Rodney Campbell's Blog

Headed back over to Remarkable Rocks for my first sunrise there. Sunrise was due at 6:23AM this day so I was out on the rocks shooting just over half an hour beforehand.

It was a very grey overcast morning so I wasn’t expecting very much weather or colour wise. Still it was another opportunity to explore possible compositions at this amazing place.

Sunrise itself was a complete non-event – didn’t even see the sun – it just got slowly lighter grey. I was soon joined by another keen photographer and I’d see and speak to her again a few times here and at Admirals Arch over the next few days.

Caveman

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 1/2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I was still heavily drawn to the area of the rock on the eastern side where these amazing water worn contours curve up in lines towards the top where these two large rocks sit. The whole area is covered in the fabulous bright orange lichen which I’d now grown accustomed to – except in the areas where the water flowed in the bottom of the contours and washes the lichen and colour away. The interesting part about these huge rocks on this side is they have these sort of sheltered caves within them with windworn curved exteriors which overhang in interesting human featured shapes.

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.

For the image above I took eight (8) different bracketed exposures from -4EV to +2EV. In the end the 0EV image was correctly exposed and wasn’t at all clipped at either the highlight or shadows end. However as a continuing experiment with layer blending in photoshop I opened three of the exposures as layers (0EV, +1EV and -2EV) and blended various aspects of the three original exposures to create the final image. I used both manual mask blending as well as some luminosity mask techniques.

It was grey grey grey and I frankly despaired that the morning was a bust when more than an hour after sunrise (and we still hadn’t seen the sun yet) some interesting light was starting to happen.

The think heavy cloud above was just starting to break up with tiny rips and pockets in the sky. The two of us were still the only ones here – it was before 8AM after all :).

Finally at 7:40AM great slashes of light were poking through the clouds from above as the sun rose above the heavy cloud across the whole sky. It was a glorious sweet light and whilst the bulk of the land and sea below was still bathed in soft even light the tears in the sky were staring to form and amazing patches of light were beaming down all over the landscape. It was god rays and pools of golden sweet light from heaven all over the place. Finally things were looking up.

With this amazing light the colours of the sea were amazing – this rich luminescent turquoise blue. Even the orange lichens were given a boost in this light.

On Rails

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Whilst it lasted I simply spent time making compositions which used the ribbons of sweet light in the sky along with the contours and curves in the rock at my feet.

Curved Essence

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/1 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Rivers of Light

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/1 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Offset Curves

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I even managed a few selfies later on whilst the god rays were popping down from above right out on the horizon out to sea. I must say I was really pleased with how these two images turned out (as landscapes in and of themselves and also as obligatory selfies :)).

For the selfies I used manual layer blending techniques again to deal with the contrast differences and mainly to bring a little light onto the git standing in the frame who was somewhat in silhouette due to the light being mostly behind him :).

Remarkable Light

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

For this one I’ve backed into one of the cavelike parts of one of the large remarkable rocks so that the front edge of the overhanging rock forms a silhouette windows to the amazing view beyond. I particularly liked how it even had this little window hole in the thin outer shell. My daughter says it almost looks like the dark framing has been pasted onto the image (even though she’s been there and we did one like this in the same spot with my girls the next morning :)). I assure you however this is how it was as shot in camera :).

Sweet Light Above

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

Then it was almost over – time for one more shot before the skies filled in and went grey again. This last shot is probably my favourite from this time.

Light Shows

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/5 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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