Rodney Campbell's Blog

If there’s one thing that Montague Island has plenty of it’s birds. You have no idea how many there were or just how noisy they can be. I’m talking thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions – it certainly felt that way.

Look Right

NIKON D750 + 50.0-500.0 mm f/4.5-6.3 @ 500 mm, 1/800 sec at f/6.3, ISO 100

We crept up very stealthily to this small gathering of cormorants lined up very nicely on this curved rock.

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.

I’s

NIKON D750 + 50.0-500.0 mm f/4.5-6.3 @ 500 mm, 1/1000 sec at f/6.3, ISO 100

I managed to get a few nice frames of them all laid out in a row before they got spooked and took to flight.

Flight

NIKON D750 + 50.0-500.0 mm f/4.5-6.3 @ 500 mm, 1/800 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Even flying through the skies in formation these birds have a beautiful grace to them.

Flight Mode

NIKON D750 + 50.0-500.0 mm f/4.5-6.3 @ 500 mm, 1/800 sec at f/8, ISO 100

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Some lovely colour in the sky to go along with the incredible colour of the lichen on the rocks.

The Hammer

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

For a few moments at least we had a little fiery red in the clouds being lit by the new dawn.

Mystique

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 2.5 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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.

Ten minutes later the sun had risen and the world had changed from night to day. The light was getting harsher but still I was hoping for a way to claw back the incredible lightness I was feeling at this spectacular location.

It was time to bring out the heavy ND’s to soften the scene. Dropping in the Lee LittleStopper (a six stop ND) along with the 3 stop reverse grad and CPL. I took a number of exposures with varying exposure times searching for that feel I was looking for. In the end I’ve taken four separate exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 20 to 123 seconds. In post I’ve manually blended the frames brushing in the areas of each image via a mask as required.

Inner Glow

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 20 to 123 sec at f/11, ISO 100

The end result an image with a vastly different feel to the incredible riots of colour only minutes before.

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Here are some interactive 360˚ panoramic views of the inside of our Entropy Exhibition.

The Inside – It’s a Wrap

Whilst I was on duty one day I took in my gear and took some photographs of the setup. I lugged in my insane Novoflex multi row pano head and took a number of frames for full 360˚ panoramas.

View from the Front Door

I took images from a number of different locations in the room and have included a selection of some here for you to wander around the room as it were. You can also interactively manually pan (both left and right and up and down) and zoom the pano’s using the mouse or keyboard.

View from the Back

Front Side

With these 360˚ pano’s I’ve only used the middle row of images I took. I didn’t bother persisting with the multi row images (had some stitching problems so gave up :)).

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It’s a wrap and our Entropy Photography Exhibition is over.

After many months of planning and preparing we can relax… well at least till our next exhibition :).

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/8 sec at f/8, ISO 100

I thought you might like to take a look at what my small part of our exhibition space looked like along with some of the other work in the wider space.

Above you get to see the tight layout of my ten chosen pieces. All fitting within my interpretation of the “Entropy” theme and encapsulated as the “Interstellar Series”.

Exhibiting your work isn’t about getting rich financially. I figure going in that it costs more to put on than you expect back. It is however food for the soul and good for the creative artist in you. It’s an opportunity to refine your work and to work towards a specific goal. It’s a process of learning and growing. Even the experience of working out and doing everything you need to do to put on an exhibition (not just the images themselves) is both enlightening and rewarding.

It also allows you to get your work out there for the wider public to see. There’s something truly rewarding spending time chatting with the people who come in to see your work. Having real conversations with them about the experience, the work and the results.

There’s something very satisfying printing your own work, cutting mats by hand and framing the pieces. Then when you’ve hung them all together on the wall and can see them all large in their individual and collective glory…

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.

View from the Front Door

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/6 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 8 Frames

Whilst I was on duty one day I took in my gear and took some photographs of the setup. I lugged in my insane Novoflex multi row pano head and took a number of frames for full 360˚ panoramas.

I’ve included a couple of the 360˚ pano’s here but only including the middle row of images. I didn’t bother persisting with the multi row images (had some stitching problems so gave up :)).

View from the Back

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/5 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 8 Frames

The Inside – It’s a Wrap

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/8 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 8 Frames

I really must thank my fellow eight exhibitors and photographers, all part of “Parallaxis”. I’m grateful to you all for being so supportive and making all of this possible. Finally I must thank my family for putting up with me and allowing me the latitude to pursue this crazy passion of mine :).

I’m already planning and working on my next body of work for a future exhibition some time. I think we’ll let the dust settle on this one before locking in the next :).

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We’d scoped out this little coloured cove the afternoon before. It was an ideal little spot for our first morning shoot on the island. I mean you can see it was spectacular of course with all these multi coloured lichens on the rocks. It was also just a short 10-15 minute walk on a well maintained path from our accomodation as well.

Dreamscape

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 62.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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.

I had thought that these masses of bright orange and red lichen covered rocks would only be found on our more southern shores in Australia. Places like Tasmania (the Bay of Fires) and Kangaroo Island in South Australia. It was a totally unexpected but welcome surprise to find them here on the eastern coast of Montague Island.

To start with we have a natural long exposure (a little over a minute) well before sunrise (5:15AM).

Colourscape

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 10.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Having a particularly colourful sunrise to go along with these beautiful rocks was an added bonus. If anything the array of colours was even more diverse here than in other places I’d seen these lichens. Here we had colours ranging from the deeper reds and oranges through yellow and lime green.

Colour Riot

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 6 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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