I do sometimes wonder about my sanity when standing in the surf taking long exposures and thinking about star trek…
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 309.3s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and the Lee bigstopper filter
one stands firm and holds the rest at bay
Some days the conditions are just perfect, sure there is often no brilliant sunrise with reds and pinks, but when the stormy weather and threats of rain coming it can make for some really cool light and conditions.
I had spotted this big rock up the beach whilst capturing another smaller pair of rocks getting smashed by the waves. This beach and others nearby are fairly unique in that the sand and rock content is made up of a high percentage of coal (probably why the place is called Coalcliff), hence the sand is often quite dark.
This little spot was also quite pebbly, reminding me of Chinamans beach up on the north coast, the familiar sound of small rocks clattering together as the waves surged and retreated was also pretty cool.
After taking the first shot as the wave pushed past me and sunk my tripod another 2 inches into the pebbly beach I knew straight away this was a sweet rock and the conditions perfect for it. Even straight off the camera back (LCD) the rock lit up like a beacon as the white streaks of the waves raced around the base taking with it sand and pebbles. Its not often that I go wow at a picture off the back of the camera, but this was one of them.
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 2s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.6 Filter all covered with lots of spotty rain drops 🙁
he (or she) who paints the sky
We (and many other first time parents with kids in Kindergarten) have survived the first term of school and its time for some holiday Easter fun! thank goodness.
Well done chaos, that's one term down… only ….47 (i think) left 😉
Every time i see a nice crimson sky or warm orange glow of the sunrise or sunset I am reminded of a time when my daughter (chaos) would always tell me how the Easter Bunny had painted the sky.
Its looking like a bit of a wet weekend, however, be sure to enjoy the long weekend wherever you are.
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter
This was taken after scrambling down the rock face only to find a rather large cave with some strange smells being emitted from it (maybe seals +Kitten KaboodleInc ?)
I had my back against the rock face next to the entrance of the cave half expecting a yowie (or seal i guess in hindsight) to appear at any moment, luckily no yowies 🙂 but there were some very cool rocks, unfortunately the swell was pretty low so there was not much in the way of water movement here, but that little tinge of colour in the sky made up for it I think.
The climb out was not so graceful 😉
2 image blend (i did not use the neutral exposure)
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 13s (neutral) 3s (under) and 25s (over)
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter
Dreamin' of Iceland
Over the years I have always dreamed of visiting Iceland, such a interesting place, did you know they are the only country to import Breastmilk (from Denmark or thereabouts from memory) ? well thats not quite the reason for me wanting to visit but hey, still a fun fact.
I actually now think rather than visiting Iceland I would rather visit somewhere like sweden or Norway, purely based on the fact they seem to be less represented in the photographic tour departments 😉
If I see another image of Gullfloss (or what ever it is) i think I am gonna barf, even if it is brilliant (which most are) 🙂
So on that note, i have dedicated this image to me moving past my desire to visit Iceland (ok there might be the other 10K price tag factor too but….), hence I'll be happy with Sydney for the moment 😉
Now this location is the unique Botany bay, the site of first white invasion in the country (yeah i know that'll rile some people up but relax, its history, deal with it 🙂 ) But what I do like about it, beside being fairly local to me, is there are lots of cool locations, from the airport (for those plane nuts), to mangroves, to Bare Island, to industrial, something for everyone I say 🙂 So.. at the crack of dawn I wandered down and was greeted by a local who said as he jogged away on his morning fitness run;
'ya picked a good one mate, its gonna light up nicely today'
So i found myself a nice little spot with my toes in the water, not really by choice, but I really wanted this composition which meant wet feet 🙂 and.. waited for the promised colour. The dude was not wrong either, it turned out nice and I was outta there as the sun peaked over the horizon and home in time for pancakes with the girls. Nicely played I say 😉
This is a 3 image blend (+Adobe Photoshop ) one for the foreground (+2EV), one for the hot stuff in the middle (-2EV) and one for the rest (0EV)
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 15s (0EV) 4s (-2EV) and 30s (+2EV)
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter
Damn, I have heard that a few times in my youth 😉
I have walked down many paths (not metaphorically now!) at all hours of the day and night and sometimes its nice to come across a path after bush-bashing through the scrub, gives oneself some feeling of comfort that your heading int the right direction 🙂 well at least were someone else has traveled, you know… less chance of shakey snakes etc 🙁
These particular paths I suspect are pretty well worn by fisherman and local walkers, one of which I bumped into quite unexpectedly in the wee hours of the morning, I think she was as surprised as me to see someone else was crazy enough to be out.
