Poled

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Botany Bay

I think I broke every rule here 🙂 central composition… disobeyed rule of thirds … man i am a rebel 😉

Its actually a 2 shot vertical panorama, I wanted that tall slim orientation (a bit like me 😉 ) with alittle beach, some nice turquoise water and the fog/rain clouds overhead…

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 111.1s
ISO 100
Out front – no filters, the storm clouds were my graduated ND and the grey overcast pre sunrise dullness was my ND

The path that time forgot

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There is always a light side and a dark side to life, just like gaffa tape 🙂

These tessellated rocks are just near the ocean pool on the southern end of Whale Beach, its crazy how this stuff forms (geologically), it also reminds me of similar (albeit much larger) ones down near Coalcliff, nonetheless, they do make for interesting patterns and in this case, paths.
I had made it to this point in the morning without getting wet feet and whilst waiting for this 5 minute exposure to finish a sneaky wave came up from behind the rock I was leaning on and left me with a wet shoe, i mean c'mon it was the last shot of the day…. 🙁

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 329.7s
ISO 125
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x, Lee Bigstopper ND filter and Hoya CPL

Whale of a time

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Whale Beach, NSW

Whale beach is tucked away up on the far far reaches of the northern beaches of Sydney, so far north I nearly needed a packed cut lunch 😉

I joined +Rodney Campbell , +Deb Mooney and Ron who had planned a morning session up here.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1.6s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, Hoya CPL

Surfs up

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I am never surprised now to see surfers at the strangest locations, rest assured if there is a wave to be had, its guaranteed that some surfer will sniff it out!

As I was walking out onto Cape Banks I noticed the swell was pretty favorable on Cruwee Cove, which probably does not happen that often since its relatively sheltered from the open ocean, then sure enough the little dots bobby up and down in the whitewash were there…shark food?

That was not the only sight I saw, silly me thought there would not be many people out here on a Monday night :), so on I walked and past, one model shoot on the cliff top, one engagement shoot (i assume), one wedding couple next to the old shipwreck and finally a bunch of enthusiast photographers 🙂 Definitely not the quiet stroll i was thinking of 🙂

Anyway's, out here on the gateway to Botany bay the waves were pumping, after setting myself up on a very large (and high) rock I was surprised to find that the rock I was standing on vibrated quite a bit when the waves smashed it at the base… after which I found another rock to rest my ass on, one which did not shudder everytime a wave came thru!

2 shot pano, it was meant to be a 3 or 4 shot one, but the poor old stitching algorithm in PS struggled with all that white water 🙂

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Hoya CPL

Wheres Wally Fisherman

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Fishing at Snapper Point

I dunno whether the fishing is really any good here, but everytime I head out this way there is always a plethora of boats just off the coast trying their luck.

See if you can spot the rock fisherman, hes pretty small in the frame, and the only other dude (besides me) to be silly to be out at this early hour. 🙂

Exif love:

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 30s

ISO 100

Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Hoya CPL

Chinaman's Beach

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The very most southern point of Chinamans beach and the limit of where you can go unless you have 'authorised access' to enter the bombing range 😉 I have always found these kind of signs quite humorous, since they will often state you must be authorised.. well it does not say I can't authorise my ass over the line :). This place did have a slightly expanded version of.. 'proof shall lie upon him'.. referring to the authorisation.. I did think that if it was a woman you would be sweet, it does not apply 😉

I am sure the lawyers would disagree with me tho…

It was a bland morning (the next was absolutely stella, yes I was in bed for that one!)

but the low tide flows were interesting and I did not mind the warm sunshine from the rising sun it did at the very least create some nice tone in the sky.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f22 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Hoya CPL

Family

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Probably not the best to compare a bunch of poles in the bay with ones family, however when I took it, i had them in mind 😉

On the left we have my wonderful partner in crime, in da middle is chaos and on the right tickles aka mayhem.

I really gotta break this minimalist phase.. every where i look at the moment everything seems.. cluttered 🙂 my new challenge is to portray clutter with a sense of minimalism 😉 now thats a task worth tackling 🙂

Originally a 4 shot panorama, the images cropped down to about 3 landscape orientation images to get the right positioning of the poles within the frame, oh btw, the rule of third gods will be pleased with me 😉

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 48mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
Out front – nada…

+Landscape Photography +Margaret Tompkins +Tony Phillips +Dave Gaylord +Doug Hagadorn +Eric Drumm +Jeff Beddow +David D

Even when things seem hopeless, always persevere

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D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 247.7s ISO 100 Out front - Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Lee Bigstopper

D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 247.7s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Lee Bigstopper

Life throws alot of things at you, some good, some bad.. in the absence of any useful advice, persevere is the only course of action…well thats what I reckon anyway 😉

Cruising down the parade at Sans Souci on the edge of Botany bay things seemed pretty dire from the photographic perspective; the clouds were heavy, rain was falling and sandy shore and picnic areas were littered with rubbish providing that extra incentive to drive on..

However in the face of crap-ville (photographically speaking, Sans Souci is not really that bad 😉 ) I pulled up at the carpark that I had found on google maps just near the ruins of a old sea pool / shark net..damn i love google maps, its like a treasure trove of stuff that when viewed from a dinky little satellite could be either nothing or something, in any case, without the maps i would not be there 🙂

I donned the rain coat and whacked my camera rain cover (code for plastic ziplock bag and rubber band) on and headed out into the rain. The location is actually pretty cool, fitting well with my minimalist phase 🙂 there are a number of old poles which previously held some kind of shark net which just make for awesome subjects.

