Rodney Campbell's Blog

Pre Dawn @ Narrabeen Tidal Pool…

by on Apr.14, 2013, under Life, Photography

This was my first visit to Narrabeen Tidal Pool, I’d heard about the location and seen a few images taken there so when the opportunity to visit the location with a few other ‘scapers came up I was happy to join in the early morning fun.

I’d heard tales of the sodium lights lighting the pool and wreaking havoc with the photos, but when arrived at the location it was in total darkness.

I was however surprised to find a few extremely keen swimmers in the tidal pool doing laps in the inky darkness with just the sounds of the waves crashing over the edge into the pool. Because it was my first time there I’d arrived early (around 5:20AM) to do a little scouting of the location to see if I could pre plan some possible shots.

I was about to try some very very long exposures in the dark to see if I could pull some colour from the pre dawn skies when the floodlights erupted into life, and thus destroying my ideas…

One of the most interesting things about the Narrabeen tidal pool is that it is quite large (50 metres) and has this very large timber boardwalk separating the main lap pool from the rest of the pool.

I spent some time exploring the various walkways over and around the pool and took a few test compositions whilst waiting for twilight to arrive and the lights to hopefully turn off…

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.

A little light painting of this far boardwalk

Dark Tides

Dark Tides

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 61.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

about 40 minutes before sunrise the other photographers started arriving and quite a few of them headed out to the outer rockshelf surrounding the pool. I decided instead to try this pre dawn long exposure which included the coming storm and include some of the photographers out on the shelf

Narrabeen and them

Narrabeen and them

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 27 mm, 61.00 sec at f/11, ISO 200


Comments are closed.

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Copyright © 2015 Rodney Campbell

Images contained on this web site may not be used or reproduced in any way without prior permission.