Rodney Campbell's Blog

I’d seen a number of images of the Webb Bridge in Melbourne so I figured I’d take a walk down there to shoot it after sunset.

I’d arrived a little early, was suitably uninspired and after checking it out for a few potential compositions later when it got darker I decided to shoot sunset over the water from the middle of the bridge (the non webby part).

The following ended up being all consecutive shots.

Yarra Wharves

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 24 mm, 1.6 sec at f/11, ISO 100 x 6 Frames

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.

The first is a stitched panorama looking down the Yarra river over South Wharf on the left then past Bolte Bridge on the middle right and then across to North Wharf on the right. It was taken right on sunset and is a stitch of six (6) vertical frames taken at 24mm.

It was a cold wintery night and it was looking like sunset would be a bust. The skies were grey and overcast so I wasn’t expecting much if any colour. Switching horizontal and wide and with just the light 2 stop (0.6) Lee GND for company to hold down the sky a little we have…

Cold Steel

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 3 sec at f/11, ISO 100

In reviewing this frame on the back of the camera I could see potential with a long exposure. Even though the cloud cover was near 100% they were moving nicely from left to right with variation in light and dark patches. So I added the Lee 6 stop LittleStopper to turn seconds into minutes and shot this 287 second version of the composition.

Longing for Bolte

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 287 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Pro Tip: Six (6) stops of exposure change (e.g. the addition of a 6 stop ND, changing from ISO 6400 to 100, etc) is a very useful gap. Essentially the exposure time changes from seconds to minutes. So if the base exposure time was 1 second then if all other factors remain constant (besides the 6 stop ND or ISO change) then the new exposure time is 1 minute. Likewise 2 sec -> 2 min, 3 sec -> 3 min and so on. Much easier than using some complex exposure calculation.

The Bolte Bridge is a large twin Cantilever bridge which spans the Yarra River and Victoria Harbour in the Docklands precinct to the west of the Melbourne CBD.

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