Monochrome at Wilsons Promontory

The scouting mission to Wilsons Promontory returned some wonderful images.      On the day I visited the Prom the sky was a  rich blue colour with almost no clouds.    The photos taken on the beautiful beaches demonstrated the lush colour contrast between the deep blue sky and the golden beach sand.

When I got back home and reviewed the images, the rich colours appeared to be distracting the eye from the real subject of the images.    I was trying to capture some of the shapes and textures of the Prom but such details were being swamped by the distracting colours.     After converting the images to monochrome and dodging and burning a little, “bang”, out popped the details I was trying to capture.

Sometimes there are situations just screaming out for a black and white treatment.   

I’m looking forward to revisiting Wilsons Promontory when the weather cools and there aren’t so many people camping down there.     Here’s two images from the day.

Title - 55 Mintues with you.

Title - A trick of the light.

ANZAC ceremony in the Yarra Valley.

Images from the ANZAC ceremony in a small town in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia, 2008.

For overseas visitors who aren’t familiar with the ANZAC tradition have a look at this link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Day

Mouth of the Powlett River

I recently attended a meet-up of Melbourne Redbubble photographers at the lovely mouth of the Powlett River.         Apparently this area is proposed as the location for a new water desalination plant.

There is a lot of local opposition to the plant being built here, …you can get a sense of the controversy by googling the words “powlett river desalination”.

The area is indeed beautiful and looks completely different depending on whether you visit a low tide or high tide. Low tide reveals some spectacular rock pools and high tide completely hides the pools and highlights the spectacular surf and tidal forces. This place is well worth two visits but check your tide guides before going.

Powlett River mouth at low tide, …rock pools exposed -

Powlett River mouth at high tide, …the pounding surf and tidal forces become the feature attractions -

Redbubble photographers enjoy the scenery -

Shiprock Falls in Gembrook

Shiprock Falls is one of those poorly signposted gems that you could quite easily drive past if you weren’t looking for it.

Unfortunately the pedestrian track leading down to the falls has been blocked by a strategically placed viewing platform. To get the best experience and the best shots here you need to climb around the outside of the platform and trek down the hill to the flowing water. Here you can immerse yourself in the total experience of the falls, ….the sounds, the smells, the chill of the water.

For the more adventurous you can climb the rocks and scattered trunks around the flowing water to reach the top where it appears that the water is coming out of a slot in the rocks. Great experience and a wonderful view of the surrounding bush from the top.

A special thanks to Di Jenkins for introducing me to this place.

This image is available for purchase as a print at - http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

McVeigh’s Water Wheel

This is McVeigh’s Water Wheel, for me the main photographic attraction at the Upper Yarra Reservoir Park, Victoria, Australia.

Unfortunately it’s fenced off, so you need to be a bit cheeky to get good shots and jump the fence. The extra effort is worthwhile to get a different perspective on the wheel.

These water wheel shots are available for purchase at -

http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

FAQ about my HDR seascapes.

Following is a post I made in my journal on the Redbubble site regarding the seascape photos. It might be helpful to those who are thinking about giving HDR a go.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - snip - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’ve recently been receiving interest from different sources wanting to know the type of camera and lens I use, and also my post processing techniques for my seascape shots.I’m posting these details here so I won’t need to repeat this information in the description section accompanying each image.Gear used – Camera – Canon 40D
Landscape lens – Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM
Filter – Hoya circular polarizing filter to suit lens
Tripod – a cheap and nasty one, I’m going to update it.

Camera settings – For landscape shots I have the camera set to aperture priority mode and set to f11 or greater to obtain a deep depth of field. I usually leave the camera to sort out the ISO (i.e. ISO = AUTO) and shutter speed unless I’m trying to blur the motion of water for example.

The polarizing filter is adjusted for each shot to reduce the amount of sky reflected off the surface of the water.

The camera is setup to use AEB (auto exposure bracketing) at -2, 0 and +2 and the drive mode is set to “continuous” with a two second delay. What all this means is that when I press the button, the camera will wait 2 seconds giving it time to stabilize on the tripod then take 3 exposures in rapid succession with hopefully no camera movement.
The tripod is essential, forget about hand holding the camera for this type of work..

Post processing -
I use a program called “Dynamic Photo HDR” to combine the three exposures then tonemap and adjust the image within the program. I then save the image as a TIFF file and open it in photoshop to touch up any bits I’m not happy with. Finally the completed image is saved as a jpeg for uploading to RedBubble.

Hopefully this has been helpful for you.
If you have any further questions please feel free to email me.

Cheers, Jim.

Thunder and halos at Blairgowrie ocean beach.

