Drop Lizard

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Its funny when you get those moments when your alone in the bush and all is still and then you notice something which causes you to go 'holy crap batman' (well thats the PG version anyway). It was funny afterwards, but I almost walked face first into this dude who was cruising on a low lying branch at my head height, I think we were equally surprised 🙂
So, after several expletives I pulled the camera out and like a true star, he sat there for a few minutes while I could get a shot of him.. cheers cheeky lizard…

Exif love:
4 landscape orientation frames stitched together
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO 1000
EV -0.3
out front – drop lizard 😉

The push back

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After a pretty stunning landing where the Captain dropped this aircraft on the centreline, literally a nosewheel either side of the centreline, (thats pretty good btw 🙂 ) It was a wait of several minutes to make sure the brakes were not gonna go up in a puff of smoke 😉 – they had used pretty heavy braking to avoid the use of thrust reversers. Finally it was then time for the push back into the temporary resting spot, I guess they will drop the good engines out of it and then put in some time X ones and then push it into its final resting place.

3 Landscape orientation images stitched together

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 290mm Aperture: f/7.1 and Shutter Speed: 1/800s
ISO 640
out front – 747-400

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-push-back/

Time in the making

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I love the texture in the leaves and undergrowth when its wet, its time in the making with fresh leaves falling on old partially decomposed leaves and sticks. All the while a little fungi makes hay while the sun shines, so to speak, and grips hold of damp prime leaf and reaches for the sun…

Exif/setup:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.6s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL and bunch of leaves in various states of decay..

https://blog.avernus.com.au/time-in-the-making/

Industrial Nation

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I initially drove up this hill and saw this view in the rear view mirror and thought, that looks mad with the layers of residential housing then the steel works and finally the hills.

I then spent 15 minutes trying to get the right view without powerlines and trees etc in the way, even so, I had to clone out a bunch of power lines in the way.. 🙁

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 340mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000s
ISO 200

https://blog.avernus.com.au/industrial-nation/

Retirement Roll

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the retirement home for planes… including VH-OJA
view large and check out all those people up there!

So I thought, how a little sunday drive down to see some little plane get parked at Wollongong Airport, can't be that bad surely 😉 Well it ain't little I suppose, prolly one of the largest aircraft to drop into Illawarra Airport (also referred to as Wollongong Airport ).

So i ditched the sneaky sunday sunrise session in favour of seeing VH-OJA plonk down at Wollongong, on that note the sunrise was of course damn fine with some sweet pinks etc…Cruising down the M1 at some stupid hour it took me awhile to realise that there was a crapload of traffic.. maybe it's all those Mardi gras revelers heading home back to Wollongong I thought, surely its not people heading down to see this 747-400 take its final flight..

But, I should not be surprised.. driving past the airfield in the dark it was very apparent there were thousands of peeps out to watch this plane land – I almost kept driving down to Bombo after seeing all those people on the Northern side of the airfield, but I did have a plan to hit the southern side for that shot of the jumbo thundering down the runway on its final touchdown, so i battled on and parked around near the sports centre on the southern side, its was packed already and it was only 6:15am! and wow it only got more packed from then on.. and you know what that means.. traffic jam on the way out, thankfully I spied the coffee van and made note to hit that whilst everyone made their exodus.

I tracked down a spot on the fence line, which actually was pretty good and prepared, like many others for the wait, some had been here since 5 am when the gates opened, others from 3am up on the other side…crazy stuff..

+Flightradar24 still functioned with the 14 billion people all searching for QF7474 (VH-OJA) and we (me and the 14 billion other people with cameras to watch it) tracked its takeoff from YSSY and its very very short flight…like 17 minutes short to the northern approach of runway 16 (16/34). It was all over in the space of a few minutes and the sound of camera shutters drowned out any sound of the +Qantas 747-400 coming to a halt on the runway 😉 It did look pretty good on the runway though, the dust it kicked up and runway overhang really made for a great sight, not to mention all those people up there on the northern side… they were on buildings, trucks, hanging off the fence… everywhere man!

On an aside, the Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 is a surprisingly nice lens, very sharp for the range and nice contrast, it takes a bit to get used to the fact that the zoom ring rotates in the opposite way to most nikkors… but 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 @ 500mm (courtesy of +Rodney Campbell) Aperture: f/7.1 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000s
ISO 800
out front – 747-400, lots of people and one dinky, dirty little runway

https://blog.avernus.com.au/retirement-roll/

Vertical

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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

 

Smooth

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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

 

The Hungry Caterpillar

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1 juicy leaf, 2 tart plums, 3 juicy strawberries…

I took this shot for tickles, we have a book called the hungry caterpillar, of which I am sure there are a few variations, ie counting etc but this one we have which belonged to Chaos, counts to 5 and then turns into a beautiful butterfly. It also has a little puppet where you can put your finger in to make the the little puppet caterpillar wiggle around (which tickles loves)… in my case its my little finger since the authors clearly did think about catering for those with larger hands ;( c'mon people equal equality 😉 lol..

