Rodney Campbell's Blog

I could see this one fabulous orange topped rock sitting out in this area of steely blue grey rocks along the shoreline. It’s bright orange top surface stood out like a beacon in this sea of neutral dark tone.

I’m guessing it has stayed this way because the top surface stays above the tide whilst everything else gets submerged at high tide and the orange lichen is killed off by the salt water. Whatever causes this – it was perfect for a nice close and tight composition with the sun setting rapidly over the horizon behind the distant hills.

Sticking with the Lee LittleStopper again for some long exposures at 8:15PM and just 15 minutes till sunset… Here I’m stacking everything – the Heliopan CPL along with a 3 stop Lee grad and the LittleStopper and dropping the ISO down to 50 to lengthen the exposure.

Almost Alone

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 77 sec at f/11, ISO 50

and now time for a “normal” exposure selfie version with the same composition. Removing just the LittleStopper for this 1/4 of a second exposure just as the skies went nuts with orange colour. A peaceful time for me to reflect on a wondrous day as well as our orange table rock 🙂

Orange Reflections

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/4 sec at f/11, ISO 400

Five minutes to sunset and we were getting really good colour in the sky so it was back to the LittleStopper for some simplified oranges against the deep blue of impending night…

Isolated Oranges

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 124.00 sec at f/11, ISO 50

It was time for a change in composition so I moved about the rock looking for another angle which would work and finally settled on this. I was liking that small pool of reflective water at the base of the rock and was trying to work it into the composition with some fine adjustments to the polariser. The sun had set by now but the horizon and some of the upper clouds were still glowing. Time for a few more tries at a selfie…

Arrow Lines

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/3 sec at f/8, ISO 400

and back to adding the LittleStopper to the mix again for this final long exposure for the evening. Had to bump the ISO to 200 to avoid an insanely long exposure now that it was getting quite dark (still a 3+ minute exposure at 8:40PM and 10 minutes after sunset).

Orange Spear

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 186 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Then it was time to go and meet up with the rest of the family… the end of a very very successful photographic day…

We said our goodbye’s to Penneshaw and started our journey to the other side of the island. We were planning a few little stops along the way including a side trip to Seal Bay and the Raptor Domain. But first we made this little detour to check out the Gala Day at American River.

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.

Finite Drive

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/100 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

The Seal Bay Conservation Park is on the southern shores of Kangaroo Island and it allows you to see the Australian Sea Lion up close.

Seal Bay

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm, 1/320 sec at f/8, ISO 100

There’s a nice set of boardwalks leading you right down to the beach where you can view the sea lions.

Zig Zag

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/200 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

and thats my three daughters jogging down to the bottom.

I figured I’d better have at least one shot of a sea lion. Though to be honest I though we may be back here again later to go out on the tour so I didn’t bring a long lens and I wasn’t really trying to take any pictures yet. Unfortunately we weren’t back here again but we did see many many more seals and sea lions right where we were staying for the next five days.

Australian Sea Lion

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/320 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

My eldest daughter basking in the warm glow of sunset.

Basking in Warm Glow

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

We’d just had dinner at the nearby Penneshaw Hotel (the food was actually quite good – a little on the pricy side but good none the less). We had some time to spare before we wandered down the road to join an evening tour with the Penneshaw Penguin Centre.

I’d brought my camera gear (of course) so my eldest and I literally walked down to the rocks below the hotel and found of course this fabulous area looking north west.

Again we had a nice array of golden orange lichen covered rocks – tho you can see in these images that where the normal tide comes up the rocks are clean and steely grey (presumably the salt water kills the lichen).

My first few compositions this evening were situated above these points of rocks aiming out to sea and covered in an array of colourful lichen.

The one above with my daughter sitting patiently watching the sun go down, then she moved out of the way whilst I tried some long exposures – first with the Lee LittleStopper and then one with the BigStopper.

Little Glow

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 185 sec at f/9, ISO 200

They both turned out quite nicely but in the end I preferred the shorter LittleStopper variant

Big Glow

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 324 sec at f/8, ISO 200

One of the photographic goals I’d set myself this year was to shoot some different things and one of those things was some textures. I’d started early this year starting my first few shots in this space back on the second of January. Now here on Kangaroo Island I continued the theme – but more on them soon :)…

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.

Driving back to Penneshaw from our morning sunrise session at Cape Willoughby with my daughters, I passed this little tree tunnel with a windy little dirt track heading off to the side of the road. Of course I had to stop and after multiple compositional attempts I think I like this one the best…

Winding through the Trees

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm, 1/60 sec at f/8, ISO 560

and stopping again about ten minutes later on the main road back to Penneshaw, looking back down the road. I’d like to claim that I saw the cool shape in the gap in the trees when I was originally composing this… serendipity at play once again. The rest of the composition, the square crop and the processing however are all me :)…

Casper

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/80 sec at f/8, ISO 360

and so back to the textures. On the island interesting textures were jumping out everywhere if you had the courage to look. Normally I was looking to do much tighter detailed views of the textures themselves (which is also useful if you plan to ever use them as textures to layer blend with other images later in post to literally add interesting “texture”). Sometimes however I couldn’t but help falling back to my landscape roots and including them in their environment.

Orange Madness

NIKON D600 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 155 mm, 1/250 sec at f/11, ISO 100

The Edge of Nowhere

NIKON D600 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/320 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Green Iron

NIKON D600 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 135 mm, 1/800 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

It was now 50 minutes after sunrise so I expected we’d be heading off soon but the conditions were still very favourable for photos so I was reluctant to leave such a fantastic location as I knew I’d likely not be back again.

A few more shots with these fantastic orange lichen covered rocks and the turquoise waters off Cape Willoughby…

Smooth Orange

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 32 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Back where we started the morning (well within a few metres of where I first composed some shots in the darkness two hours beforehand). The colours in this place are amazing – with these brightly covered rocks, the more subtle tones in other rocks from pinks to greens, blues and grey, lush green mosses and grasses and the vibrant turquoise waters – who needs brightly coloured skies…

I took two versions of this composition…

The first (below) is a “normal” exposure with the polariser and a 3 stop grad ND filter.

Turquoise

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

and the second (up the top) adding the 6 stop ND Lee LittleStopper to the mix to stretch the exposure to just over 30 seconds – I didn’t need a lot – it was still very windy and the clouds were moving very fast.

Then down onto the fingers of rocks stretching out into the water to try something… and here’s where things went awry :).

BigFoot

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

A couple shots after this I moved forward to try and improve my composition and get a better set of water flow over the rocks… and thats when the tsunami hit … Well not quite but a large wave surge did smash into the rocks at the front and then proceeded to arc up into the air over the rock and well landed on me. I held the tripod up in the air but things still got pretty wet. It gave my daughter who was standing watching from about 5 metres behind me quite a shock 🙂

We spent a good ten minutes trying to dry the camera, lens and filters off. Being a sucker for punishment I was back for more straight after. Unfortunately the wet filters and the conditions meant the next 14 frames were all hazy with foggy filters. Eventually I just removed them and shot “naked” (the lens – not me :)).

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.

Time for one more shot before we left the amazing Cape Willoughby for the last time… the conditions were still stormy and moody but it was time to go – it was after 7:40AM and two and a half hours since we’d arrived.

Storm Rider

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 1/10 sec at f/11, ISO 100