk, in fact its more up and down with shrub that seems to be out to catch you at every turn. To top that off I was cycling thru bush patches filled with cicadas which makes you feel your entering to some kind of torture chamber !

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Location #451

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Location #451 which is better than any roadhouse on the Pacific Highway to stop.

Bulahdelah is a nice town to stop in, however a step up is the Myall lakes national park, its a bit out of the way, but if your not in the hurry you can spend a couple of hours here and enjoy the beach, dunes and a lake to boot 🙂

Sunrise.

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Its pretty awesome when you can roll outta your sleeping bag 35 minutes before sunrise is due to come up and stumble 5 mins to a epic tree.

Just a glimpse of the sun as dawn hit before the clouds rolled in and covered it all up… then rolled away.. then covered it up again..a perpetual cycle of this particular day.

5 shot panorama to really show this snowgum’s size. D750+24-70mm @ 27mm f/8 1/100s.

Kosciuszko National Park

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South Rams Head

Its been a few years since I have gotten down for a snow camp session, last year was an absolute write-off. So when my sister (Lorena Blacklock) said she wanted to go this year and it could double as a birthday present how could I refuse 🙂

I have been wanting to get back to this area on the slopes of South Rams head, and given its a fairly mild snow shoe hike up it ended up being perfect. The weather forecast was looking ok, also conveniently timed around the new moon so plenty of black night for astro if the opportunity presented itself and of course a location close to some stunning snow gums and the peak of South Rams head. Everytime i go to the NPWS office at Jindy, the lady asks me the same question, have you seen the weather forecast ? its like a trick question to vet those unsuspecting back country folk 😉 The wind forecast was not much chop, on the friday the place had been issued with a severe wind warning – thats no fun, but it was calming down with 25-40km/h winds, still could well be enough to make things miserable if one got stuck in that with -7C.

We made it up to the treeline and it was pretty gusty, and not consistent direction gusts either, like the ones that swing around 180degrees to mess with your head as you try and find a nice camp spot 🙂 We did find a pretty nice spot that seemed fairly sheltered and with a nice view (that is pretty important:) ) It was snowing a bit and a bit windy still and the spot was on a fairly decent slope – enough that when I put my camera down and it went for slide half way down the hill 🙂 it still works so no new camera for me 🙁

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Trondheim

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This is for the peeps on the northern half of the planet… where, apparently, its a bit cold at the moment.. I gotta say, it was a beautiful day when we flew into Trondheim, shorts and tee-shirt weather and a town with a whole lot of history and buildings on the water without a straight line between them 😉

8 shot panorama
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 1/320s
ISO: 100
Out front: cool buildings

Manly Pipes

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Boom!!.. double bunger pipes

I am surprised that these outflow pipes still exist here, given that Manly is one the top tourist spots of Sydney I would have thought they would have moved or found another solution for them… oh well, it gives the local photographers something I guess

D750 coupled with Nikkor16-35 f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 218s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and Lee Bigstopper

Botany Bay

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the underside

The many breakwalls placed in Botany bay to try and prevent sand shift and loss create a strange view but also do create neat photo ops and also handy fishing outcrops for those so interested in catching fish 🙂

At low tide you can see all the cool little sea creatures that have also turned up to make the basalt boulder wall their home, unfortunately its also slippery as a freshly greased bearing so one must take care not to slip over.

This image is a kind of panorama, i took one image for the foreground at an exposure to get the detail in the rocks and another exposure captured for the sky in particular to maintain the highlights on the clouds. I was too lazy to bother bracketing each one 🙂 and the post processing was as simple as stitching the two together and some manual blending to get the exposure correct between the images.

D750 coupled with Nikkor16-35 f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1/3s and 6s (or thereabouts) for the foreground
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and Hoya CPL.

Buried

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A bit like the 80' music that I have been listening to whilst editing the image, which is 3 long exposure shots stitched together into a panoramic format. 80's music is just something which will never be repeated (probably for the best) but has also, i reckon anyway, produced some the most awesome music, film clips and of course hair! I just finished watching 'Countdown' by Europe and man, they should be advertising shampoo and conditioner! The hair flicks, the makeup and leather pants just scream the 80's 🙂 I did follow this up with Alice Cooper's 'Poison'.. hit after hit which the teeny boppers of today just can't compete with 🙂
Don't get me started on Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi 🙂 Don't stress though, I did get to some quality rock ballads by U2 🙂

Anyways, here is Manly's (Sydney NSW) outflow pipes, I have always wanted to grab a few pictures of these, I had a particular image in my head which this one kinda ended up as but was hoping for a bit more cloud action.

It was a bit tricky to get these to stitch without getting some funky bending distortion, I even used a nodal rail to help, next time I will take several steps back and use the 24-70 to get more of a 'flatter' panoramic rather than a wide angle.
D750 coupled with Nikkor16-35 f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 144.2s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and Lee Bigstopper

Stars

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Colourful ones at that. The thought of sitting out in the dark, like really dark, like no moon dark and tripping over crabs kinda dark.. in spots away from people is not always on the top of my list of things to do – except for the away from people thing 🙂 however it is growing on me, maybe this year I will make more of an effort to get out and capture more the great night sky we have in this part of the world.

The weather was great, pleasantly warm and no clouds and great for the beach or pumping yabbies down the river, yep my arms are still sore :). But all this cloud free weather is not so great for colourful sunsets or sunrise however at the right time of the month, which it was, the moon is a late riser and its a perfect time to get out and see the stars. Chinamans beach is the north most accessible beach from the bombing range which extends for 20 kms or so before you reach Yamba and Iluka, This means looking south guarantees very little light pollution apart from the odd fishing trawler out to sea or the occasional fa/18 sortie on some training session 😉 the latter is pretty hard to miss and luckily fairly rare 🙂 I do also find it interesting that the whole range is located in the area called Bundjalung National Park but you cant get into most of it 🙂

Onto the stars, its amazing to see how much the colour the stars have and star trails are a great way to bring this out, by slightly underexposing the sky and stars means you retain the colour, in this case only the brightest star was over exposed, ie blinking on the highlights display.

This set of trail images is made up of about 30 images each with a shutter speed of 86 seconds @f2.8 (14mm) and ISO 400 with a separate single image for the foreground. The foreground image is only 30 seconds and was lit using a LED torch. The trail images are merged via layers in Photoshop by simply using 'lighten' as the blend mode.

I would have gone for a few hours more, but the promise of 6am wake up call from tickles and wallaby that besides scaring the shit outta me was taking way too much interest in me whilst munching the grass nearby.

Sand Pumping Jetty

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4 or so shots merged into a panorama, using the Leofoto Panoramic Kit, this was just using the panning clamp and the rail since it was in the landscape orientation. This setup is actually really nice and lightweight and providing the pano is level about the horizon ie, not tilted up or down then it works fine.

D750 coupled with Nikkor17-35 f2.8 @ 17mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 20s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x)