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.
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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Little Bay, NSW where the photographers are keen and the fisherman even more so, it is great to see them doing the right thing with life jackets.
Luckily I cleaned my filters, lens and sensor the night before
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
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
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.
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
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.
It started off as a 18 shot (6 vertical frames, each bracketed) panorama and got seriously whittled down. Realistically it could have been done with 3 landscape shots, but hey, wheres the fun in that 😉
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)
Cool little jetty that I have driven past a few times on the way home from up the coast 🙂
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 143s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee bigstopper, Lee 0.9x graduated filter and Hoya Circular Polariser
looking for the first ride outta here
I hope ya'all had a great weekend, where ever you are on the planet 🙂
D750 coupled with Samyang 14mm f2.8 @ 14mm Aperture: f/3.2 and Shutter Speed: 48.3 seconds
107 files bumped and ground together
ISO 100
out front – intergalactic bus
That there is a lonely old rock with some cool rock weed and a neat water flow. I have really missed taking pictures of the ocean, you can turn even the most boring old rock into something nice with a bit of water and colour.
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 f/4@ 16mm Aperture: f16
Shutter Speed: 1.3s
ISO: 100
Out Front: Lee Graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.
There has a been a whole bunch of discussion as of late regarding what is photography, specifically in regard to processing or photo manipulation – you just need to search AIPPA and the name of a famous australian landscape photographer to get the gist of whats going on.
Its been great to see these discussions and also get a insight into what people think, not to see what side people are on, if thats even possible since to have sides there must be a line, but more to understand what is the drive behind them when they generate images.
It has also been interesting from a introspective view trying to understand what I enjoy about photography and drives me to continue doing it, for me its the process of being out there and taking the image and also the interpretation of that image through the processing, from a long exposure, to panoramic to a… dare I say it.. tiny planet or whatever, whatever I can come up with 🙂 the final result, the finished image which gets dumped on social media, is but a mere 5% of the whole process and reason. That said its awesome for a having a timeline and collection of images since I could not organise or find any image on my hard drive beyond a few months 😉
so here we have a picture from Geiranger, Norway, its a wide angle panorama, using 4 frames to get the wide angle, each frame was bracketed to give 3 images, (one over exposed, one normally exposed and one under exposed) these were then automatically aligned and then manually blended (to preserve the bright areas and keep the dark areas) – is it reality? dunno, what if the mountains were tweaked to make them bigger ? everyone has a line when it comes to photography and art, simply because it might not be the same as your line does not make it right or wrong, just different – and just like opinions, this is just one 🙂
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8
Shutter Speed: 0.8s, 1/5s and 3s
ISO: 100
The conditions on this particular morning were quite interesting and photogenic, the sun really held out for ages and consequently i ended up with 14 million images from the morning… i did only edit a couple so I reckon this folder deserves alittle more love 🙂
I quite like this one – similar to a previous one, however just two shots stitched into a panorama, the second shot really only accounts for about 1/5th of the total image, however it is on the right hand side and gives the sun and its rays a bit of room to breathe.
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 f/4@ 16mm Aperture: f18
Shutter Speed: 1.6s
ISO: 100
Out Front: Lee Graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.