Engagement Photo Shoot

For quite a few years now I have been photographing landscape images from around Victoria, Australia.  And while I have been out and about taking these photos I have often come across other landscape photographers and also a few wedding photographers.

One time while I was down at Cape Schanck photographing Pulpit Rock a bridal party with their photographer arrived.  What was surprising about this is that to get to Pulpit Rock involves a walk down a long steep boardwalk and then a scramble over the many rocks which make up the “beach”.  How the bride made it out there in her dress and shoes I’ll never know, but one thing was certain these guys were keen!  I ended up not taking many photos that night but watched with wedding photographer instead.

And then a similar thing happened a couple of weeks later while I was at Gunnamatta Surf Beach.  Again not many photos were taken while I watched the wedding photographer work.

Thinking about these two wedding photographers it struck me that what they were doing was very cool.  Not only were they able to work with couples documenting one of the most important day of their day of their lives together, they were also doing it in these amazing locations!  I have taken quite a lot of studio based portraits of toddlers and families, and also a lot of landscape images, but for some reason it never occurred to me to combine the two areas until recently.

I was fortunate enough to be able to photograph Sara and Fady late last year in a park in the south east of Melbourne, I’ve included several of the shots below from the shoot.

It was great fun to be able to work with Sara and Fady, shooting in the middle of the day in summer was certainly a different experience from working in a studio with strobes, however we got a lot of terrific shots and it was great to be able to spend some time with them both!

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Late Afternoon at Bayon

During the end of October and the start of November I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks with my family travelling through Cambodia and Thailand.  The time that we spent visiting the temples at Angkor in Cambodia was simply amazing and I am looking forward to visiting again one day.

While we were there I took hundreds and hundreds of photos.  The one below was taken late afternoon at Bayon, which was the state temple of Jayavarman VII and was built in the late 12th through to the early 13th century.  Today it is most famous for the enormous stone faces that were carved onto each side of its towers (of which only 37 are now standing).

Pentax K5 IIs, DA* 16-50mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/50sec.

I’ll post more pictures over the coming weeks.

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A HDR Photograph of Tawonga Huts.

A couple of weeks ago I went up to the Bogong High Plains to photograph Tawonga Huts which are a 4 km walk from Pretty Valley Pondage.  Cattlemen’s huts have been located on the site since the late 1880 and have been rebuilt several times over the years with the most recent one being constructed in the early 1970s.

I arrived at the site around 10:00 am (unfortunately well after sunrise) while it was a cloudy day there were prolonged periods of bright sunshine which made for some challenging lighting conditions.  Ordinarily I would use graduated ND filters to bring down the exposure of the sky however in this instance they would have also unnecessarily darkened the hut I was trying to photograph.  Therefore to try and capture the full dynamic range of the scene I decided to take a bracketed series of photographs (with exposure values of 0, +/-2 and +/-1) with the intention of HDR processing them through Photomatrix Pro.  For these images I used my Pentax K7 and DA* 16-50mm lens, the camera was mounted on a tripod and the shutter was fired with a Pentax cable release.

I have included the 5 shots taken below that were used to produce the final image.  These images are the RAW files and are unprocessed, however as you can see I have been able to capture the full dynamic range of the scene with good detail in the sky in the -2 and -1 EV shots, and in the +1 and +2 EV shots I have got a lot of detail recorded in the log fence, shadow areas of the hut and some detail in the overhanging snow gum.

-2 EV

-1EV

0 EV

+1 EV

+ 2 EV

Below is the final image once the above 5 were processed through Photomatrix Pro and Photoshop CC.

5 image HDR composite of Tawonga Huts on the Bogong High Plains (Alpine National Park). Pentax K7, Pentax DA*16-50mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/15sec.

 The final HDR image turned out much better than I had hoped and it is a great representation of the scene; I am really happy with it, it certainly made the 10hrs of driving and 8 km round trip walk worthwhile!

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The Old Pier

A few weeks ago I went down to Clifton Springs near Geelong in Victoria to photograph the remains of an old pier that was constructed in the early 1900’s.  The top deck of the pier has long since been removed and all that now remains are the old pylons.

Pentax K7, Pentax DA* 16-50 mm, ISO 100, f/16, 1 min.

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Sunset Over West Peak.

This photograph was taken on an extraordinarily windy night from the Crosscut Saw looking towards West Peak in the Alpine National Park (Victoria, Australia) late in 2013, just 4 days before a bushfire burnt through the area.

Pentax K-01, DA 15 mm limited, ISO 1600, f/4, 1/60.

