Rodney Campbell's Blog

I was with Gerry on a cloud less pre dawn one morning at Circular Quay on the harbour here in Sydney.

Just before sunrise however, a hint of the first clouds and what was to come started magically appearing in the sky. When sunrise finally came the skies lit up with a wonderful array of pink tinged fluffy cotton ball clouds across the whole of the sky. I love it when this happens.

Rush Hour

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28 mm, 246 sec at f/8, ISO 400

The other thing which is fantastic about clouds appearing fast like this is it’s usually accompanied by wind pushing the clouds across the sky and into view. As it was this morning the clouds were moving across the sky very fast even though the air was relatively still down here at ground level.

We had been at the time shooting up on the deck of the Cahill expressway which overlooks Circular Quay and the ferry terminal. We were already pointing out into the harbour towards the famous coathanger and the clouds were moving in a nice left to right (west to east) direction.

Unfortunately I’d not brought any of my heavy ND filters today. I had grads and the polariser but I wasn’t expecting to be shooting after sunrise. It’s always the way – decide with all best intentions not to bring something and then I need it…

Gerry had his Lee BigStopper and his B+W 10 stop screw in ND so I asked if I could borrow the BigStopper (I know he prefers the colour cast from the B+W to the blue of the Lee).

We stuck with this view looking out towards the harbour and tried a few compositions with the addition of the 10 stop ND’s.

What is very interesting with both the image up the top and the one below is the way it looks like the clouds are stationary on the far left and then progressively look like they are speeding up as you move to the right where they are accelerating out of frame. I’m not sure if if was just because the wind was picking up or localised that way but I found the end result very interesting.

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.

Accelerate

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28 mm, 246 sec at f/8, ISO 100

When the clouds finally came it ended up being a very fine and productive morning out. Time to make use of the great conditions and work with a style of photography I do enjoy… But more of that in the next instalment :).

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