Just a little house with a view

Posted on by

ya gotta view this large.. its a crime not too

Its got this cool patch of grass in the front, which given the right cold conditions and a fresh layer of frost would make one very awesome ride 🙂

There quite a number of angles on this building in the Canberra National Aboretum, one of which is across the highway which means you need a pretty long lens to get the shot, even down the bottom of the hill in the actual Aboretum you still need at least 200mm i reckon.

This is with the 300mm lens and is a panorama of 6 landscape orientation shots.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 300mm f4 @ 300mm Aperture: f6.3 and Shutter Speed: 1/80s
ISO 100
Out front – bigass hill, some cool building and hill worth sliding down!

Two Worlds

Posted on by

collide

There is a song about that 😉
This was the last shot of the day (well for sunrise anyways 🙂 ) The rain had momentarily stopped and the sun was making another grab for freedom from the clouds.

I stumbled about the rocks looking for that cool foreground as the rays of light shone down like some biblical scene, i suppose i did pray for some something decent but all it threw me was a bunch seaweed and some neptune necklaces 🙁 coulda been worse I suppose…

Here is a cool example of the polariser working, whilst its pretty well straight into the sun (polarisation is strongest at 90 degrees to the direction of the sun) the polariser let me get a clear glimpse into the world that lay at my toes..

Exif love ('cause I know your just hanging for it 🙂 )
2 shots, one for the sky and one for the foreground, really easy blend with the straight horizon.
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 1.6s (for the sky) and 3 s for the foreground
ISO 100

Gap

Posted on by

hello little sunrise, fancy seeing you here

There was a brief moment this morning when it actually felt like sunrise, for a few fast minutes the sun crept out from behind the clouds and said hello.. then disappeared … and then it rained… again.

I sat in this spot trying to get the right composition and avoid getting rained on for quite some time, finally I worked out that I needed to be in the water to get the right perspective, so I battled a river of seaweed and the shifting stands and all in all it was rather fortuitous since all that time stuffing around the sun finally came out.

Note, seaweed around a tripod leg can create some mad vibrations in the tripod when under some strong current 😉

Exif love:
3 shot panorama (landscape orientation)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 10s
ISO 100

On the Edge

Posted on by

the road that is 🙂

I had this composition in my head before I went to this spot, however with most ideas in my head it looked nothing like it actually ended up.
The more I look at it, more I dislike it, i see all the dust spots, the stitching errors, the inconsistent colour smoothness..the noise..

I will chalk this image down to one of those ones which needed alot of beating over the head to get to the point where it looks like what you wanted it to look like… like the image in my head, but even then its not there. FYI, the image in my head was a large expanse of ocean with the road and cliff teetering on the edge of the frame.

Its a 5 shot panorama image at the height of the colour of the morning, which needed alittle help to really shine through 🙂

#‎seacliff‬ ‪#‎coalcliff‬

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 48mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 18s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and LEE GND (0.9x)

The Landing Pad

Posted on by

tgif

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

Swirl

Posted on by

I did plan to hit this place for a completely different reason, there is a cool channel near here which during the December month lines up with the sunrise. I did get it last year, but was not overly happy with the result… its amazing that a whole year has gone past since then, damn it went fast! anyways, so I thought I would go back, however rather than capture it with a bunch of clouds and very little sunrise, I really want to get a nice sunrise with some cool colour, hence, it will have to wait.. probably until this time next year lol.

On the upside, whilst it was rainy and cloudy the tide was fairly low (and coming in) which meant this nearby rockshelf had quite nice conditions with the waves spilling over the shelf. The scale is a bit deceptive, its actually quite larger than it looks, if you look carefully you can see a crazy fisherman stick out there on the left where they hang onto whilst catching breakfast 😉

This particular image is a 3 shot panorama, 3 landscape orientation images at 21mm, it took a bit of time to get the same wave action in each frame such that when it stitched it did not end up with funny join lines. Its not perfect but still somewhat acceptable.

