Turquoise Waters... - Rodney Campbell's Blog Rodney Campbell's Blog

Turquoise Waters…

by Rodney Campbell on Mar.23, 2015, under Life, Photography

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