Rodney Campbell's Blog

Planned a quick sunrise session at Mona Vale Ocean Pool with Gerry but when we arrived at the carpark next to the beach we noticed at least a dozen other photographers with tripods already heading down to the pool. There’s really only a couple locations to shoot this pool at this location so we decided to give it a miss and head to the next beach/tidal pool along – Newport

The Damned Log

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 8 sec at f/11, ISO 100

I’d shot at Newport tidal pool once before and it was already pretty late by the time we got out and down the beach to the pool (it isn’t very close to parking, etc). As is pretty common here in Sydney there were already a few brave souls swimming in the pool (in the darkness mind you)

It was another morning with crap clouds – a heavyish bank right down on the horizon out to the east and no high clouds to get any colour – we’d have to make do with some pastels if they eventuated

We headed straight past the pool and around the headland to do a little rece to check out what was there – lots of interesting rocks is about all – and this huge driftwood tree. Gerry and I figured if only it was much closer to the water we could at least use it for some very interesting foreground interest since the sky was not…

We spent about ten minutes almost breaking our backs trying to move it – we got it a few metres closer but eventually it was too hard to get any further and we gave up in frustration; the image at the top at 6:48AM and ten minutes to sunrise

I started heading back towards the tidal pool and along the way found another driftwood trunk on the rocks – this one was smaller and easier to move and eventually we got it into the water. As it happens – too far into the water as the tide was rising and threatened to wash it away (eventually did)

We had to grab shots quickly and making compositions wasn’t easy since the waves were shifting and spinning the log around with each ocean surge!!… sigh… around 10 minutes after sunrise

Washed & Churned

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

and a few minutes later with the sun just peeking up above the cloud band

Tumbled

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 24 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

So we had an interesting morning of back breaking log shifting at Newport with a few moments for photos inbetween :)…

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