Lineup Lurline

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Channel - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Channel – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11and Shutter Speed: 15s over exposed frame 5, 2 and 1 second for the highlight details shots. All manually blended in +Adobe Photoshop ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

Welcome to the channel of pain
Many months ago after doing a sunrise session at Maroubra I drove around the headland and noticed this little dinky bay tucked away amongst some very expensive property, whilst I am sure its not the first time the place has been photographed it certainly has to be on the lesser known and abused list of spots.
After some reccy on google I noticed this mad channel penetrating the ocean, from the satellite view it look natural, however, as one can see its pretty clearly man made (something not noticed until on site)…. for what? probably a obsolete poo dump pipe 🙂

It has taken a few couple failed attempts to get here, mainly due to sleep motivation issues ( +Suren J I am looking at you here) but finally I made it 🙂

and.. ya know the real kicker? there were no hordes of togs there ! – well I don’t count +Rodney Campbell more than twice, so no hordes… just two 🙂

It was one of the really nice mornings to be out, nice colour, muted sunrise by a large bank of cloud cool rock formations and plenty of sweet green slippery ass moss (don’t quote that outta context)

As part of the reccy on +Google+ and the photographers ephemeris (photoephemeris.com) I noticed that towards the end of the year the sun lined up with the channel… hence the need to get there now-ish 🙂 There are several other nearby locations like this which come alive with the sun lining up channels and crevasses…all which are on the cards for the month of december 🙂

anywhos… onto the obligatory image info..

This image is captured from 4 different exposures, even with the graduated filters onboard the super dynamic range of the nikon D750 there is still the need to bracket to capture all the dynamic range without pushing the limits of the sensor range and raw files.

This was also taken using my 11-16mm DX lens since my 16-35 is currently being assessed for repair..which by comparsion was not as sharp (well mostly) as my DX 11-16mm…

Exif/setup data:
D750 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @16mm Aperture: f/11and Shutter Speed: 15s over exposed frame 5, 2 and 1 second for the highlight details shots. All manually blended in +Adobe Photoshop ISO 100
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x and the Hoya Circular Polariser.

 

Colony by the Sea

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Colony by the Sea - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Colony by the Sea – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 6s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

Risking life and limb to capture the little sea creature huddled on the shore of the raging river 🙂 ok probably a little over exaggeration, but i did get my right toe a bit wet waiting for the right wave to flow over the rock shelf.

The sun had already set over the city skyline that is north Coogee and the subtle pastel colours were coming out to play. With one foot delicately balanced on the only somewhat not submerged rock and the other skating on slippery-ass moss I tried to capture the little shells (which by the way, my daughter loves to pick up, collect and relocate 😉 ) coupled with the S curve of the water flow and the lines of the rock to point the viewer to nice pastel serentity that is… nightfall over the clovelly rockshelf.

Techie love:
Single shot.
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 6s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

Temporary Residents

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Temporary Residents - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

Temporary Residents – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

or balls of steel

I could have sworn I was gonna see one of these peeps end up in the drink, but nope, for the entire time I was there, no dunkings, quite to the contrary they pulled out seveal fairly decent sized fish.

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 20mm Aperture: f/18 and Shutter Speed: 1/2s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

Green and Blue

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Green and Yellow - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Green and Yellow – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 3s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

and the silver tail…
Some very luminous greenery was present on this particular morning at Austinmer, so green in fact I had to dial it down 🙂

I think green moss is a close second favorite to lone trees for me at the moment 🙂

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 3s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

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

Emotion

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Tree - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Tree – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
Panorama – 3 frames (non bracketed) stitched together in Adobe PS CC2014
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.0s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

After being fortunate enough to get to the Focus Awards (http://goo.gl/hBQtGQ) on the weekend (Thanks Ray for the tix), there was a very interesting talk by David Oliver (http://www.davidoliver.com.au/) regarding the idea of creating emotion in a image, this was quite insightful but also quite confusing since as a concept, emotion in landscapes is one tricky concept. For landscape images that have a person or human connection this idea of emotion can be more easily achieved, but a landscape with no human elements and true in the sense of a landscape this idea just about escapes me. Looking at the winning images, which are all quite stunning I feel the term mood could be used in place of emotion for a landscape, particularly where there there is no person or human connection.
I also think the mood is something a bit different to the ‘wow factor, for me a image that makes me go wow is often a result a of the initial impact, often generated by distinct processing or colour, the mood however is something which is more on the lasting side then initial impact, for me the wow factor/initial impact often wears off as I analyse a image and dissect it. The mood, however is something that develops and improves with the age of viewing the image, a bit like a good wine 😉 take this example,