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Gunnamatta Ocean Beach

Over the last few weeks I have been spending quite a bit of time at Gunnamatta Surf Beach which is located in the Mornington Peninsula National Park (Victoria).  The beach is a 3 kilometer long stretch of exposed sandy beach and according to beachsafe.org.au is one of the best surf beaches along the Mornington Peninsula, with consistent 2 m waves all year.  It is however a very dangerous beach with Life Saving Victoria making an average of 113 rescues at the beach each year.  Going to Gunnamatta at the end of winter means I haven’t had to fight the crowds that flock to the beach in summer and it usually just been myself down there and a few keen fishermen.

There are several spots along the beach where there are some large rocks in the sand which make for some interesting photographs if you are game enough to get close to them.  This photo below is of one them and was taken late in the afternoon just prior to sunset; just in case you are wondering I got drenched taking this!

Pentax K7, Pentax DA21mm limited, ISO 100, f/14, 0.5 sec

The sunset last Sunday was incredible, the colours were so vivid and constantly changing.As I mentioned at the start the waves are practically constant at Gunnamatta and you need to keep you remain alert and keep your eyes open, I didn’t and it caused the loss of my DA* 16-50 mm, f/2.8 SDM lens.  So my next post will be on seascape photography tips that no one else will tell you!

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Winter sunset at Princes Pier

One of the joys of having a diesel car and only making short trips in it is regularly having the particulate filter become blocked.  Short of replacing the filter, which costs lots of $$, the only way to clear it out is to take the car on a drive and try to burn the trapped particulates off.  So on Sunday I took went down to Princes Pier in Port Melbourne to try and clear out the particulate filter in my car and take some photographs of the pier while I was down there.

Construction of Princes Pier was completed in 1915 and until the late 1960s it served as one of the major entry points into Melbourne for new migrants arriving by ship.  The pier was eventually closed in 1990 and in the subsequent years a series of fires damaged the pier and several structures built on it.  Then in 2006 restoration work was commenced with the first 200 odd metres of decking being restored and the remaining 400 metres of wooden pylons being preserved.

The remaining pylons are fascinating to photograph and they remind me of the old cattle jetty at Point Nepean but on a massive scale!  At this time of year the position of the sun during sunset bathes the pylons in soft orange and pink light.

The two photographs below were taken 5 minutes apart and show the changing colours of the light during sunset.

Pentax K7, Pentax DA* 16 – 50 mm f/2.8, ISO 100, f/14, 10 sec.

Pentax K7, Pentax DA* 16 – 50 mm f/2.8, ISO 100, f/11, 15 sec.

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Wallaces Hut

Out of all the huts in the Victorian Alpine region, Wallaces Hut is one of my favorites; its a hut I have visited on many occasions and is something I will never tire of.  Built in 1889 from slabs of snow gums with roof shingles made from woollybutt it is the oldest hut in the Alpine National Park.  Wallaces hut was frequently referred to as the Seldom Seen Inn as it is located among a grove of old snow gums, however it is easily accessed by a short walk from the Bogong High Plains Road approximately 7.5 km from the rocky valley dam wall at Falls Creek.

The photograph below was taken on a particularly chilly morning during late spring after a night of light snowfall.

An old Parks Victoria sign at the hut which has now been replaced gave an evocative description of the location.  I have repeated the text below.

It’s the 1890’s… David Wallace and his three sons Arthur, William and Stewart had recently built the “Seldom Seen Inn”.  They made the hut as a shelter for their visits, when they mustered their cattle off the high plains before the winter snow.

Sitting around the open fire with a cup of billy tea they’d recall their days.

Like when the lean-to door was left ajar and a cow got stuck inside and died!

Or when William was stuck here in bad weather and there was no dry firewood!

With numb hands, a knife and patience, a fire was made…necessity being the mother of invention.

No easy access through the high country in those days, just rough tracks made by cattle and the few bush characters who came here.

If ever you find yourself at Falls Creek take the time to visit Wallaces Hut, its certainly something you won’t regret.

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Dawn in the Alpine National Park

Pentax K-01, Pentax DA* 16 – 50mm, ISO 1600, f/7, 1/15 sec.

This photograph was taken just as the sun was about to come over the horizon during a trip to the Alpine National Park in late March this year.  The wind was blowing at over 60 km/h making it incredibly difficult to get a sharp photo.  This one was the taken during a brief break in the wind and was the only one that was sharp from a morning of shooting.

Cope Hut at First Light

I took this photograph of Cope Hut in the Alpine National Park a little over 4 weeks ago just towards the end of dawn.

Pentax K-01, DA* SMC 16 – 50 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, f/14, 1/4 sec.