Rodney Campbell's Blog

The sky was being bathed in epic light late one afternoon in Sydney and it was looking like we might get a spectacular sunset so I’d thought I’d reprise my trip to nearby Berry Island on the North Shore of Sydney Harbour near Wollstonecraft.

The last (and only other) time I was here I marvelled at the fantastic multicoloured and striped sandstone at the waters edge around the point of the island on the harbour and knew I’d have to return.

Being back here again I could see what inspired me the first time. Unfortunately nature conspired against me this trip – it was very low tide so my favoured rocks were no longer right at the waters edge and sunset was pretty much a bust with quite heavy cloud limiting the spread of colour through the sky.

With my images from my last trip to Berry Island my wife remarked that the stones were nice but complained about that ugly ship in my compositions :). The striped stone was still stunning so I set about creating some compositions which looked in a different direction but still included the stone as my foreground interest. This time I ventured further around the point and along the sides and used the Sydney CBD in the distance on the other side of the harbour as my background.

This composition on the eastern side of the point looking mostly south and taken pretty much right on sunset

Puffs and Stripes

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 71.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Just on the western side of the point facing south east about ten minutes after sunset and a natural long exposure (121 seconds) with just a CPL and the 3 stop reverse grad

Sydney Ice

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 26 mm, 121.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Half an hour after sunset and I wanted to include some greens and really interesting textured rocks to go along with the purples of late twilight – no filters now, just a 244 second exposure in the near darkness

Swirl

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 28 mm, 244 sec at f/11, ISO 200

I wanted the city to have a more prominent view in my composition so I moved much further back and used a more telephoto lens (52mm) to compress the scene and bring the city closer to my foreground

The following image is also focus stacked – I took one long exposure (244 seconds) frame predominantly for the foreground (and the water out to the horizon) with the foreground rocks being the point of focus and then another shorter exposure (81 seconds) for the city and sky (with the focus on the city) and finally a third frame also with the focus on the city but exposed just for the bright city lights (36 seconds). I then took all three frames and blended them for this final result

Sydney Sleeps

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 52 mm, 244 sec at f/11, ISO 200

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