Rodney Campbell's Blog

Week 15

A little late (was working from home for a week)…

Morning, Liverpool St, Sydney

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1/320 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 100

Bike, Liverpool St, Sydney

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 200

Reflected, Pitt St, Sydney

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 1/320 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 100

My family spent Easter this year in the Shoalhaven (New South Wales, South Coast region). We had a great time and it was great to relax for a few days – it was also an opportunity to spend some time exploring and take some photographs with my children.

We decided to walk down to the Shoalhaven river (and the bridges there spanning the river between Bomaderry/North Nowra and Nowra) and take some photographs at sunset – it was also another chance to make use of my new Lee filter system and the 3 stop graduated ND filter. We were blessed with some excellent cloud and colour during sunset which made our job much easier.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

River Lights

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm, 0.4 sec at f / 16, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

Pink River

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm, 1.0 sec at f / 11, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

Blazing Bridge

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1.0 sec at f / 16, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

Sunset’s Glow

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 4.0 sec at f / 11, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

A very early start (4AM) now as daylight savings has ended and it’s quite a hike from the carpark around to the location we shot. The location this morning was the infamous Canyon X at the northern end of Turimetta beach on Sydney’s northern beaches. We arrived around 5AM for the 30 minute walk around the shoreline in complete darkness (our party wasn’t willing to brave the fisherman’s ropes and cliff climb in the dark :)).

I finally invested the day before in the Lee Filter system (with the Foundation Kit filter holder, the 77mm Adaptor ring and a 0.9 (3 stop) Hard ND Grad filter) – it was time to test it all out. After sunrise I also gave the B+W 10 stop ND filter a run with a few simple compositions (nothing particularly good however). I have to say regardless of the actual images we took I was very happy with the filter system itself both in ease of use and in controlling the highlights in camera rather than trying to do more in PP – I should have done this long ago!

The weather gods didn’t smile so much on us (photographically) for this session – it was a beautiful morning and day however a low tide and a near cloudless sky made for very challenging and less inspired shooting. At least it wasn’t raining like our last outing 🙂

We scrambled our way across the boulders along the coastline until we reached the blowhole and then setup for some shots.

The interesting cliffs being bathed in the predawn light and the very interesting blowhole at the bottom.

Cliffs at Dawn

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 4 sec at f / 16, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

The rock shelf had a number of very interesting (and deep) potholes with all manner of interesting things in them including this spectacular specimen of green “stuff” 🙂

Reflections in Green

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 0.8 sec at f / 16, ISO 100 + 0.9 GND

Week 14

Wildhearts

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 220

Crossing

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/1000 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 100

During our recent photowalk in Newtown (Sydneys inner west) where we shot lots of graffiti covered walls – we also captured a few other images like the following:

Mercury

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 200

Growing through the brick walls lining a railway line workers had obviously come and spray painted the entire wall in thick grey/brown paint covering everything including the plants growing there – new growth however will have it’s way 🙂

Painted Leaves

NIKON D7000 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 16, ISO 1000