Rodney Campbell's Blog

I like photographing these plants. They look really good in colour as well (with their soft shades of various greens and strong lines along the leaves) but I really like converting them to monochrome – especially with this sort of strong processing and I hope you like it too. Again I’ve found one with some water drops in the large catching leaves which I also think processes well and adds to the look I was hoping for when I took the image.

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 1/80 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Week 57 – Help me Choose?…

Taken on Australia Day in the city just across the road from St Mary’s Cathedral. People everywhere but I felt I could find an image here – I took a number of slightly different compositions but liked this one the best. I’ve processed this to monochrome in two different ways (same source image). Personally I like the first (darker) better but it may be too dark I’m not sure – I’ve included a much more stark high key rendition as well so I’ll let you the viewer decide – which do you like better?

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 1/400 sec at f/5, ISO 100

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NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 12 mm, 1/400 sec at f/5, ISO 100

I drive past these largish mains water pipes almost every day and I had been thinking in my mind for quite some time that I’d like to have a go at light painting them in the dark to see what could be done. In my mind I was hoping for a sort of semi indistinctly appearing out of the darkness sort of look – at least that was what I was envisioning… 🙂

Whilst on a recent walk near my home I also found another set of exposed pipes which showed some promise (as they were surrounded and covered by trees which would block out nearby street lights and so should essentially be totally dark at night).

Since it thankfully finally stopped raining in Sydney over the weekend I thought I’d go out at night and give it a try.

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 slideshow gallery viewer.

It turned out at the first location that even at night the area was very well lit (too well lit) with a number of very bright street lights, cars headlights as they pass by, etc. However not to be deterred I setup a few compositions and stopped down to allow me time to walk through and paint with my LED headlamp torch.

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 60 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I then moved on to the other location I’d found which was thankfully a lot darker and began again.

NIKON D7000 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 60 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I tried a number of different compositions and light painting at both locations including shooting straight on, from an angle, etc and lighting from behind and from in front from both sides of the frame – which I think was probably more successful at the second location. This was a first attempt at this and I’m not sure I’ve done it any sort of justice yet – any feedback or suggestions gratefully accepted 🙂

Photography is normally not permitted inside St Mary’s Cathedral – however on Australia Day I was with the thousands of others packed inside the Cathedral who were happily snapping away and taking videos with all manner of phones and cameras so I figured I’d try some handheld 3 shot HDR brackets and see what I could get.

I did this with AutoISO on so I could get a half decent shutter speed but it did mean I usually ended up with the 0EV frame at greater than ISO 2000 and the +2 frame at ISO 6400! so I wasn’t expecting any miracles here.

That said I was very pleasantly surprised with the way this monochrome conversion of the handheld HDR turned out…

NIKON D7000 + @ 12 mm, 1/60 sec at f/4, ISO 2200

Week 56

Another from North Sydney – this time some architectural street imagery.

I came back to this shot on consecutive days – the first I only had my 17-50mm and it wasn’t wide enough to do what I wanted to do. I came back with my 12-24mm on and took this – it started life as a handheld HDR (3 shots at 0, -2 and +2EV) which I then processed into monochrome and was really happy with this particular conversion – particularly the really glassy finish (which the building had with glossy tiles and sparkling glass and chrome)

NIKON D7000 + @ 12 mm, 1/250 sec at f/5, ISO 100