I never planned these to be a triptych, however after reviewing the images it seemed like the appropriate means to present them, however I do like the first image and think it could work nicely on its own (wih that cool 'S'' curve and all), however thats for a rainy day processing session 🙂 The trick with triptyches is to get the images to flow and match, which, is easy to say, much harder to do, one day I will go out with the specific purpose for this to make sure the horizons line up and the bits on the left and right of the frames are complimentary, rather then juggling and cropping them after the fact.
Exif love (typical for each image):
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/5s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and some paths 🙂
and there's tiger striped rock hiding behind the bushes out to get you 🙂
view large
I originally started with 5 landscape orientation images stitched together, this got cropped pretty ruthlessly down to what you can see now, which is probably only about 3 or 4 images overlapped 50%
I was not quite sure what composition I wanted when i took the shots, all I knew I wanted to included the element of the tiger rock, the foliage/bushes and the spooky star trek Enterprise shaped island in it 🙂
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 30mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL
don't slip over the leaf or trip on the broken plank
I always love a good cliche jetty shot, couple this with a long exposure and for some reason the scene turns into something out of a dream. Maybe its the vanishing point, maybe its the lack of a boat or lack of a person, or the softness.. i dunno …
To be honest, its pretty well a lazy man's style of shot, not really pushing the envelope at all, but I still love seeing these scenes and they seem to never grow old in my head. I did try and include the leaf to provide a little catch ya attention and really spring that eye back from the vanishing jetty 🙂 .
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 192.2s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and the Lee bigstopper filter
the land of fairies, mushrooms and elves
Chaos has volunteered to don the fairy wings and pose for the fairy and elves scene, so hopefully the the next iteration will include a real life fairy 😉
Exif/setup love:
5 Landscape orientation images stitched together in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 26mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 30s
out front – Hoya Circular Polariser
walk
a mere 160 metres of free falling water which for a drop of water takes only seconds to get to the bottom… me on the other hand….holy slippery ass steps batman! all 600 of them! and when you get to the bottom its like being in a shower anyway, hence turn around and walk right back up.
If i did that everyday I would be as buff as +Vin Diesel Club , well i suppose at the least my legs would like his arms :–/
In all seriousness, its a very nice waterfall, one of the highest in Australia and the best part about it…wait for it .. there is a Cafe at the top which has the best cheesecake…ever..
trust me, after you walk to the bottom and back again then eat a piece of Cheesecake and you will be in heaven 🙂 and they are generous sized ones too, not like the crap you get in sydney where its the size of your little finger, another reason why the country rocks (compared to the city)
Exif Data ('cause i know your hanging out for it 🙂 ):
2 frames (had 3 but only used 2) manually blended together to get the dynamic range.
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/30s
ISO 200
out front – circular polariser (Hoya CPL)
https://blog.avernus.com.au/its-a-long-way-to-the-bottom-if-ya-wanna/
Following on from my first composition (https://blog.avernus.com.au/fair-weather-photographer/) of the these falls this was the second in my limited 5 compositions, I was looking for a panorama image, but just could not quite see the landscape version at this point, I did eventually find a landscape version after this one.
