Rodney Campbell's Blog

I decided take a punt and try shooting sunset on Sydney Harbour from somewhere I’d never been before. Out came TPE (The Photographers Ephemeris) for a bit of research and I searched for some suitable locations which would hopefully provide a good sunset location on the harbour and wasn’t too far away to drive to.

Eventually I found this little place called Berry Island Reserve – right next to Wollstonecraft on the lower North Shore of Sydney. It was originally one of Sydney’s Harbour Islands, but it is now connected to the mainland by a constructed isthmus.

I couldn’t find many photographs of or taken from this location but Google Maps and TPE suggested that sunset would be behind the Shell Refinery on Greenwich Point and I was hoping for a ship to be docked at the refinery to include in some compositions. My only concern was that on maps it looked like there was heavy bushland on the whole point with no real access along the shore. When I arrived however I found a very well maintained ring track going around the island and right out to the point – bonus! 🙂

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 slideshow gallery viewer.

I arrived at the point about 50 minutes before sunset to find these absolutely fantastic colourful striped sandstone rocks around the point and out into the water with a good selection of green mossy stuff as well – perfect for some foreground interest.

The skies had been very smokey since before sunrise but had started to clear during the afternoon so I wasn’t sure what we’d get by sunset. I framed up this shot with this fantastic rock out in the water with the sky producing this magical soft light about 30 minutes before sunset. I stacked a Lee 3 stop ND with the Hitech 3 stop Reverse Grad along with the CPL and set my ISO to 50 to get a longer exposure

Otherworldy Light

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 50

This one perhaps 10 metres around the point with the fantastic lined rocks and ribbons of green in the cracks taken just one or two minutes after sunset

Berry Lines

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 100

and just 5 minutes later we were treated to a brief show of vibrant red lines in the sky

Curves in Red and Green

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 25.00 sec at f/10, ISO 100

almost twenty minutes after sunset it was getting much darker so I could do some extremely long exposures – this one looking straight down one of the stripy cracks between the coloured sandstone towards what colour and light was left in the sky

Cracks in Purple

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 154 sec at f/11, ISO 100

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