Exif love:
3 shot panorama
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 21mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 1.6s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and LEE GND (0.6x)

Pinlight of hope

Posted on by

its a bit like that small amount of hope in the back of your head when sitting in the dentists chair that it 'aint gonna hurt… but it then gets squashed…;) damn I hate going to the dentist 😉

The sun made a brief appearance on this particular morning before succumbing to the thick blanket of clouds.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 15s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL

Some rock on the north coast

Posted on by

Its so cool when you go out to a location for the first time and you find all these kind of weird and unique geological gems, i do start to think about how and why they formed this way but then the time scales boggle me and my head hurts, I then finally just enjoy it. This is a rock on a little secluded beach up on the north coast where you are pretty well guaranteed to be the only person around – but you do have to share it with the snakes and spiders 🙂

4 shot panorama (landscape orientation)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 24mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL & GND

Horseshoe Falls

Posted on by

I have a image of the same falls from way back in 2013, but its taken from behind the waterfall, I would link it here, but google+ has just become craptastic and you cannot find your freakin' lunch let alone a post from a few years back. Flickr on the other hand makes it easy, so here's a link to it on there 🙂 https://flic.kr/p/eYyVAD

Anyway, the relatively minor amount of water coming over the falls meant that I could get right up close and personal with the falls, it was a bit of a challenge to capture the full dynamic range, even with the overcast day there was plenty of shadow under the ledge. This shot is a 4 shot panorama with each frame bracketed, the picture then manually blended to maintain the shadows.

4 shot (landscape orientation) panorama

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 13s (normal exp) 1.6s (under exp) 30s (over exp)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL & ND

Edith Falls

Posted on by

I needed to get my photography fix on the weekend, waterfalls have been on the mind with all the great rainfall we have had lately, however this rain was followed up with some crazy hot days and pretty well dried everything out 😉

Anyway, not to be deterred, i punched on and picked some random locations from googlemaps, one of which was Edith Falls at Woodford, I think i must have taken the long route after parking the car, however it was mostly on fire trails which made for a walk which was nice change from collecting spiderwebs on my face 🙂 Edith Falls is pretty small, there was very little water flowing over it, however this kinda worked to my advantage (well thats the story I am sticking to) since I could get up real close without getting my toes wet.

It was fairly late in the afternoon and quite overcast, the falls are buried deep under vegetation with only the trickle of water exposed which means you get this nicely selective light applied to the falls. This shot gives the impression that the area is more spacious then it really is, i was actually crouched under the branch you can see on the right things were pretty tight, however the panorama option just opened the frame up and let the two bigass rocks gently lead you right into the falls.

4 shot (landscape orientation) panorama

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

The tail end of the Rainbow Serpent

Posted on by

the green end at that

So the story has it, the rainbow serpent lived in waterholes and was responsible for shaping and naming significant places in Australia. The thing I find interesting is that its a story that is consistent, with variations across all parts of aboriginal cultural, i also remember as a kid reading a few different versions of the tale. One such one was where the serpent ate lotsa people and while he slept (after eating so many peeps) he slept and the others came up and slit his belly and everyone got out :).. the serpent got cranky after that 🙁

weirded out yet ?

There is much more to it (Rainbow serpent story) than my lame 2 sentences, however the partially exposed rock at low tide with the green moss reminded me of the Rainbow serpent, hence the title.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 4s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and Hoya CPL

The Hidden Weeding Wedding

Posted on by

yep, up there, thats a bride and groom in the throes of….

passion..whilst being photographed 😉 well maybe not quite passion…

Hats off to the couple and the keen bean photographer's, its a fair old walk down here to the cape and the last time I wore high heels (ssshh.. ! 🙂 ) i can imagine that it would have been hell for the bride 🙂

It was a quick grab shot as I was heading back up towards the golf course, I turned around and the photographer had perched them up on the edge with clear instructions to stand very still 🙂 .. which was kind of them, meant they were not blurry in this 1.3s exposure.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 1.3s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Hoya CPL