I really liked the rocks and the little ferns and wanted to include this with the classic scene that is Somersby falls, at 16mm I could not get it in, hence I opted for a vertical panorama 🙂
This was 3 portrait orientation images stitched together, strangely enough adobe PS could not stitch them, so I had to use PTGUI, which I really like, however I only use for bracketed panos etc since it adds another step and program to the process. That said, I can almost guarantee if PTGUI can’t stitch it…. and (this is important) provide good perspective control then it just ain’t gonna work 🙂 h/t +PTGui , love your work.
Exif love:
3 vertical shots stitched each as follows:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL
7 and half minutes of smooth
just for wordless Wednesday 🙂
Exif love:
banged this one over the head real hard to remove that blue colour cast inherent to the Lee bigstopper 🙂
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 433.9s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL, Lee Graduated 0.9 Filter and the Lee bigstopper filter
view large to find the yowie, he’s in the blurry bit
There’s this mountain up the coast called Middle brother, that’s the name given by Captain cook anyway, I am sure the Birpai people have another name for it, as story has it, it was named after one of the brothers killed by the witch Widjirriejuggi. Anyway back to the point, its the site of a state forest which has been logged a bit over the years, I suspect its survived moreso than other surrounding state forests due to its limited access and rather hilly terrain.
I have been up there once before and there is place in there called the Bird tree, which by all accounts is one of the largest surviving black butt trees around, the tree it self does not appear that big, but when you look at the volume of wood thats in it (these have very thick trunks) you can see why its probably considered so large, this is also the reason for its desire as a timber product over the years, lots of yield in each tree I guess.
I do digress tho, whilst driving up this mountain, in the wet I saw this awesome stand of relatively young trees 30 or 40 years I guess which were covered in mist and positioned nicely for a pano shot, this is not the shot of them unfortunately 🙂 i drove right past because it was so wet and I was on a bit of deadline, i did however promise myself to get a shot of them or similar on the way home. I did finally get to the Bird tree and I did not take a picture there either… because it was absolutely pouring down rain and I was already soaked cause I had to move a bloody large branch off the road to get through. Did i mention that after looking on the NSW environment site that they say 4wd vehicles in the wet only 🙂 oh well.. i did get out eventually 🙂
Onto the picture, this is off a similar location further inland on a equally slippery ass road, i spotted some very similar gums (same sort of age, quite young really) growing in a gulley and thought yeah I ain’t gonna miss these ones, hence got out took a few shots. It turned out alright, however it was not until I got home I realised one of the frames was slightly blurry from camera movement…bummer, its still alright but it annoys me when that happens – oh well just another excuse to go back 🙂
I should have used ISO 800 just to get that shutter up a bit more..
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 16mm Aperture: f/6.3 and Shutter Speed: 1/40s
ISO 400
out front – no filters, just trees, yowies and mist.
This is the pastel paradise that is….Kurnell and the sydney container port, I am surprised the security guards from the port were not here hassling us about pointing our cameras in the direction of the new container terminal 😉
you can see +Rodney Campbell 's version over here:
https://plus.google.com/102418874970398612673/posts/1PAZqprvmpH
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 60.7s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL and Lee 0.9x Graduated Filter
and tripodless
I do get a lot of questions from people regarding the processing and filters on many images (not only mine), I do understand why since when I standing in the same spot as them and they fire off a few on their smartphone and then the comment comes as why their images are so different, ie you must Photoshop them 😉 or have filters
So here's a recent image , no filters, yes it is processed (albeit minimally and not in photoshop lol), however every image out of a camera has some form of processing – I only found out the other day my smartphone had beauty face turned on.. i was wondering why i had the glamour glow look whenever I took a smartphone selfie 😉
So, its a 3 shot panorama, handheld, no filters (ie they funny things out front) and processed in Capture NX2
View large and check out that detail in the rock.
Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/9 and Shutter Speed: 1/50s
-0.3EV
ISO 200
out front – nada but rocks and bigass cliff