Rodney Campbell's Blog

My eldest daughter and I spent the weekend with a large group of photography friends staying at Bundeena in the Royal National Park just south of Sydney. Our aim was to spend the weekend taking great pictures, eating and drinking, great conversation and processing images. We woke at 5AM on saturday morning for a sunrise session at nearby Wattamolla beach.

Wattamolla Sleeps

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 123 sec at f/11, ISO 100

We knew that the weather forecast was pretty grim for the whole weekend (you don’t know that when the trip was planned months in advance :)) but we were here so we pushed on. To be fair it could have been much worse – it was raining for quite a bit of the time but whilst it was completely clouded over with very very heavy clouds it was at least not raining when we woke and prepared to leave. It did however rain a little on our short drive to Wattamolla which was of some concern but once we arrived the weather gods at least allowed us to walk down to the beach and start shooting before it started to drizzle.

So with umbrellas at hand and rain covers over our gear we began our morning ritual…

At the back of Wattamolla Beach there is a lagoon and a small cliff with what looks to be a very nice set of waterfalls (when the water is flowing). Unfortunately today even with the rainy conditions (and in fact rain in Sydney for the previous week) the water still really wasn’t flowing and all we had was a single thin fall. I’ve seen images where there’s a wide cascade of water coming over the edge and I look forward to one day shooting that 🙂

So we stuck to the beach and I tried some compositions both on the right and left sides with the rocks that were available at a medium to highish tide

6:30AM and it’s a bit over ten minutes to sunrise (not that we saw any of that – it just got gradually lighter grey). The image above is a natural two minute long exposure in the dark with no filters at all (which is unusual for me :)). I’ve left the blue cast (because I like that sort of thing – others hate it) for a dreamy look to the sky and ocean

I then moved back to the beach to try something with the rocks in the foreground – I liked this curved piece (reminding me of some long low creature digging into the sand – a platypus maybe?) right at the waters edge and with a long exposure the waves intermittently washed around it right up to the tripod

Digging In

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 57.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

A move to the other side of the beach I’m up on this nice looking sandstone wedge with the 16-35 to let it point me out to sea (and that nice looking log wedged in the rocks (I did try to move it to a better position but alas it was very tightly wedged)). Whilst it doesn’t look much changed this was taken just a few minutes after sunrise – apparently it’s directly out towards the middle – I’m sure you can see it out there on the horizon… not… Still quite dark at this time allowing me to still use a long exposure

Pointing the Way

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 28 sec at f/13, ISO 100

Finally as it was getting lighter I looked around along the rocks for somewhere I could get some nice water movement in some images with a shorter exposure time to emphasise the structure of the swirling water. Found this great spot with the waves every now and then washing right up to encircle this great rock in my foreground. Pushed the ISO to 400 and opened the aperture to f/8 to allow a shorter shutter speed (0.6 seconds) to capture the water

Wattamolla Swirl

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 22 mm, 1/2 sec at f/8, ISO 400

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