Rodney Campbell's Blog

Headed down to Mrs Macquaries Chair for some sunset and twilight views over the harbour.

I found some nice rocks which when viewed from the right angle lined up nicely to allow a view towards the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and then it was just a matter of waiting for sunset and trying not to get too wet with the waves coming in from the wake of the large boats passing on the harbour (my feet/shoes and bottoms of my jeans got soaked – which was disappointing on a bitterly cold winters night in Sydney – but hey you’ve got to take some hits for your craft I guess :)).

Another cloudless event for me (at least in the direction I was pointing) which meant no real interest other than a touch of colour in the sky. This leaves all the action from the horizon down 🙂

I tried some long exposures with the ten stop neutral density filter before sunset and then just as the sun hit the horizon – nothing particularly worth showing unfortunately.

It was left to twilight to save the show – so with a circular polariser and both my 3 stop (0.9) and 2 stop (0.6) hard graduated neutral density filters stacked I waited till I could get exposures long enough and with colour I liked.

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.

This first is at 5:23PM (about 25 minutes after sunset) and a 170 second exposure to get a nice eerie look to the water and the rocks (I also did a little light painting of the rocks with my LED torch – with some localised white balance adjustments of the torch light in post processing)

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 14 mm, 170 sec at f/16, ISO 100

This one is at 5:35PM and is at about the end of the colour in the sky – I’m tossing up whether I like this square crop (which makes you feel much closer to the foreground rock) or the wider vertical aspect above better… what do you think?

Blue Hour

NIKON D7000 + 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 @ 14 mm, 93 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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