Rodney Campbell's Blog

Sometimes there’s lightness even in the darkness…

After more than half an hour of lovely pastel colour and some lovely subtle pink in the high whispy clouds overhead the sun finally rose over the low band of heavy cloud on the horizon. The world became a significantly brighter place and changed all that.

I’d just completed a couple sets of images to stitch into a panorama of the scene (just before sunrise). I tried a couple quick images just as the sun peeked over the clouds but once that was done I moved out into the field of stones in the shallow waters. I was looking for my next composition – one which would work with the black glass – the name many long exposure photographers use for very strong ND (neutral density) filters. I have two of these that I use regularly – the Lee BigStopper (a 10 Stop ND) and the Lee LittleStopper (6 Stop ND).

Leading With Green

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 259 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Jason was already using his 16 Stop Formatt-Hitech Firecrest ND (for some insanely long exposures). However I didn’t have hours to wait 🙂 so opted instead for stacking the BigStopper with the 3 Stop Reverse Grad for some exposures more in the five (5) minute range.

Adding these very strong ND filters turns the view to complete darkness through the lens. The ten stop ND allows just 1/1000th of the light to pass through to the sensor. This results in allowing very long exposures even during the day – turning day into night, lightness into darkness.

Wandering through the rocky scape I spied this lovely patch of green that I thought I could incorporate into a composition. I needed to point anywhere but east (away from the sun now risen in the sky) so I’ve faced a little east of south here.

I don’t normally take test shots with long exposures – I usually just look at the normal exposure through the viewfinder without the BigStopper and then calculate the translation in my head and then wing the shot by feel. For some reason I took one lone test shot – 0.8 sec @ f/11 and ISO 100. It was so lucky I did – the tide was rising very rapidly so by the time my 260 second long exposure at f/8 had finished the water had risen and half submerged my patch of green. In the end I’ve blended the two frames in Photoshop taking some of the rocky green patch in the foreground from my test exposure and blended it into my long exposure take.

The final result is up the top – sometimes luck is just on your side…

The tide was now rising rapidly and covering the rocks on the reef, at high tide they would all be completely covered. The light was still good (some low cloud was being side lit and warmed by the suns low rays) so it was time to find another composition and quickly.

Just behind me I’d spotted this very interesting lone rock. It was very unlike most of the other rocks as it was more rounded (whereas most others were more jagged) and it had this patch of very green moss growing right in the middle of the top surface – perfect…

I envisaged this shot in my mind – the moss covered boulder all lightness and glowing sitting in a pool of darkness of the water around it.

Again I’d taken a couple “normal” test shots of the scene without the BigStopper and then with the filter of darkness applied I waited for the 324 second exposure to run it’s course.

As before it was lucky I had a test shot to use – I blended in the moss covered foreground rock from the “normal” frame with the long exposure. Why you might ask – exposure wise the rock looked perfectly fine in the long exposure shot and this time the rising water hadn’t covered the rock. However the rising water had slightly bumped the tripod rendering the foreground rock slightly unsharp at pixel peeping levels.

A bit of photoshop blending and we’ve the final result…

Alone

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 324 sec at f/8, ISO 100

It’s the Lights of Christmas St Mary’s Cathedral time again in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.

Each night from now until Christmas from 8:30PM to midnight the walls of St Mary’s cathedral will be lit up with projections celebrating the festive season.

The Lights of Christmas

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 35 mm, 10 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Note: These images (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.

The Lights of Christmas are told in three parts.

1) The Joy of Giving

The Lights of Christmas examines the joy of giving and of service. Serving, or put simply, ‘doing things for others’ is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone that costs nothing.

2) The Twelve Days of Christmas

The Season of Christmas is a time of anticipation and celebration, especially for Children. Young and old can count down the days to Christmas as we are treated to a fun and specially designed animation of the traditional melody; The Twelve Days of Christmas.

3) The Madonna and Child

We are reminded of the devotion to service that the Madonna endured throughout her life and can reflect with images created by some of the world’s greatest artists.

Life

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 35 mm, 2.5 sec at f/5.6, ISO 640

Love

NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 4 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800

Service

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 13 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200

1st Day

NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/2 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800

11 Days

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 3 sec at f/11, ISO 400

Madonna & Child

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 6 sec at f/11, ISO 400

Madonna

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm, 8 sec at f/11, ISO 200

and Child

NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1.3 sec at f/5.6, ISO 500

One of the reasons for thinking that this large very straight hand hewn channel in the rocks may have once had an ocean outfall related past was the very healthy rivers of green. It seemed unnaturally vibrant and lush even – surely it was nutrient fed…

I made two attempts on this composition over a river of green. They were taken and have been processed in vastly different ways so you can compare the two here and decide for yourselves which you might like better.

