Rodney Campbell's Blog

Before coming to Kangaroo Island I did a little research on potential shooting locations and Remarkable Rocks was one of the top hits and it’s easy to see why.

The Flinders Chase National Park features the spectacular Remarkable Rocks and Admirals Arch as well as a colony of New Zealand fur-seals at Cape du Couedic.

Remarkable Rocks are naturally sculptured formations precariously balanced atop a granite outcrop and are a wondrous sight to behold.

Remarkable View

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm, 292 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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.

I’m not sure if I can adequately describe how crazy amazing these rocks are and how out of place this whole thing appears to be. All the land around this area is covered by these very low scrubby bushes (which you can see in the first shot above). For many kilometres behind me it’s just like that, lots of scrubby bushes as far as the eye can see but no rocky outcrops or anything like that. However right at the tip of this promitory reaching out into the sea this huge rounded granite outcrop rises up out of the ocean and on top scattered like a handful of jacks sit these huge weather sculpted rocks.

Luckily the Lighthouse Keepers cottage we were staying in at Cape du Couedic is literally a five minute drive from Remarkable Rocks so I knew I’d get a number of opportunities to shoot here during our five days stay.

Wasting no time however I decided to make a quick trip here on our first day. Straight after eating dinner and leaving the rest of the family to recover from our long drive here from the other side of the island I made the quick trip here and arrived at the rocks just before 7PM. Sunset was late at this time of the year (8:30PM) so I still had plenty of time.

The image up top is the view as you walk down the boardwalk towards the rocks. There were very few people about at this time so I setup for some long exposures on the boardwalk. This image using just the Heliopan CPL along with the Lee BigStopper (10 Stop ND) for a lazy five minute exposure.

I tried a few more with a 0.6 grad as well but with the rocks sticking up haphazardy above the horizon line, using the grad was fraught with the danger of obvious darkening. In the end I pretty much didn’t use the grads at any stage when I shot here at Remarkable Rocks over the next few days because of that reason. There was just too much important stuff (these amazing rocks) sticking up above the horizon and having them strangely cut with darkened lines just wasn’t going to work.

Of course there was time for the obligatory selfie with the rock… This is a blend of two images – one long exposure shot using the Lee BigStopper stacked with an ND 0.9 and the CPL (247 sec @ f/13 and ISO 50) and another with just the CPL (1/125 @ f/8 and ISO 100) to get a good capture of me after I’d climbed up into the rock.

Rockin’ Sunset

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1/125 sec at f/8, ISO 100

and why not another as the sun slowly sank in the west (behind the camera position here)… I took a combo long exposure and normal shot for this as well but have given you the normal frame here.

Remarkable Set

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1/15 sec at f/8, ISO 100

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