Selfie Stick

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I have been meaning to get back to this location for quite sometime, under the right conditions of course. It was only when I looked at the date when I went here last time did I realise that its been 1 year and 6 days, sheesh, time goes waay too fast!

This is the shot from last time:
https://goo.gl/photos/kB9FgQpzSZovLR2v7
and I vowed to go back and plant myself next to that fisherman's stick of death 😉

+Kitten KaboodleInc , this one is for you, no Britney boobies and pole dancing was a little difficult 'cause it was so fing cold.

A h/t goes out to +Phottix, i have the Aion wireless remote which at the time seemed expensive, however its usefulness and also its convenience has by far paid for itself. The only pain in the rear thing is when I stick it in my pocket and accidentally bump it I end up with all these random shots at the end of the day ;). Here i triggered the shot from about 20 odd metres away..

So, it was around dawn, i watched the waves for a while, picked my interval and made a dash for the stick, dodging the incoming wave, barnacles, slippery ass rocks and the golf ball from the nearby golf course.. ..yes whoever that ball belonged, your a freaking terrible shot, give it away… 😉

and there it is, single shot, no composite funny-buggers here, no added waves and no photochopping my ass in 😉

Stick of death -> check.

Exif love:
single image
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 35mm Aperture: f11 and Shutter Speed: 2s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

https://blog.avernus.com.au/selfie-stick/

Black Fish

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These fairly elusive fish certainly attract the keen fishermen and one big bonus is that you don't need to carry around stinky bait. On the flipside ya gotta get your ass out in places like this, noting the abundance of 'cabbage' on the rock, which the blackfish or luderick feed on.

It was just before dawn when this bunch of dudes passed me on the rock shelf, politely saying hello 🙂 one bloke was wearing shorts and a hoodie which I thought was nuts, even I was not wearing shorts ! whilst only 7 or 8 degrees the wind chill was crazy….

anywho's… after getting bored of taking pictures of the sea I wandered over to see how they were going, sure enough they had already nailed a couple of really nice sized fish and one bloke nearly got washed away so with the cool clouds hanging around I thought why not..

Exif love:
single image
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 32mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/8s
ISO 100
Out front – Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

https://blog.avernus.com.au/black-fish/

Its wicked world

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and there's tiger striped rock hiding behind the bushes out to get you 🙂

view large

I originally started with 5 landscape orientation images stitched together, this got cropped pretty ruthlessly down to what you can see now, which is probably only about 3 or 4 images overlapped 50%
I was not quite sure what composition I wanted when i took the shots, all I knew I wanted to included the element of the tiger rock, the foliage/bushes and the spooky star trek Enterprise shaped island in it 🙂

Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 30mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL

Turbulence

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Hopping from rock to rock looking for that nice water flow all whilst keeping the peepers out for those rogue waves – in this image the water flow is a result of the third big wave rolling back out to sea , the flow right at the bottom has actually originated from a big shelf to the right of where I was standing and streamed back down to join the mothership again 😉 It was well past sunrise but the heavy cloud on the horizon meant the colour lasted for a bit longer than usual as well providing some nice diffused lighting.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/20 and Shutter Speed: 1.6s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. and three barreling waves 🙂

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

Sneaky, spidery, Sunday Sunrise Sessions

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Squeezed in between a golf course, a pistol range, a cemetery and a so called national park is this little gulley which I had seen many times when browsing the google maps, I have frequented the areas north (Little Bay) of this and also south (Cruwee Bay) however never quite made it to this place, whilst not terribly inspiring the clouds and sunrise did give it some interest.

Rod and I did a fine battle with the local spider population from which we were quite victorious, ie no spiders on faces 😉 there were a few close calls 😉 It is really only a short walk in and we did not even notice the cemetery in dark, however i suspect the attention was more concentrated on the spidery fiends, its funny how the walk into a location in blackness can seem much further than that on the way out. I had actually visited this area just the day before with both Chaos and Mayhem for a bushwalk and driving past this spot we saw a red belly black snake slithering across the road – it has certainly been a season of snakes for me 😉

This spot is classic Sydney coast cliffs, much like what you find at Kurnell and even some of the eastern suburb cliff line, the rich green mixed with the sandstone can really shine in the right conditions, particularly when the golden light of the sun rising meets it.