This first one is only a few minutes after sunrise (well technically a sunrise – it was still well hidden behind that great big cloudbank on the horizon so it hadn’t actually made an appearance as yet).

For this shot even with using a 3 stop grad angled over the sky I manually took 5 exposures at 1 stop increments (from 1 second to 15 seconds). The “normal” exposure (4 seconds) was actually exposed perfectly – no clipped highlights or blocked shadows but I felt I wanted to make more of a statement with that green at the bottom and I felt that the overall exposure was a little flat and didn’t have that glowing sunrise feel I was looking for. So I took some extra exposures (-1 and -2EV under for some more drama in the sky, and +1 and +2EV over for more life on my river of green and on the rocks).

For this image I’ve used an HDR technique that my mastery Cohort in The Arcanum has been experimenting with lately. That is to not use the HDR software tone mapping at all but rather just use it to create a 32bit RAW TIF file with much more extended dynamic range and then do my normal post processing in Adobe Lightroom but with significantly more latitude with the sliders in post.

I’ll cover the specifics of this technique in a future post but essentially I’ve used Adobe Photoshop’s Merge to HDR to generate an untonemapped 32bit TIFF and whilst a normal RAW file in Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)) can have the Exposure slider go from -5 to +5 but with a 32bit HDR TIF you can go from -10 to +10.

River of Green

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1 to 15 sec at f/13, ISO 100

Well after sunrise the sun finally rose above the heavy cloud and Gerry and I were shooting down the channel again towards the now rising sun. It was very bright by this stage so he was using the Lee BigStopper whilst I was using the Lee LittleStopper along with a CPL and the 0.9 GND.

After this I came back to the river of green for round two – this time with the LittleStopper stacked with the CPL and the 0.9 GND as before and this time this is a straight single long exposure with just some post processing in Lightroom.

River of Green II

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 123 sec at f/13, ISO 100

It’s that time of the year again in the countdown to Christmas when the lights come out and the streets and building are decorated.

As is a bit of a tradition now in Sydney, various iconic buildings in the heart of the Sydney CBD are lit up with projected light and sound shows each evening up until Christmas.

The first to receive this treatment is a relative newcomer to the scene with the MLC mushroom (Commercial Travellers’ Association building) in Martin Place getting the Christmas gift treatment with a four (4) minute projection show on it’s fascade.

I headed down for the opening night to capture some images.

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.

Here you can see it’s all wrapped and ready for Christmas.

Christmas Wrapped

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 17 mm, 2.50 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Stardrive

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm, 1 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Toy Carousel

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 17 mm, 1.60 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Blasting Off

NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1.60 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Shroom

NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1.60 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Liftoff

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 1.30 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Headed out for what Gerry likes to call a “sneaky sunday” to Lurline Bay in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

Lurline Bay is in the Local Government Area of Randwick. It is located about 3km north from Boona Point (near Mahon Pool) and about 2 km South of Coogee Bay.

Lurline Mood

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 151 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Gerry had been planning to shoot this location for about four months – I spied this nice channel right in the corner of the bay on Google maps and Gerry assured me that Nov/Dec was the right time to shoot because the channel would line up perfectly with the rising sun. I met Gerry in a nearby street at 5AM and we made our way down to the bay.

On Maps the channel looks for all intensive purposes to be a natural occurrence. However it wasn’t till we’d ventured down the coast and onto the rocks that we discovered that it was in fact man made. It looked live very old work and we suspected it was once a poo channel out to sea – how wrong we were…

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.

Up top is the second shot of the morning and I’ve had to bump the ISO to 200 so I didn’t have to hang around all morning for the exposure to finish :). We’ve added some light painting using torches mostly at the bottom and I’ve really lit the rocks under the water in the end of the channel to emphasise them. Even still it’s a 150 second natural long exposure to start the day at 5:10AM (half an hour till sunrise).

We were a bit worried about that heavy band of cloud on the horizon when we were walking around the coastline in the semi darkness but the colour was shaping up very nicely. A slight location and compositional change and it’s another natural long exposure ten minutes later at 5:20AM. For this shot I’ve taken the image into photoshop for a little extra work including cloning out that post.

The Lurline Motion

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 86 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Ten minutes to sunrise and the fire in the sky has come in force – it’s great when you get some nice intense colours in the morning – doesn’t seem to happen all that often for us lately. We’re still shooting down the channel towards where the sun would rise soon – if it could make it’s way through the heavy cloud right on the horizon. I’ve left the post in this shot because I felt it balances better with this horizontal frame.

Sun Channel

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