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

I happened to be up right on sunrise this morning and looked out the bedroom window to see this fabulous light with the sun just rising through the low clouds and a pool of mist or fog in the valley between us and the distant city buildings.

I umm’d and aar’d about getting the camera out, changing lenses, getting out the tripod and setting up for the shot – in the end I opted to run it handheld (through the flyscreen :)) almost fully zoomed with the 70-200. The mist was vanishing quickly as the sun rose and burnt it off so I grabbed a few quick frames before it whisped away…

Morning Mist

NIKON D600 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 190 mm, 1/200 sec at f/10, ISO 500

Continuing with my project with one lens, one focal length for one hour in one location, on a nice overcast day – this time I’m visiting a very futuristic office building at 1 Bligh Street.

Unfortunately I ended up having to shoot this building across two separate half hour sessions.

When I first arrived at the building I walked (with just my D-SLR with the tiny 15mm fisheye lens in hand) towards the concierge desk in the centre of the public foyer inside the building and asked security if it would be OK for me to take a couple shots inside (specifically mentioning the classic straight up shot in the centre of the building). The building is a pretty amazing piece of architecture – it’s like a round cylinder on the outside but inside it has this large central hole right up the core of the building almost in the shape of a heart

Unfortunately the answer was a polite but confusing “you’re welcome to take shots with your smartphone but not with a ‘real’ camera”. I must say I was somewhat puzzled – I had no tripod or camera bags, etc and was wondering what practical difference it was going to make to them if I handheld my iPhone or my D-SLR. So on this first visit I ended up only able to shoot on the outside

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.

Only Circles

NIKON D600 + 15.0 mm f/2.8 @ 15 mm, 1/80 sec at f/4, ISO 100

1 Bligh

NIKON D600 + 15.0 mm f/2.8 @ 15 mm, 1/250 sec at f/4, ISO 100

Curvaceous

NIKON D600 + 15.0 mm f/2.8 @ 15 mm, 1/30 sec at f/4, ISO 100