Exif love:
4 landscape orientation shots stitched together.
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/20 and Shutter Speed: 3s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. rockage, greenery and a cool sun poking over the clouds.

https://blog.avernus.com.au/sneaky-spidery-sunday-sunrise-sessions/

All that glistens

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Its just after 5am in the morning and there is nothing but a subtle glow out on the horizon giving the hint that sunrise will happen once more (yeah i know its a pretty sure bet but hey … 😉 ), the sharp grinding and clacking (yeah thats a real word too) of the stones under my feet is the only sound, even the ocean seems to be quiet in anticipation of the sun's arrival.

After finding my favorite spot to setup, its always a good spot to start out at anyway 🙂 I rattled off a shot, guessing the exposure only to find things are still pretty darn dark..hence i thought I would add a little extra artificial light to try get some detail out of the foreground, normally I would not bother and just wait for some more natural light from the sun coming up, however I had nothing but time to burn… I pulled out the big berther torch and added some light to rocks during the relatively long exposure.

The light has created a artificial feel to the scene, however gives the viewer another dimension to look at and engage in, typically the lower part of the image where the black and dark rocks are would simply be rendered black, however 600 lumens of light brings out some detail and texture, which after I took it I thought, thats not so bad. Hence I put a mental note in to try that again next time rather than sit in the dark waiting for the sun to come up 😉

One big problem with LED torches is the colour temperature of the light, they are really cool in colour, resulting in blue cold light, this image was no exception, even without the LED light the scene is very blue with the predawn light, however wit the LED, it was like another world – I have corrected alot of that to bring some warmth back to the light and match what I saw on the morning.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 67s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL…. LED torch applied to the rocks on the left, the rocks to the right and the ones in middle right of the frame.

https://blog.avernus.com.au/all-that-glistens/

Long Bay Textures

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where nitrates, phosphorus and potassium meet the ocean

well, i might be over dramatizing it a bit, but there was some very lush green grass nearby which I am sure was not there way back when 😉

This mixed with some lovely Sydney sandstone makes for some great colours and textures, especially when the use that cool blue dye to see where all the runoff ends up ( see here for more http://goo.gl/IIzhK0)

The sunrise looked pretty bland with a thick band of cloud planted firmly on the horizon and clear skies above, however as I always say, things can change quickly and suddenly clouds were coming from everywhere 🙂

This hidden little gully on the golf course at Long Bay had lots of little shelfs and water ways, especially with the big swell and high tide. This particular little shelf just screamed to be photographed, there were some noice waves coming over it, however I did not manage to capture them, darn that patience thing again 🙂

Pretty simple image, single exposure with a graduated filter and polariser, not too much in the way of dynamic range and hence plenty of shadow detail to be seen. Might need to clean the old sensor, cloning out the dust spots is getting a little onerous 🙁

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 70.7
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and Hoya CPL, bigass swell and lots of cool textured rock.

https://blog.avernus.com.au/long-bay-textures/

Undecided

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Undecided - (c) 2015 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 18mm Aperture: f/18and Shutter Speed: 1s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and a polariser (HOYA screw in)

I could not actually decide which I liked the most – hence when in doubt, just throw it all in 🙂 well in this case into a triptych.
I think its also a good example of how water movement and flow in a scene can change the overall feel look of the image. There was no change in the shutter speed, just in the timing of when to take the frame.

