Rodney Campbell's Blog

It was 8:30AM and now more than two hours after sunrise at Remarkable Rocks. Still no-one was here other than the one other lone photographer who’d braved the early morning here.

The upside of shooting at a very remote location like this at times like this is that with no-one around it’s very easy to create wide expansive images without having to worry about crowds of other people in your shots. When I shot here at sunset a few times I tended to use a longer lens (and a lot of patience) to get more isolated views without other tourists in them (especially as they tend to be climbing all over the rocks).

The Volcano

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 1/8 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 saw my newfound photographer friend photographing this smaller mounded rock off to the side of the main granite base. It’s right near where the path comes out so you basically see it and walk past it to get onto the granite base of Remarkable Rocks. She was setup down near the bottom of this slope quite close to the rock.

I decided to setup a shot up here to include this large interesting orange slab in my foreground with the orange volcano (or pimple if that makes more sense :)) in the middle with the lush low green shrub covered land behind. Off to the right you can see the boardwalk which brings you down here from the carpark.

Pro Tip: Most beginner landscape photographers get so enamoured with the amazing view in front of their eyes in the middle ground or distance that they forget to look at their feet. It’s one of the things which I think many photographers take for granted when they capture horizontal shots of the landscape in the distance (because it frankly looks amazing out there to the naked eye). However when you look at these shots afterwards they look very flat and two dimensional – because they are – photographs by their very nature are two dimensional. What you sometimes need is something in your two dimensional frame which implies the feeling of three dimensionality. Often the easiest thing to do is connect the foreground to the background of the image in some way so that your eyes are drawn into and through the image.

I waited and once she had finished her shots and moved on I decided to take mine. For something a little different I thought I’d add myself for scale and go down there and get in the shot. It’s actually pretty tricky getting up on that rock. It’s probably at least five metres tall with very smooth steep sides. All around there’s no actual cracks or handholds for climbing up so I found the best way up was to just gather some speed and run at it and hope you had enough momentum to get you near the top so you could grab in. I’m sure my friend thought I was crazy as she watched me do this.

Now the real reason I’ve included the above image is to give you a frame of reference to the image below.

This Remarkable panorama is a full 360˚ stitched panorama comprised of twelve vertical frames taken at 19mm. The tie to the above is that I took this panorama standing on top of the pimple of rock you see me on below. Let me tell you getting both my tripod and gear as well as myself up onto this rock was no mean feat :).

360 Remarkable Panorama

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 1/8 sec at f/11, ISO 100

It’s just before 9AM so it’s time to head back to our Lighthouse accommodation and greet the rest of my family for the days activities ahead 🙂

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