Sylvia Falls

Posted on by

Valley of the Waters

I really love this walk, I love it even more early in the morning, like just after the crack of dawn, its a very popular walk and thats a great thing for sure, however sometimes you just want a bit of space and not run into someone every 10 steps, hence thats where the early morning start comes in.

I trekked down to these falls shortly after sunrise, passing Empress falls on the way and passed two people, one was a fairly elderly lady coming up the valley, which meant she had probably walked all the way round from wennie falls – which is not a stroll in the park, the second was a chap about my age (thats young btw 😉 ) who was jogging, yes, you read that right.. jogging down the walk. I did not really know what to say to him, so 'gday mate' was about it, with a bit of disbelief admiration 🙂

Anyway's, the Sylvia Falls is a very popular photographic spot too, super easy to compose and most people go for the vertical, i did too when I first visited 🙂 however this time, and its kinda a phase I am going thru, i want to capture a pano of the falls, giving a bit of texture and context to the scene, showing the falls (which are very cool on the black rocks ), the drop to the right and also the sharp incline on the left where the path is cut in.

Strangely enough panoramas are actually quite easy to compose and in my opinion much more forgiving than say the standard 6:4 format, I say this since the brain reads from left to right (in most languages anyway), thus the image taker has already the advantage that the viewer will natural flow thru image when looking at it, that said, its also very easy in panos to create that dreaded 'big empty space' so getting right up close and personal can often work much better – see the next image from this same spot for an example…

There is one key flaw in this image and I blame photoshop 🙂 I cloned out / content aware filled the hand rail on the left, but by geez it did a rubbish job and I did not notice until the very end, I really should go back and fix that…

Exif love:
7 landscape orientation shots stitched together in PS
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 28mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 5s to 13s (note I changed the shutter speed as i took them to control teh exposure as I went around)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL.

The Endless Road

Posted on by

I had to really beat this one over the head to get it to stitch properly, its 5 shots with quite a lot of overlap, but no matter i did the road lines would just not line up in the stitch, so I had to resort to some clone sorcery to bring them back together 🙂

Exif love:
5 landscape orientation images stitched in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s
ISO 100
Out front – a long ass road 🙂

Cropped Sky

Posted on by

so clouds.. you guys hang around here much?

A different take on a new favourite tree of mine, it did start off as quite a large vertical panorama, however crop at the very bottom of the frame just did not quite sit well with me. Hence rather than a horizon at the middle it ended up as a classic 1/3rd composition…

ya gotta view it large too 🙂

Exif love:
a whole bunch of vertical frames stitched together…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 50mm Aperture: f11 and Shutter Speed: 1/180s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and a lonely tree.

Harvested

Posted on by
Harvested - (c) Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f9 and Shutter Speed: 1/125s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and a lonely tree.

this is how my brain feels nowadays 🙂

I love a good lone tree buried in a agricultural crop of some kind… but I am thinking the average factory farm operator not so much 🙂 I think having a lone tree in the middle of their paddock does not really serve much purpose other than to cause pain when sowing and harvesting.

If I ever meet a farmer I will happily point out that having that lone tree may be a pain in the ass, but jeez they make cool photographic subjects 😉 think of the artistic merit 🙂

I wold love to come back top this spot for sunrise or sunset, rather than midday, but one must make do with what one is presented with 🙂

Exif love:
a whole bunch of frames stitched together…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f9 and Shutter Speed: 1/125s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and a lonely tree.

Beans

Posted on by
Beans - (c) Gerard Blacklock D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/100s ISO 100

Beans – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/100s
ISO 100

Ironically, I did the shopping the other day and needed to get some beans but was bitterly disappointed at my large supermarket monopoly store when they had none left, I could have just picked a few from this field 😉

So, if you ever wanted to know what mass produced beans look like? well wonder no more, ’cause here they are, rows and rows and rows of beans which seemed to stretch endlessly into the hills.

This shot is from 5 vertical frame shots stitched together, luckily for me a cloud had just come over the field and blanketed the beanscape with some less harsh sun that was beaming down on me minutes before..