Can you pick which way the water is going in each frame? (in or out) which looks better? I typically find that taking the frame with the water flowing out seems to give better lines – this is not a hard and fast rule tho. Another important benefit of using the outflow is that your not crapping yourself when the big swamper comes thru and you got your eye plastered in the viewfinder trying to get that sweet frame and then blam 😉

Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 18mm Aperture: f/18and Shutter Speed: 1s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and a polariser (HOYA screw in)

 

Protection

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Protection - (c) 2015 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.3s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) a bit of a wreck or something and some rockage

did not help this wreck
view large… its a crime not too 😉

Whilst the colour and clouds were nice, i really liked this channel that ran between the breaking waves and outer rock shelf and the next set of rocks (which I am standing on). The small rock cluster, only standing several feet high created a calm little bay with the waves just bubbling thru the rocks and occasionally flowing over the top – I did wait for that set of waves, since that would have topped the image off I think, ie some nice water flowing over the rocks, but alas, patience got the better of me and at the time I was not overly impressed with the shot, only after i reviewed it on the the computer did it get a look in.

4 landscape orientation images stitched together in +Adobe Photoshop, the scene has a bit of the bendy feel to it due to the wide angle and in hindsight taking several steps back and running with 35mm focal length would have been a much better option, or even better swapping to a longer lens.

Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/10 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.3s
ISO: 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) a bit of a wreck or something and some rockage

The Wedge

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20,000 years in the making - (c) Gerard Blacklock

20,000 years in the making – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 20s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and some big ass rock with a hole in its bum.

20,000 years in the making…

I was watching some show on the telly before about the oldest skeleton ever found, in England with some woolly mammoths head 🙂 apparently its 29,000 years old.. thats pretty old.. the cave where they found it is right on the ocean, however apprently back in the day when the body was buried there the water was significantly lower 200 something feet and there were plains and stuff not the sea!

It never ceases to amaze me that in my short life time I can revisit a place, like this, several times in my life and I am pretty well guaranteed that it ain’t gonna change due to natural forces..and yet to form this little isolated island rock out cropping it would have taken thousands of years… yep i feel pretty insignificant.. especially given the billions who have came before..

well at least they did not take photos here I suppose 😉

h/t to mother nature again 🙂

4 shot panorama (landscape orientation)
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 20s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter (0.9x) and some big ass rock with a hole in its bum.

Nice day for tinny ride

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Tinny Ride - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Tinny Ride – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 0.6 seconds (neutral frame)
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

boating on Gordons Bay
Following on from my previous version of this composition with a long exposure (https://blog.avernus.com.au/muted-maritime-dreams/) I also made a ‘conventional’ style shot, I really wanted the lines of the boat rack to shine through and compliment the little aluminum boat but trying to get enough space around it was difficult and it felt like my lens was never quite wide enough 🙂

The clouds did come to the party in this case and put on a nice show as the sun rose behind them (you can see this in the LE version too), even with the sun being shadowed by the clouds the dynamic range in the scene was still very large and as a result this frame is the culmination of 3 bracketed shots to maintain the the shadow detail, particularly in the foreground below the boat.

I don’t like to present two shots of the same composition, but I think it’s a good example how the mood of a shot can be drastically changed by the shutter speed, plus my pano of this location failed to stitch 🙁 so single vertical composition it is..

Nice day for a little boating adventure too.

Exif/setup data:
3 Bracketed shots manually blended in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 0.6 seconds (neutral frame)
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

https://blog.avernus.com.au/nice-day-for-tinny-ride/

‘S’ is for Summer

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S os for Summer - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.3 s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

and s-curves of course

Some nicely greenery and rocks on the edge of Lurline Bay bathed in the warm afterglow of a fiery red sunrise.

Exif/setup data:
Single shot
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.3 s
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

 

Muted Maritime Dreams

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Muted Maritime Dreams - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 248 seconds
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, Lee Bigstopper and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

smoothing out the rough seas with a very long exposure.

Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 248 seconds
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, Lee Bigstopper and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

 

Wave Power

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Wave Power - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Wave Power – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/13
Shutter Speed: 319 seconds
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, Lee Bigstopper and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

a man born well before his times

After posting my previous version of the Lurline Channel image (https://blog.avernus.com.au/lineup-lurline/) and incorrectly and ignorantly labelling it some sewer channel it got me thinking (as rare as that is) about why the channel was there, so off to mister +Google+ it was for some research, it was very quickly apparent that the channel was anything but a sewer outlet, in fact it was part of a very historic moment in time and also very much about a man, Peter Bates who was well ahead of his time. Peter, designed, built and successfully proved that wave powered electricity generation was possible and potentially feasible at this location – Lurline Bay Power Generation.

