Rodney Campbell's Blog

Continuing with the very long exposure theme of a very different nature… This evening I offered to do a light painting session for my fellow photographers – let the chaos ensue…

These were the lighthouse keepers cottages we were staying in. They would provide an ideal backdrop for some light painting tutorials and exploration.

Chaos Theory

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 809 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200

I worked through a number of lighting tools in single frames. Showing my friends some of the technique for using each of the tools. They could see the results of these individual lighting implements in those test frames.

Working up to this single image involving multiple lighting in various areas of the frame using different tools all in one take. Chaos in 809 seconds (thirteen and a half minutes)!

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Montague Aurora

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 6400

Since we were up late at night I thought I’d see what the astro possibilities were Before going to bed. This is only minutes before midnight however whilst the moon was being kind the clouds were not.

Still I don’t mind the composition I created with the island receding into the distance down below. A small touch of light painting and a little bit of green airglow in the sky. Maybe even a few very faint touches of aurora in the sky to the south – or maybe thats just my wishful thinking :).

I returned to this amazing little netherworld later in the afternoon after an epic lunch. This fantastic rock filled beach spanning the join between the two major halves of Montague Island. I came back with my proper landscaping kit, ready to do some long exposures specifically in mind.

The clouds were thick in the sky and moving. Thus I was anticipating some nice streaky cloud movement with some heavy neutral density filters.

Netherworld

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 430 sec at f/16, ISO 50

What I was really hoping for was to have one or more brightly coloured litchen covered wet black rocks in the foreground. These smooth boulders, when wet, were a nice deep black so any litchen growing on them would stand out nicely. See my previous post to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Unfortunately what I hadn’t counted on was the tide dropping so dramatically.

When I was here before lunch the tide must have been quite high so the waterline was up next to the litchen covered boulders. Now four hours later at 4PM in the afternoon, the tide was very low. The waterline was ten metres away from the rocks I’d originally wanted in my frames.

Alas I had to make do with what I’m provided with…

For these images I’ve stacked a 3 stop hard Lee grad with the Lee ten stop ND (BigStopper) and the Heliopan circular polariser. This allows me to turn day to night with these multi minute exposures.

In the image above I’ve also dropped the ISO down to 50 and closed the aperture to f/16. This lets me extend the exposure time out to 430 seconds (over seven minutes).

I found this lovely barnacle covered smooth black boulder to include as my foreground hero and framed for this Netherworld scene. The result – one of my favourite images from our trip to Montague Island.

Montague Blue II

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 143.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

I had some real trouble taking my second image. The sun was appearing through breaks in the cloud above quite often now. This was causing havoc with flare which I could see in the viewfinder let alone in my long exposures. I tried shielding the lens and filters with my arms and hat. Holding objects high in the air to selective shade the gear without having yourself or the hat in the frame for many minutes is… well… laborious and tedious to say the least.

I ended up having to manually merge parts of two different exposures to get this one to work and deal with some remaining flare issues. Still very happy with this more open composition and of course the end result.

An afternoon well spent… still want to go back and do it properly one day with the coloured litchen covered boulders however.

A few of us headed to the very small rocky beach that joined the two main islands of Montague. Above the waterline the rocks are just covered in these amazing coloured litchen.

Lovely Litchen

NIKON D750 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/4.0 @ 155 mm, 1/160 sec at f/11, ISO 900

Here the colours of the litchen ranged mostly in the oranges and yellows. With very overcast skies the light was even and soft. I still only had the borrowed 70-200/4 with me so compositions were limited to what I could do with these longer focal lengths.

S

NIKON D750 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/4.0 @ 175 mm, 1/200 sec at f/11, ISO 1000

It was almost lunchtime so I’d head back to the accommodation soon but I planned to be back with my usual landscaping kit :).