Rodney Campbell's Blog

Even though a great deal of organisation goes into our camera club weekends away, we are unfortunately not so organised about planning what to shoot when we are actually out there.

Basically we tend to just wing it. This tends to work pretty well for the daytime and afternoon shoots, since we can just drive about exploring new places and stopping wherever we feel like taking some photographs.

However for us sunrise landscape shooters we tend to like to have some idea of where we are going to go and some sort of expectation of what is going to be there when we get there. I know crazy talk… :). When you’re heading off in the darkness an hour or two before sunrise it’s sometimes kind of handy to have some sort of plan :).

Blue Poles

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 215 sec at f/11, ISO 50

So it was we’re in the house where we all gathered to eat and chat on our first evening and a few of us start to wonder if we’ll get up for sunrise and go shoot “somewhere”. Given we are not actually familiar with the location and no-one did any recce during daylight the “somewhere” is the problem :).

So it was onto Google, Flickr and other such resources to see if we could find somewhere close by to go shoot sunrise. I found a few shots online of these interesting looking poles at the edge of this dam and as it happens it was less than five minutes drive down the road from where we were staying.

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.

Getting up the next morning was a bit of a struggle – our accommodation at Cicada and Hunter Moon Country Houses was very very comfy and warm, and well it was cold out here on a winters morning in the country :).

Still three of us were up and on location at this spot before 6:30AM (which was pretty late for me since this was just 15 minutes before sunrise).

Most of the cloud was over on the left towards sunrise, so this view up above looking south over the poles and the dam wasn’t so great colour wise but the use of the 6 Stop ND of the Lee Little Stopper adds an extra dimension to the image.

As you can see these poles simply lead out into the water of the dam – and we couldn’t actual fathom their purpose?

In the image below it’s almost twenty (20) minutes later and nearly 25 minutes after sunrise but the heavy cloud over that way is still holding the sun at bay. Time to whip out the BigStopper this time for some more long exposure goodness angling more towards the sun and the little colour in the sky.

Sliding Beyond

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 125 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Almost an hour after sunrise and it was time to start packing up and head back to our digs to catch up with the rest of our cohort and for some well earned breakfast.

Eaten

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 90 mm, 1/100 sec at f/5.6, ISO 110

and one final handheld look back towards the poles with some really interesting cracks in the sky where the sun is trying to break through the dark void. I was thinking at the time possibly the shot of the morning is taken as we’re walking away :)…

Dark Void

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 65 mm, 1/250 sec at f/8, ISO 100