The return to Blairgowrie beach was everything I could hope for. I timed the visit to coincide with the low tide late in the afternoon, and as a bonus a thunderstorm happened to roll in off the ocean with a vengeance.

As I stood exposed on the beach to take this photo I was reminded of what a precarious situation this was. There were occasional bursts of lightning coming from the low dark clouds striking the water. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture a lightning strike with the camera but the view of the clouds was magnificent.

As the main part of the storm passed over head the rain poured down heavily and I managed to shelter my camera gear and most of my body by huddling against a large rock. As the rain began to ease gaps appeared in the clouds allowing scattered sunlight through creating wonderful light shows including halos and misty streaks.

As always, these photos are available to purchase as prints at -

http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

You can contact me by email at jim.worrall@gmail.com

Number 16 and Pearse’s beach

Following the recent visit to Sorrento (Australia) ocean beach and it’s stunning rock formations and rock pools I decided to move further along the coast to Blairgowrie to see what’s there.

It was late in the day when I called in at two of Blairgowrie’s ocean beaches. The first one was called “Number 16″, yes I know a strange name and I’m sure there’s a fine story behind that name. The second beach, just down the road, was called Pearse’s beach, most likely because it’s located at the end of Pearse Road.

On arrival the tide was getting pretty high so the beaches offered only a limited opportunity for exploration of the more interesting rocky areas. I’ve made a mental note to myself to come back to Pearse’s beach when there’s a low tide. There appears to be some great photographic potential here.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been using a camera backpack called a Lowepro Slingshot 200AW which I bought late last year. I’ve been more than pleased with this bag and it seems the more I use it the more I appreciate its excellent design. Well done Lowepro !! (……and NO, I have no affiliation with the Lowepro company.)

As always if you would like to see a higher resolution version of any of these photos, or purchase a print, you can find them at- http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

You can contact me by email at jim.worrall@gmail.com

The optical jewels at Sorrento.

My recent visit to the ocean beach at Portsea, (see previous blog entry), sparked a craving for more of the same photographic material.

This time I visited the ocean beach further along the coastline at Sorrento. The first visit to the beach was a spur of the moment decision. When I arrived there the sun was hovering just above the horizon, I had no time to explore the beach and it was a high tide. I took a few shots of the sun fading into the horizon and a few long exposure shots of waves swirling around the rocks.

Here’s a couple of the high tide shots -

The next visit to Sorrento beach was a bit better planned and I actually remembered to check the tide charts before leaving. On arrival the rock pools were at their low tide best, the sun was high enough in the sky to give me time to explore some of the rocky features yet low enough to give the area a nice warm glow.

Here’s some of the shots from the low tide visit -

If you would like to see any of these photos in a larger more detailed form they are available at -
http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

Please feel free to contact me at - jim.worrall@gmail.com

Visiting rock pool heaven.

I recently visited a tourist attraction called London Bridge in Portsea, Australia. It’s a large partially eroded sedimentary rock formation on the ocean beach.

When I arrived there the tide was luckily at its low point exposing a large area of rock pools surrounding the Bridge. It was a photographers heaven. There were lots of pools surrounded by large expanses of rocky plateau over which the gentle waves would occasionally flow.

My original intention was to photograph the Bridge but I found the rocky shallows surrounding the bridge to be much more interesting. Since the sun was setting and it was getting dark it gave me the opportunity to try doing some long exposures, ….something that I haven’t tried before.

When moving water is photographed using a long exposure time the resulting image makes the water appear more like a fog or mist. The “misty” water running between some sharply focussed rocks looks wonderful (to me anyway).

From a technical perspective here are some camera settings details -

I had a polarizing filter on the front of the lens to reduce the amount of sky reflected off the water pools that were close to the camera. I set the camera to aperture priority (Av) and a set the aperture value to F11 to give a wide depth of field which means that objects in both the foreground and background would be in focus. Setting the aperture to F11 also gives the added benefit of forcing the camera to keep the shutter open for a longer time, which is an advantage in this case because I was trying to achieve a long exposure to “blur” the moving water.

I also changed the cameras ISO setting from the default of “auto” to “ISO 100″ which makes the sensor effectively less light sensitive and forces the camera to keep the shutter open for longer as it tries to achieve a “correct” exposure.

As much as I hate using a tripod I certainly used one for this expedition. After fiddling around with the camera settings the average exposure for most shots was about 5 seconds, way too long for holding by hand.

I also used exposure bracketing for each shot so that I would have the flexibility to generate some HDR (high dynamic range) photos if required. This meant that the shutter was sometimes open for about 10 seconds or more.

If you would like to see some higher resolution versions of these photos or purchase prints you can find them at -

http://www.redbubble.com/people/pixelmuser/

If you would like to contact me by email then feel free to contact me at - jim.worrall@gmail.com