Rodney Campbell's Blog

There are a number of shipwrecks in Homebush Bay, here in Sydney near the olympic village.

A friend from work and I had been interested for some time in taking some photos there – specifically the wreck of the SS Ayrfield.

We finally got organised enough to go and take the images one evening. Most people appear to photograph the wrecks either during the day or at sunrise (where the sun will rise almost directly behind the SS Ayrfield). Since we didn’t fancy getting there at some insane time in the morning we decided to give sunset and twilight a try. There is unfortunately a large multistorey apartment block right on the waters edge which blocks the late and setting sun so we knew the ship would be in shadow before and during the actual sunset.

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 gallery viewer.

This first image was taken before sunset (7:20PM) – we had fantastic dramatic skies from a storm rolling past and beautiful golden light on the buildings in the distance.

Days Like This:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 29 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 11, ISO 200

The next image was actually taken before sunset as well (about 15 minutes before sunset at 7:30PM). This very long exposure was possible because I made use of a 10 stop (1000x reduction in light) neutral density filter which allowed the two minute exposure during daylight.

Lavender Ghost:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm, 123 sec at f / 11, ISO 200 + ND3.0

The following two very long exposures were taken well after sunset during and just after twilight (8:16PM and 8:23PM)

Blue Ayrfield:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 22 mm, 123 sec at f / 16, ISO 200

Something a little different with this next image (besides the very long exposure) is that we light painted the right hand side of the ship (which was dark and in shadow) with a dolphin torch to give a bit more detail on that side. The left side of the ship and the mangroves on the far right are lit by a fixed tungsten spotlight that they have lighting the ship at night.

Ayrfield Shine:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm, 239 sec at f / 13, ISO 200

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