Rodney Campbell's Blog

I took my first visit to Sydney’s annual Sculpture By the Sea very early one morning during the week before heading in to work. I went early hoping for some sunrise action (although it turned out to be quite foggy and overcast).

Spread across the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama this annual event brings together over one hundred sculptural works scattered along the coast.

I’d arrived about 45 minutes before sunrise and headed first over to Marks Park to find some suitable material for pre dawn twilight shots out to sunrise. Bubble No:5 by artist Qian Sihua which sits in one of the prime positions for coastal photography was my first port of call and as I was basically the only person there except for some security guards I setup for some long exposure shots in the darkness.

Note: These photographs (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 one is a lazy 231 seconds taken just over 30 minutes before sunrise – we had a very thick heavy band of cloud on the horizon which makes it hard to distinguish where the sea ends and the sky begins but also meant a spectacular sunrise was unlikely. It was so dark on my side of the scene I knew I had to do a little light painting fill using a small zoomable LED torch on this side mostly on the sculpture but also on the foreground stones…

Blowing Bubbles in the Sky

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 27 mm, 231.00 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Around sunrise I moved further up the hill above the sculpture to try some longer length views – this one just before sunrise was about as colourful as the actual sunrise itself got

Raspberries at Dawn

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 8 sec at f/11, ISO 100

By this stage I was having real trouble with lots of condensation buildup on my filters (Circular Polariser and Graduated ND) which required frequent mopping to avoid having hazy contrastless images

Just after sunrise as the sun got up into the cloud layer on the horizon we got a fabulous second chance rise and the colour storm in the sky really started to happen so I stayed where I was and continued with compositions with the Bubble No:5 sculpture

Blowing on the Fire

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm, 1 sec at f/11, ISO 100

and then ten minutes after sunrise the sun finally broke through above the heavy cloudbank for a spectacular second rise

Second Sun

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm, 1/3 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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