Jervis Bay Vs Botany Bay

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Jervis Bay vs Botany Bay - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Artist license is something every tog uses, whether it simply be the way a image is framed or the way it is processed, images can and do lie 🙂 – this one is no exception, this spot on the East side of Botany bay is probably the only spot I have seen that is not strewn with washed up bottles, rubbish and general crap, just the other morning I was standing in a spot several kilometers to the south of here and all around me on the shoreline was all manner of rubbish – and that was in the Nature Reserve section of the Bay 🙂 So, this is not really a true representation of the true nature of Botany Bay.

However, I have chosen to try and portray this particular composition as something one would see at Jervis bay, a place which I wish I could visit more often 🙂 For those not familiar with Jervis Bay, it does apparently have some of the white-ist sand in Aussie land and whilst a bit full of old naval junk it is pretty clean 😉

So here you have it, Botany Bay, from Kurnell, the city lights and new shipping terminal just in sight on the horizon.

4 shot landscape orientation panorama.
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55 mm f2.8 @ 17mm Aperture: f/8 Shutter 2 seconds
LEE Graduated Filter out front.

panorama

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.

Darkes Forest Waterfall

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The multiple falls over the various rock levels made for a perfect panorama composition, the sun was in full force but limited to lighting up the upper falls.

This is but a small portion of the falls, there is basically a whole extra layer above this, each with its unique and very lush set of ferns.

Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 16mm – Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: multiple ( 3 brackets)
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.

Shooting Sunsets with Chaos

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Dunbogan
Normally for me photography is a opportunity to gain some solice, some time to myself, however this is often not possible with the family and two young girls. Hence I have taken to asking chaos (the older one) if she would like to come along and help, well I don't need to ask her twice.. 🙂

Soooo.. i think I can call it a success, time well spent with chaos and i did get a few shots I like out of it, which leads me to the next point – I did not actually press the shutter button for this panorama, chaos had control of the wireless remote and pressed it for the 12 shot bracketed pano 🙂 so technically she probably holds part of the copyright 🙂

It was enjoyable, if not alittle frustrating 🙂 instructions were given to press the shutter remote when I was ready and said so.. well she took immense enjoyment and plenty of giggles at pressing the shutter release midway me setting the shot up or swivelling the camera for the next bracket which left me with lots and lots of shots of random compositions 🙂

Anyway, this pano did work out ok, thanks for the laughs chaos.

Techie data:
12 shot bracketed panorama (4 sets of 3 images)
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 19mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 0.5s, 1/8s & 2s
out front – LEE Graduated filter (0.9)

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.

Midday Seascapes – Coalcliff

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Coalcliff, NSW, Australia, part of the great region just south of Sydney. Coalcliff is called that for the literal meaning, the cliffs here oozing with coal, you can see the layers of coals in the cliffs and quite often when snorkelling/diving down here there is lots of it on the seabed.

Continuing my quest for some reasonable hour seascapes, i found this little gulley exposed by the low tide, the water trickling over the rock is actually coming from behind me on the other side of the headland/rockshelf, the waves were pumping and sending large amounts of water across the shelf to run off at this spot, by the time it got here is was nothing but a little trickle , thankfully 🙂

This image was taken shortly after the one in this post and with the same settings, simply recomposed and focused.:
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/WkZK7GJ1aku

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 132.9s
out front – LEE Bigstopper, 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.

Waterfall Fantasy

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View large, you won't regret it, money back guarantee 🙂
The walk in and climb to the bottom of the falls was not so much as a fantasy as a nightmare 🙂

Madden Falls, definitely not a fair weather photographer location, which btw was wanted this particular day, a nice easy walk and a sweet set of falls. Well, the walk to the top of the falls was easy, boardwalk even!, however it dumped you at a lookout possie at the top of the falls which was a pretty ugly, thus some bush bashing was required.
Armed with a gripless pair of wet sneakers and a rough plan of where to go to get to the bottom, I slid, scrambled, climbed down a tree and not so gracefully arrived at the bottom of the falls, 30 minutes later 🙂

It was however, worth it, what a great set of falls tucked away with no one around, well not down here anyway.

This was the last shot of the day and the moment the first bit of cloud swept across, prior to that it was nothing but blue sky. Rarely do i get conditions like this for water shots, however I really love that long exposure sky/cloud coupled with a waterfall. The wind was blowing pretty hard up top and provided the perfect amount of cloud movement to generate the sweep of clouds. I did have to clone out one tree up top which was nothing but a blurry mess.

Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm – Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 61.9s
out front -Hoya screw in circular polariser and B+W screw in neutral density filter (10 stops).

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.

Who needs Sunrise?

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Dunno why i spend all this time getting up at the crack of dawn to capture sunrise..should just do it at noon, such a more respectable hour and you can actually see where your going ! 😉

Just throw in a LEE bigstopper and a few clouds and voilà seascape sorted.

Damn it was windy on this rock shelf! the only reason I pointed in this direction since it was so damn windy and I needed to shield the camera from the wind with my body and keep the sea spray off the filters.

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 132.9s
out front – LEE Bigstopper, 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.