I forgot my freaking polariser which would have helped a bit in this scene, but, one must deal with these kind things…

Single shot, long exposure, the rain cloud had just passed and engulfed the opening of Botany Bay, i took a test shot, of 3 minutes, in which time a small wave sunk my tripod, so this was the second take on the shot

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 247.7s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.6x and Lee Bigstopper

 

Choice

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As I regularly say to my daughter, you have a number choices which will lead you down different paths… in the case of the waterfall… into the same place, for my daughter 🙂 not always the same place :-/

I did like the twin flows here, there was very little water, but i think it gives the rocks a bit more limelight.. and really its about the journey over the rocks not the end destination right? 🙂 A really nice little set of falls at Mount Wilson NSW, Australia.

2 image shot, bracketed, just to capture those highlights and preserve the shadows, i could have done it with the underexposed version, however sometimes it's nice to be able to process with a full dynamic range there without having to wrangle the shadows too much.. shadows don't like being wrangled very much and tonight.. they deserved a break 😉

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 30s (normal exp) 15s (underexpose)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL

The Ballet Tree

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So its been weeks since I have gotten a chance to get out and spend a bit of time taking some photo's, between work, kids and domestic duties its hard to even fit a Sunrise session in – I have now finally tested the Samyang 14mm for what I originally bought it for.. astro work 🙂

I had a recent job doing a bit of night chopper work, which gave me the opportunity to further scope out this super cool tree that i have seen many times times in the past but never really stopped to take a decent shot. Also +Michael Domaradzki had a cool perspective on it awhile back which triggered the idea for some astro stuff.

So, finally i got a leave pass for a night out and thought.. sweet as, i can go and take a sequence of images and spend a bit of quality time by myself, you know, soul searching/rejuvenation etc. and surely no one else is silly enough to head out in the freezing cold at night at this spot, even though it is in a city of 5 mil….

This is a bit of how it rolled – parked the car and there was no one there it was around 9 ish, got myself setup and taking a few preliminary shots and a young couple turned up :-/ sure.. this is where i would have brought all my potential hot dates lol… anyway happy to share my quiet time and space i suppose 🙂 Shortly there after a bunch of dudes in the their cars rock up and I am like.. yeah great this is gonna be trouble.. but no.. they just rolled out with some torches and freaked out when they saw someone else out, ie me 🙂 …and my torch was much bigger 😉 lol. so my night out with a bit solitude was not so solitary… oh well.

I did not quite nail the right position with the earths axis of rotation here, i was trying to get it directly behind the tree, the tree itself is actually quite small and the camera is positioned only a few metres from it, its probably a 3 metre tree which has been sculptured by the sea breeze. The light at the bottom right is the industrial lights over Kurnell on the edge of Botany Bay.

My original scope out image : https://plus.google.com/+GerardBlacklock/posts/KKZ3uh7TgDE

Exif / shot love:
184 shots over the space of 2 hours.
Images are stacked in +Adobe Photoshop just using the lighten mode, the foreground/black image needed a bit of work to ensure it looked sensible with the background.
The side lighting is kindly provided by the SLSA Rescue base 🙂 could not have done it better myself, no additional torch lighting needed 🙂
D750 coupled with Samyang 14mm f2.8 @ 14mm Aperture: f/3.2 and Shutter Speed: 50.5 seconds
ISO 500
out front – a very bendy tree and some cool stars

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-ballet-tree/

Stick family

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So my eldest daughter after lookign t the pictuire, says to me…
'hey dad, that looks like our family, the big one is you and the little ones are me, tickles and mum' 🙂

Even though she certainly lives up to her nickname 'chaos' with just about every day its a soul searching test of my patience, i still sit down at the end of the day after shes gone to bed and reflect quietly on the fact that I am lucky to be part of her life and a privilege to know..

way to go chaos… 🙂

Single shot, long exposure.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14 and Shutter Speed: 186s
ISO 100
Out front – and Hoya CPL and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x

Greener Pastures

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I wonder whether these dairy cows ever have the desire to check out whats on the other side of the fence? what you can't see in this image is there is nothing between me and this paddock of cows besides a cattle grid, which I only recently learned about how they actually work. Cows have a great field of view with those eyes on each side of their big heads, however the disadvantage of this 360 degree view is that their binocular and depth vision is pretty crap, hence when they see a cattle grid, its not that they cannot balance their dainty udders across, its more they get the perception thats its very uneven due to the high contrast in light…

so waddayaknow.. you learn something new every day 😉

anyways onto the picture, some cows really enjoying some very lush grass..

5 shot pano, all landscape orientation.

Oxford Falls

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The best light for taking images of waterfalls is typically overcast and early morning or late afternoon, the soft light from the clouds and the less top down light create a much more dramatically lit scene than one at say close to midday and with the sun streaming down unabated. That said, and the last time I checked I can't control the weather.. (yet 🙂 ), hence sometimes you have to run with what nature throws you.

This was one such time, the sun was high, the shadows harsh, I had already promised myself to come back in more favorable conditions but I thought I would give it a shot anyways..all things considered I reckon it turned out alright. Its a 3 frame panorama with extra frame bracketed, the image was first blended together and layered which then allowed me to subsequently mask and select what shadows / highlights I wanted. This helped reduce the effect of the harsh conditions..

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 8s (normal exposure) 1s (underexposure) and 30s (over exposure)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya 4stop ND and Hoya CPL

Single

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Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 19mm Aperture: f9 and Shutter Speed: 303.4s
ISO 100
Out front – and Hoya CPL and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the LEE bigstopper.