Rodney Campbell's Blog

Leaving Broome early in the fog we headed south on the longest single days drive of our entire trip by far.

We’d be traveling 536km to De Grey River Rest Area.

The Flock

NIKON D750 + 28.0-300.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 300 mm, 1/640 sec at f/5.6, ISO 140

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.

Why so far – well… frankly… the drive between Broome and Port Hedland down the west coast is pretty boring. My father said this would be the least interesting part of our whole trip :).

The drive was very long and relatively uninteresting but we still arrived at De Grey with quite a bit of daylight to spare. The Rest Area was pretty full by the time we arrived however so we just needed to grab a spot as best we could and setup for the night.

Having driven for much of the day I was pretty tired and there was no time to recce the area looking for some decent foreground interest to include with the stars at night. We weren’t yet in ideal conditions for milky way shots – we are just past the full moon. However there were still no clouds in the sky day and night and tonight the moon wouldn’t rise till 7:36PM. With sunset at 5:37PM I only had a short window from astro twilight (approx 6:50PM) till moonrise to get some half decent milky way shots in before it became too bright. Of course given the conditions I had to limit how high I bumped the ISO.

First shot of the evening – 6:51PM and the night looks pretty reasonable even at ISO 3200. That’s our car and van there with the rest of my fellow travellers sitting out under the stars on the other side.

Parallel Parking

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 3200

I then moved a touch closer and took a number of vertical frames for a stitched panorama of the milky way arching above our campsite at De Grey river.

Last shot of the session before the moon started making it’s presence felt. 7:25PM and time to join the others for the evening.

Sky Light

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 4000

Don't forget to Share...

Google

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

Print