Queenslake

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In celebration of those expensive royals visiting our great country I thought I would tribute a image to them, appropriately located at Queens lake
Heres to you baby george…

techie love:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 85.5s
out front – LEE Bigstopper, 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 google tree

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I tracked this little old mangrove tree from a aerial shot from +Google Maps , it was a gamble trying to find it and see if it would make a half decent image, at first I missed it all together, however on the walk back found it (things look pretty different from up there 🙂 ) – I really wanted to see it at high tide, but timing did not allow me to be there – next time.

Often I will spend a few minutes browsing maps and checking out locations to find interesting nooks and crannies., good on ya +Google Maps 2 thumbs up, I dunno what i would do without google maps now.

Towra Nature Reserve.
techie love:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 @ Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 158.2s
out front – LEE Bigstopper, LEE graduated filter 0.9 and screw in circular polariser

Sydney's Moon Scape – Towra

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Somebody drained all the water outta botany Bay this morning 🙂 That was the lowest tide I have seen in quite a while.
Made for quite the challenge for finding some interesting foreground action, especially considering more than a few minutes in any one spot meant your shoes were being swallowed by the mangrove..

Towra Nature Reserve.
techie love:
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 279.8s
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.

Between the Trees

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This afternoon there was absolutely beautiful light coupled with low lying clouds being funneled up the ravine (i think I can safely call it that – pretty serious depth and very narrow). I had traveled to these falls (Carrington) to try and find a nice location with the fall back option of just taking a cliche shot of the falls, which usually the common lookouts provide, noting that this was a first time I had been here.

The steady wind was flowing around the trees and the mist coming through the scene sporadically, the light last a few minutes and I tried a different composition to try and capture the light, mist and surrounding foliage.

3 shot landscape orientation panorama.
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55 mm f2.8 @ 17mm Aperture: f/13 Shutter 1 seconds
Hoya screw in circular polariser out front.

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.

Adelina Falls -Lawson

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So once again, its a friday night and one hands rocking the tickles to sleep which means it must be time for some more image processing, I mean, really what else can i do 😉

I took several images from Adelina Falls in Lawson and I spent quite some time walking around the falls (which incidentally are not very large) to try and find that sweet composition. I even got up around the trees off to the right of this frame to try and encapsulate the entirety of the falls, however it was not to be and as such I opted to chop off the upper part of the falls and work with the lower part at a particular angle where the light created a glow over the veil of water coming down.

This image was a series of vertical portrait orientation shots stitched together, i did actually end up cropping pretty heavily to achieve the composition I wanted, however given the large number of frames this was not a problem (from a resolution POV anyway).

I have been saving this one up trying to work out the best way to process it and capture the rocks on the left and the delicate water flow. A interesting side note, here is another good example of the polariser in action, not so much in a positive sense though. The ferns on the left are nicely 'polarised' and the reflected light removed, however the ferns on the right are not and as such come across more white and washed out..

Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 8s, 1.5s & 30s
out front -Hoya screw in circular polariser and neutral density filter (3 stops).

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.

Weeping rock Pano

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Up close and personal with the Weeping Rock Falls in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia.

Where has this location been all my life 😉 ? what a great little set of falls, I could spend all day here, some many great little compositions and angles, from detail to wide angle it has it all and… the big and.. its out in nature and part of a really sweet walk at leura.

Techie data:
4 shot (landscape orientation) panorama.
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm Aperture: f/8 Shutter 20 seconds. – Hoya screw in circular polariser and neutral density filter (3 stops)

Upper Cataract Falls – the new ice-skating practice rink ;)

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Mental note for next time – old sneakers with no grip are not the most suitable footwear for traversing a mossy slippery set of falls such as these, how I got to this spot without going arse over tits is beyond me 🙂 I think booties with nails in the bottom would be more useful.

Nonetheless the beautiful deep colour in the rocks and the texture and veins made it worthwhile, not to mention the veil of wispy water flowing over the edge.

Techie data:
4 shot (landscape orientation) panorama.
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm Aperture: f/13 Shutter 8, 2 & 30 seconds. – Hoya screw in circular polariser and neutral density filter (3 stops)

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.

Lower Cataract Falls

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A difficult little set of falls to shoot, the time of day and the light made things a bit tricky and as such I opted for a really close tight panorama view to try and convey the scene with its many over hanging ferns, branches and water seemingly dropping from the bright clouded sky.

I could almost reach out and touch the fern on the right, a bracketed panorama to achieve the desired dynamic range and encapsulate the pool and surrounds.

Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm Aperture: f/8 Shutter 8, 2 & 30 seconds. The bright frame was only used to bring a fraction of detail to that really shadowed overhang to the side of the falls
out front – Hoya screw in circular polariser and neutral density filter (3 stops)

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 Tempe Jetty

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Sydney Park, NSW

or whats left of it 🙂 Well thats my name for it, there is probably some other official symbolic name representing something or rather but stuffed if I know what it is 🙂 There is a sign saying its a swan breeding ground though.. ?! I was hoping for a swan up on one of the poles, but i think i might be asking alittle too much of the poor things 🙂