Hence, I have promised myself, at the very least for the next few weeks while I remember 🙂 I am going to try and look at a landscape with the specific purpose of capturing and conveying this idea of ‘a mood’ – now exactly how I am gonna do this is, I am unsure of, but it would seem the use of light and selective application of light and often not what you can see but what you can’t is something that can go a long way to getting this mood…. So, here’s a image which i think has no mood in it 🙂 I like it, but I am not happy with it, for me it rates a little better than a snap. It has my favourite element, a single tree but is missing something.. here is a image that I think has mood, but, its created by peeps 🙂 https://blog.avernus.com.au/park-life-2/

How would you generate mood in a frame like this? long exposure it? BW conversion? selfie? I did try a BW conversion, but I can’t bring myself to destroy the colour….

Techie love:
Panorama – 3 frames (non bracketed) stitched together in Adobe PS CC2014
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.0s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

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

Nothing lasts forever

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Nothign Lasts forever - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Nothign Lasts forever – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 1.3s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

time is nigh
I do like bold and punchy landscapes, however from time to time I come across a scene where saturation, even as it may well be in reality, does not quite match the scene and also the mood.
This scene of the mangrove appearing to be on the final straight I think needed a saturation level that matched the mood, whilst the pre-sunset colours were shaping up nicely and there was some very tidy warm colours in the upper part of the sky I chose to desaturate the image so that the colour did not detract from the composition, particularly the roots in the foreground.

I found the punchy bold coloured version left me as a viewer missing some of the finer detail, like the texture in the roots and left me in a confused state (not hard on a good day) about the intent.

Techie love:
I actually bracketed this shot and merged the frames, but in revisiting it, i found the single neutral frame was all goo, in terms of dynamic range, the sensor in this camera (D750) is certainly a improvement to that of my older camera (D7000)
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 1.3s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

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

Bold

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Bold - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Bold – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/13s
ISO 640
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

yet shedding
Sneaky Wednesday Sessions at Beachmere, I had a hour to smash before hopping on a burner to come home, I wish I had more time to explore other areas, like Bribie Island and a bit further north but alas not this time.
There is something relaxing about doing a seascape shoot and i find it quite therapeutic after a long day, the sensation of mud, shells and water under foot (excluding that fing sharp oyster shell – needs another session in the washing machine) washed all the worries away (except for that one that i better not be late to grab the plane)

Its a popular tree and I had wanted to visit another tree nearby , however upon closer inspection it would appears its fallen on its bum…so that one was out ( you can see it here
https://blog.avernus.com.au/solitude/)

For this shot I needed a quick shutter to freeze some of that water, rather than a blurry mess, which, btw looks alright, hence i need to bump the iso abit to keep things at f13 since i now know that the 16-35 is crap at f4 😉

I timed it to get that dinky little leaf, but was a bit too slow, I really wanted it further up in he frame oh well..the CPL was key here to get some clarity thru the water.

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/13s
ISO 640
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

man that tilt screen is worth every cent… 🙂

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

Pastel, Maroubra and fuzziness

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Pastel, maroubra and Fuzziness - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Pastel, maroubra and Fuzziness – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 15s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

there are two ways to achieve a nice softness/diffusion in a image – well the way I see it anyway 😉

1) you can use some funky filter in Adobe Photoshop during your post processing, or 2) you can do like I did here, simply place one’s tripod in some sand near a beach, start a long exposure and wait for the sea to come and wash over everything resulting in the tripod slowly sinking
– softness achieved, job done, in camera, purist reunite! 😉

I love the pastel colours in the sky, maybe because its I see them so much more that the blazing sunset or sunrise (which are fairly rare – for me anyway), maybe it’s the challenge in conveying that often very subtle colour which is always in the opposite direction to where most are point their cameras.

