Rodney Campbell's Blog

I’m psyched to be able to tell you that my photograph of sunrise over Chris Anderson’s 1000 Surfboard Graveyard at Garie beach in the Royal National Park south of Sydney has been shortlisted as a finalist in the City of Sydney’s prestigious Art & About “Australian Life” photographic competition

For those of you who can make it to Hyde Park in the Sydney CBD between 19 September to 12 October 2014 you can see the work displayed in large scale format in Hyde Park North for the entire festival period!

Australian Life – Boarding

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 110

I remember the morning well – Gerry, Suren and I were headed to Garie for a typical sunrise shoot. Just as we hit the sand we could see a large cluster of faint lights way up at the northern end of the beach. Throwing caution to the wind (we’re thinking perhaps some bizarre cult activity!) we investigated. It wasn’t till we got much closer that we saw it was a huge area of surfboards sticking out of the sand with tiny lights at the base of each

We met Chris Anderson – a young artist on a mission – to collect 1000 broken surfboards to raise awareness about a more sustainable approach to the way we manage waste. He’d been collecting boards for over three years and it just happened that his display for the 1000 Surfboard Graveyard was on the previous night

Of course we knew nothing about this beforehand but in a slice of serendipity it was still there in the pre dawn and became part of our foreground interest in our normal landscape morning ritual

Almost half an hour before sunrise – thick moody clouds were on the horizon but a long exposure with the reverse grad brought out some colour and light

To meet the brief for the Australian Life competition I focused on the theme of surfing. Surfers and surfing have now become embedded as part of Australian culture and my aim was to highlight their passion and sense of adventure

My own childhood is filled with memories of being at the beach and altho I don’t surf, I believe that we seascape/landscape photographers and surfers do share a lot in common (you could probably include rock fishermen as well :))

We’re all incredibly passionate about our chosen recreation and go to great lengths to participate. We’re often found rising early and heading to the ocean before the sun rises and often pushing the envelope to get the results. We see the beauty in the world at this spectacular time of day and get to share in the silence and serenity of the pre dawn. It’s a magical time of day which few people really get to experience. It’s not just the light which is often conducive to photography – it’s the whole feeling of being at one with the forces of nature and contemplating the magic of the world around us… food for the soul…

This was actually my first shot at our session at Camp Cove. What’s unusual (at least for me) with this image is that it’s a manual blending of two images

With landscape and seascape images especially on the cusp of the days (sunrise, sunset & twilight) I almost always use some form of graduated neutral density filter to hold down the usually brighter sky to match that of the darker foreground. This is so I can achieve a nicely balanced exposure (or as close as I can get to it) in one shot. I prefer to do as much as I can to get it right out in the field so I have as good a source material as possible and am left with very little to do back in post processing

This was the case here as I used the Lee 0.9 (3 stop) GND for the shot however I was also stacking this with the Lee BigStopper (10 stop ND) to greatly lengthen the exposure time (out to minutes). We were getting a bit of cloud movement in the right sort of direction so we figured some long exposures were in order

Blending Lines

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 62 sec at f/11, ISO 50

When using heavy ND’s – especially in rapidly changing light (here it’s about 5-10 minutes to sunset) it can be a bit of a guessing game selecting the right bulb mode shutter time to get the right long exposure for the shot. Normally I look at what the exposure would be without the ten stop ND (in Aperture priority mode) then switch to Manual (bulb) mode. I then add the BigStopper and then start the shot and whilst it’s going work out roughly how long I want to shoot for (ten or so stops more). I often add another half to one stop – especially in falling light (sunset)

My first shot of the session (144 seconds) was slightly overexposed for that bright patch of sky right on the horizon and on the water just below (but the foreground rocks were very nicely exposed)

I could straight away see some blinking highlights in the image review, I suspected I might be able to save most of them from the RAW file in post (since the histogram in camera is based off the 8 bit JPEG preview which has less dynamic range than the 14 bit RAW file). However the image was looking a little too bright for what I wanted overall anyway so decided to take another shot

My second take with the same overall settings except that I more than halved the shutter time (62 seconds). This had a much better histogram – almost touching the right side and also having no crushed blacks but pretty much touching the left. The exposure for me for the top two thirds (and the bottom right corner) of the image was just about perfect but that bottom left corner where the green covered rocks and around it in the shadowy darkness was too dark for me

As I mentioned earlier I almost never blend images in photoshop (except for stitched panoramas and star trails) however this was a case where I had a perfectly usable source frame. I likely could have extracted detail from the shadows in that bottom left corner but it’s always better to use well exposed source data than try and rescue underexposure

I opened the two source images as layers in photoshop with the second (better overall exposure as the top layer) and just added a simple layer mask and lightly painted in the better exposure for that bottom left corner (mostly the rocks) from first (overexposed) image I’d taken for a little blending to take effect. I was using a large brush with very low flow and opacity so the blending would appear seamless. Whilst I was there it also allowed me to paint in some of the better exposed shed which sticks up above the horizon into where the grad was covering it, and also slightly lighten up that top left corner which I felt was just a bit too dark

The finished image is above and the two source frames are below

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 144 sec at f/11, ISO 50

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 62 sec at f/11, ISO 50

A few more single shots from my sunset session with my daughters at Mrs Macquaries Chair

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.

Forcing a longer exposure with a Lee 0.9 ND stacked with the Hitech 0.9 Reverse Grad and shooting at ISO 50

Post Opera Blues

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 28 mm, 125 sec at f/11, ISO 50

The above about thirty (30) minutes after sunset and well into twilight, the below another five (5) minutes later and just before we packed up to leave (it was getting bitterly cold by this stage :))

Shadows of the Opera

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 56 mm, 93 sec at f/11, ISO 100