I saw this caterpillar going gangbusters on this leaf and in the space of several minutes he had nailed the entire leaf and was heading for a second helping! I thought it a great supplement to our hungry caterpillar story at home and i am sure it will become a useful midnight settling tool 🙂

Exif love:
single shot
D750 coupled with 55mm f2.8 micro @ 55mm Aperture: f/22 and Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO 800
Up top: SB600 flash unit
out front – a fat grub and a leaf

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-hungry-caterpillar/

The forest

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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.

 

Its a giant….tadpole..:)

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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

https://blog.avernus.com.au/its-a-giant-tadpole/

Disappointed

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its a long walk home when the location is crap and the sunrise even crappy-er 😉

Some-days it just ain't on and on this day it was certainly not on, however on the bright side whilst walking back +Rodney Campbell noticed this curvy path which begged to be photographed, all we need now is a real model (no offense Rod) and some sweet light

Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 70-200mm f2.8 @ 200mm (thanks +Cameron Fong ) Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 1/400s
-0.3EV
ISO 500

Filterless

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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

https://blog.avernus.com.au/filterless/

Cows with mist

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view large and find that cow 😉

I had just emerged from some pretty thick forest on a very wet and muddy road, i had not passed another car for the last half an hour but was instead greeted by a bunch of dairy cows across the way. It really was quite a away 🙂 this shot was taken with the 300mm lens and consisted of about 16 portrait orientation shots, it was cropped pretty heavily from there but still is pretty enormous, the fog made it quite challenging to achieve a good autofocus and the pressure was on since the rain was getting pretty heavy.

Due to the rain I took only one set of images for this scene and jumped back in the car and almost got bogged since I had pulled over into a pretty soft edge. Thankfully the old falcon did not let me down, with mud flying and wheels spinning and a fist in the air I gave those cows a farewell 😉 well they really did not care i guess…but makes for a better story 😉

Exif/setup love:
16 portrait orientation images stitched and cropped
D750 coupled with 300mm f4 @ 300mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/640s
ISO 250
Out the front, mist, mud, cows and rolling hills

 

The Difference Time Makes…

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Frankly, I don’t think I see images any better now than the day I got my first DSLR 🙂

This is a great example, I visited the Ellenborough Falls back in 2007 (Dec) back when I had just got my first fresh D80 DSLR, i was shooting jpegs then 🙂 I had also just gotten my first tripod (the same one I have now, albeit, corroded and with significantly less paint). I took this shot and it was one of the first.. actually along with a picture of the falls the first ever canvas prints, one is still in Chaos’s room and the other at my mums..

So, I went back recently, i delibrately did not look at my previous images since I really wanted to see what I woudl come up with :)..the result, compositionally pretty well the same, however the newer gear, the processing knowledge and other little tricks I think have helped, so I am probably incorrect in saying I am not any better now, well I certainly hope I am 🙂

onto the images.

Tallowood Tree 2007 (Dec)

Ellenborough Falls - Tallowood 2007 (c) Gerard Blacklock

Ellenborough Falls – Tallowood 2007
(c) Gerard Blacklock

Tallowood Tree 2015 (Feb)

 

Ellenborough Falls - Tallowood 2015 (c) Gerard Blacklock

Ellenborough Falls – Tallowood 2015
(c) Gerard Blacklock

Rooted

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enjoy the freshness

I think its a Tallowood tree, I saw this tree many many years ago and the only thing that has changed…is the moss, its got a little less than before…oh there was also some more bush litter (branches leaves etc) but really… all those years could have just been a few days for all I know. As cliche as it may sound, time really does stand still in forests like this, time in the scale of humans anyway (unless they cut it down)

I took a number shots of this tree, i bracketed this particular frame thinking that I may need to blend the images together to achieve the full dynamic range, however the D750 did a pretty good job with a single shot, and this particular moment had some nice filtered light thru the trees and a small amount of fog rolling through the undergrowth..

I did get a few strange stares from the bushwalkers as I stood in a mozzie infested creek amongst the forest tree litter, but for once, my mozzie repellant worked… i only got bitten about 100 times rather than a million 😉

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
out front – Hoya CPL….

https://blog.avernus.com.au/rooted/