Maybe in this case, its because the pastel pink an blue in the sky compliments the fuzzy green rocks down below, in any case it was fun, except for the howling wind and spray, a prelude to https://blog.avernus.com.au/opening-the-portal/

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 15s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

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

Seascape to die for

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Seascape to die for - (c) Gerard Blacklock

Seascape to die for – (c) Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 750s
ISO: Lo1

waiting for that perfect flow 😉

I ain’t gonna write anything about this – just use your imagination 😉

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 750s
ISO: Lo1
Out front: some freaky skeleton

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

Riding into the pastel sunset

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Riding the Pastel Skies - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Riding the Pastel Skies – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 250s
ISO: 400

man vs wind

So, i rock up to the beach just in time to hear over the loudspeakers, which by the were very, very loud that the beach was closed due to dangerous rips and surf (not uncommon at this particular beach) on;y to see this dude on his kite surfer flogging it around the bay. Now, it a was well after sunset and the pastels in the sky were just fading and I thought surely this dude is heading in soon, but no, he was out there until it was dark, like really dark! certainly much more gutsy than me 🙂

The wind was absolutely howling this evening and the kite surfer was covering the length of the beach in 30 odd seconds, not only would this have taken alot of stamina to hold on and control but to come off at that speed would really hurt 🙂 which he did a few times, face planted into a wave 🙂

This was taken with my all time favorite lens, the old school nikkor 105mm f2.5, its old, its beat up, the aperture ring is anything but snappy and its got quite a few dust specks in it but it still produces really sharp images and lovely contrast.

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 250s
ISO: 400
Out front: nada

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

The Green Alley

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The Green Alley - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

The Green Alley – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 8s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

welcome to slippery-ville, population..me

Nature is pretty damn amazing, I drove past here a few weeks back and there was not a sign of any moss or indication of a green explosion about happen.
After having a chat to a local on the beach it would appear that its not really that common either, however I have noticed in the last week or so many of the coastal areas in and around sydney have taken on a green tinge – possibly due to the change in weather and a slightly increased sea temperature. In any case, this stuff looks mad and I can never resist a good seascape scene with some complimentary green.

So here we have it, a scene full of green with a complimentary seascape 😉 I was standing ankle deep in sand with the waves flowing up the channel and with the tripod splayed across the rocks clinging to the green moss – and loving it.

Techie love:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/16 and Shutter Speed: 8s
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

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

Bioluminescent ocean surf

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Bioluminescent ocean surf - (c) Gerard Blacklock

D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/3.3 and Shutter Speed: 329.5s
ISO: 200
Outfront – a hoodie, a big f-off drop and some funky-ass wave action.

So here we are, myself and Rodney perched out on some freaking rock outcropping atop a old munitions bunker trying to get a better view on the freaky stuff happening in the ocean, my first thought was a super aerated water being more reflective (and white) to light etc however it would have appear, to the naked eye and also to the camera sensor there was some bizarre means to which the ocean seem to emanate a glow when the waves shamed on the rock shelf.

I have seen images of the crazy ones in San Deigio but they are much more prominent. Clues anyone, surely we do not have Bioluminescent ocean here?!

Ironically, in less than 7 hours I was in a boat out in that very ocean doing some deep sea fishing, which btw was was pretty successful, got me some very tasty flathead and bream, real man sized fish 🙂

Single shot
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/3.3 and Shutter Speed: 329.5s
ISO: 200
Outfront – a hoodie, a big f-off drop and some funky-ass wave action.

The battle – Light vs Dark

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Light vs Dark - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Light vs Dark – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 152s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser and a battle between the rocks

and whats left between

I really liked this scene, the comparison between the warm friendly looking rock in the front and the mean dark ominous rock out back simply meant I could not compose it any differently, I did have to crop out a rock off to the left, but hey, sometimes nature does not see my entire vision and needs to be bent a little bit to achieve the artistic license 😉

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 152s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser and a battle between the rocks

Texture Duo

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Texture Duo - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Texture Duo – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @13mm Aperture: f/8and Shutter Speed: 10 seconds
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser

So I am sitting here with two keyboards, two mice and Tickles, who is taking immense enjoyment in bashing out on one keyboard and mouse, it all goes well until she realises she wants my mouse and keyboard, which are much more interesting (probably ’cause they get a funny reaction from dad), especially the mouse with its cool little red light 🙂
Editing images is always fun with either tickles or chaos, it takes 10 times longer than normal and I lose a few hairs through frustration but its still worth it 😉

So, this image, intended to be BW from the get go, is dedicated to tickles! Pretty typical semi-LE seascape image which could have actually worked in colour also, there was some nice subtle warm glow on the top of the clouds but I felt that water flow and texture in the rocks did not need any colour to really make it shine.

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @13mm Aperture: f/8and Shutter Speed: 10 seconds
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser

I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

Comparison

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The difference time makes
1/3 of a second vs 175 seconds
The prelude to the following shot, mainly to test the composition.
https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/JjW9rZZuD3w

Single frame
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/16
ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 1/3s
out front – LEE Graduated Filter 0.9x screw in circular polariser and…

I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.