Exif love:
a whole bunch of vertical frames stitched together…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/100s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and lotsa of beans

Cecil Plains

Posted on by
This is the Hard Stuff - (c) Gerard Blacklock D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s ISO 100

This is the Hard Stuff – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s
ISO 100

this is where the hard stuff is made

Exif love:
a whole bunch of frames stitched together…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and some dodgy shack and lots of croppy stuff….prolly sorghum

Jetty

Posted on by

long

I learnt two things from a nice old bloke who I met at the very end of this jetty. 1) you can catch some awesome prawns here smile emoticon (but don't tell anyone else 🙂 ) 2) They shipped houses over on barges to get to the suburb of 'Long Jetty' – no prizes for the reason why they called it Long Jetty.
Its always great to meet a local, they can really give a insight into a place that can't be had from reading stuff online or in tourist literature. The other interesting point he made was regarding all the weeds in the water, which extended out past the end of this jetty, apparently these are only fairly recent (that could be 20 years given the age of this bloke 😉 ) and are a result of increased nutrients in the water from surrounding suburbs.

I gotta say, these jetty's (and this one is one of the shorter ones) are really really long and looking at them from someone who has never been there before they seem kinda strange, however given that they were typically built back in the 1940's era when there was no access road to area and there was no bridge to the north it makes sense since everything was barged/boated in. It's a cool legacy to have and I bet all the local hobby fishermen love these jettys to go out and fish on.

Now that I know where this spot is now, I'll be sure to visit again, its actually not far off the freeway and makes for a great spot to spot on the way back from up the coast.

Exif love:
5 landscape orientation frames frames stitched together
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 35mm Aperture: f11 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and LEE Graduated filter 0.9x

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

Storm Runner Triptych

Posted on by

The basic concept of a triptych is to link or tell a story with the images, for me, i started with triptychs mainly since I could never decide on what image I liked out of a series, this has morphed into triptychs that mostly follow the landscape or, more likely a series of images of the kids which lays out what happened 🙂

Sometimes, and only sometimes, do a get a few images that are related and when combined create a story or a link.

I reckon this is one such example, now whilst the viewer may not know the 3 images are all from the same location but basically lookign in different directions, this fact is not really important to anyone else but me. In this image the flow of the land lines up between the images to form a landscape, the seat and the building create points of interest and raise question marks for the viewer, the middle image throws in the human context and links the two.

Taken at Sydney Park, one of the City of Sydney Councils success stories, lets hope the west connex interchange that they are putting next door does not stuff it up 🙂

3 images
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO 400
Out front – umbrella, rain and lclouds

It's a long way to the top

Posted on by

if ya want a rest

3 shot panorama, all birds where there, some got stitched out in the processing, but I could not work out how to get them back 🙂

The things we do for a bit of exercise, its rather amazing how many people will happily trot for a run in the run, thunder and lightning 🙂

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO 400
Out front – umbrella, rain and lightning.

Surfs up

Posted on by

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

Row MM

Posted on by

Row MM Stadium - (c) 2015 Gerard Blacklock

just bring your binoculars 🙂

Allianz Stadium, or whatever its gonna be renamed to tomorrow has some very nice curves and features, if you can keep it all together!

I have always wanted to try and get some shots within a stadium when its empty, particularly a symmetrical panorama. I learnt a few important lessons with this image and a few other panos I took, 1) technique has to be spot on in terms of camera rotation and position between shots 2) proper pano head would make life a crapload easier 3) Photoshop gets very confused when trying to straighten these kind of wide angle panorama’s 😉

This is a 3 shot (bracketed) pano using the Samyang 14mm f2.8, a real gem, damn sharp (even if you miss the focus like i did here) and then stitched and smashed over the head in photoshop to get the horizon kinda straight and the footy goalposts kinda vertical.

Taken as part of Stadium Stomp 2015 with O. Sydney

Techie love:
D750 coupled with Samyang 14mm f2.8 @ 14mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.6s (normal exp) 1/5s (under exposed) 13s (over exp)
ISO 100
out front – a very bendy Allianz stadium