Rodney Campbell's Blog

Here in Sydney Australia it’s the middle of winter – tho you wouldn’t know it from the weather we’ve been having – record warm winter days and clear blue skies.

I’ve been photographing a local school event over the past weekend – mostly indoors so I havn’t been able to really enjoy the great weather. But on saturday in the late afternoon we had some outdoor games and it was a good chance to do some golden hour candid portraits. Just on sunset the skies turned beautiful with both intense and subtle colour across the skies and clouds, and as a stood in the school grounds staring up at the sky I was lamenting that I wasn’t at some epic landscape or seascape location making use of these gorgeous skies.

I’ve been shooting with the sumptuous Sigma 85mm f/1.4 much of the time (both indoors and out) and so it was about ten minutes after sunset I made use of the location and colour as best I could…

Winter’s Blush

NIKON D7000 + 85.0 mm f/1.4 @ 85 mm, 1/200 sec at f/2, ISO 560

The last stop on our day trip around northern Bali. We’re well and truly on our way back to southern Bali when we stopped at Taman Ayun Temple – this is a Royal Temple of the Mengwi Empire and it is located in Mengwi Village, about 18km north of Denpasar. It is set on land which is surrounded by a big pond to look like it is adrift on the water.

Inside the temple grounds my three daughters found this one tower you’re able to climb these narrow outside steps to the top 🙂 – which of course we did – and I was more than happy with how the Olympus EPL-1 handled this scene.

Looking Up at Taman Ayun

E-PL1 + OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L @ 14 mm, 1/250 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Taman Ayun

E-PL1 + OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L @ 36 mm, 1/160 sec at f/9, ISO 200

Our second last stop for the day was at Goa Gajah. At the façade of the cave is a relief of various menacing creatures and demons carved right into the rock at the cave entrance. The primary figure was once thought to be an elephant, hence the nickname Elephant Cave.

There isn’t much inside by my girls and I ventured in for a look around

Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave)

E-PL1 + OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L @ 34 mm, 1/100 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200

The Jatiluwih Rice Terraces was another place I had intended visiting to photograph during a good time of day. On our day tour we were here for lunch in a place looking over the terraces.

Lunch was only so so but the view was spectacular even in the middle of the day. The terraces weren’t at their peak times – they’d already been harvested – but this was rural Bali and our first real look at steep valley terraces

Jati Luwih Rice Terrace

E-PL1 + OLYMPUS M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 L @ 42 mm, 1/125 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Here is a take on the famous Sydney Harbour I like to call “Pocket Watch” for hopefully obvious reasons. This is a conversion of one of my existing panorama images – continuing the panosphere theme (originally from this post – Luna Park to Kirribilli Photo Walk Part II – Twilight)…

Note: These panospheres look much better when larger – so click the image below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Pocket Watch

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 35 mm, 30 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200 x 10 Frames