It is quoted ‘the Lurline Bay power project was a remarkable story of human perseverance and , ultimately , bitter disappointment’. I don’t entirely agree, disappointment maybe.. but remarkable achievement all the same, especially given the era.

Peter was, in the true sense of the word, a engineer, with no formal training, he was a man with the natural tendency to think like a engineer and harvest scientific information and engineering skills, his feats on the Lurline Bay Power project (and other smaller projects, moving eyes for dolls, rock drilling…) just go to show that simply a university education is not enough to be able to quality yourself as a engineer – that is another whole story in itself btw 🙂

After quite a life of engineering, importing scissors, singing family and kids among other things, and at the ripe age of 51, Peter turned to concentrating on his Wave Generation project. In 1920 he submitted a patent titled “Improvements in and Relating to the Utilisation of Wave Motion”. In 1921 he really got cracking and with a 5 year leave pass from his wife 🙂 , a sidekick to help and also some funding he managed to successfully setup a system consisting of vanes, pumps and turbine / dynamo to produce enough electricity to power a single light 🙂 .. well we gotta start somewhere right!

The project continued to develop past the 5 year leave pass (1929) from his wife (man I am glad i was not there asking for another 5 years!) but successfully managed to refine the design and system to produce a peak power of 5,000 watts.. that’s pretty respectable for that era. This is basically where it ends it would seem…

As part of the design and probably something that took up a large portion of the time was the building of the channel, this was cut from Sydney sandstone, which by stone types is actually quite soft, but I am sure when your cutting it by hand it is still bloody hard. Anyway, the channel is obviously still there today with some of the original brickwork (and pole) and is the main feature that I noticed when doing some research for a sunrise photoshoot here.

So there you have it. This location is part of the renewable energy generation.. nearly 100 years too early 🙂

Here’s to you Peter Bates, h/t.

Onto the image, this is the composition and the position of the sun I have been waiting to capture for some moths, it lines up nicely in the months of November and December, I had taken a few conventional shots prior to this and the sun was just starting to peek over the thick band of cloud on the horizon, to slow things down a bit I used the Lee Bigstopper to really extend the exposure time, however, I made one cardinal sin (in addition to all the others I have made 😉 ) I did not cover my viewer finder with the DK-5 cover, this is the only feature that nikon needs to be beaten over the head for when it comes to the D750. One has to remove the eyecup and place this fiddly little plastic cap on the viewerfinder, what a pita, really nikon, you could have just stretched it to include a viewfinder bind…

Anyway, as a result of not covering the viewfinder, I ended up with a nasty vertical streak in the frame (top to bottom), after swearing profusely to Rodney and wishing a thousand papercuts to the nikon engineer who designed the D750 without a view finder blind I resigned myself to another ruined 4 minute exposure…

Later, when processing a few of the images from the morning I was looking at this streaky frame thinking, ‘can I salvage this?’ I decided to give it a crack.. after about 30 minutes of tweaks, adjustments and voodoo magic I got it to a point where the vertical band was… well .. less noticeable..

So, can you pick where the vertical band was??

 

Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/13
Shutter Speed: 319 seconds
ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x, Lee Bigstopper and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

for more info about Lurline bay:
http://lurlinebay.com.au

Its closing in

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Closing in - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Closing in – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 168s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Lee Bigstopper

The only reason I got to see this tree , let alone photograph it was due to work (which I am sitting her currently doing, the joys of on call) with a little luck (as strange as it may seem 🙂 ) I may not revisit this location for quite some time, however in the meantime its a location with many memories and still plenty of un-processed images sitting on the harddrive. I am sure down the track I will get to several of the other images that are tagged ‘to do’ but for now as the night closes out and morning approaches – a image to match my mood.

Single image, long exposure, processed exclusively in +Adobe Photoshop using the +Nik Collection by Google
(I did add the border in +Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 🙂 )

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/11 and Shutter Speed: 168s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Lee Bigstopper

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.