Rodney Campbell's Blog

Having had limited composition offerings at Coogee’s Ross Jones Pool (due to an unthinking tog who’d decided to camp out in the middle of the scene for the entire sunrise session) it was time to check out the greenery that was on offer right next to the pool and see if we could compose some shots without him and his tripod in them.

Tides of Green

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 82.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

The tide was moving from low to mid so the rocks were still reasonably well exposed above the waterline but the water was coming up. This was pretty ideal for the lovely green covered rocks along the waters edge between the beach and the pool.

I tried some slightly slowish shutter shots (in the half to two second range – which is usually good for water swirling around rocks and waves washing in and out). However the tide was still too low and the water really wasn’t coming up far enough onto the sand or my green rocks for my liking so I added the Lee LittleStopper to the mix. This added six (6) stops of ND and turn seconds of exposure into minutes for this more dreamy look – and allowing the occasional high wave surge to come up and swirl water on the sand and greenery.

Up top the Lee LittleStopper stacked with a Lee 0.9 Grad ND and the Heliopan CPL for 82 seconds of goodness moments before sunrise…

and moving back to get even more of the green outflow, just after sunrise but the heavy bank of cloud on the horizon was ensuring we wouldn’t get much of that…

Green Flow

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 112 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Less than ten minutes after sunrise we were lucky enough to get a second chance sunrise with fantastic God rays breaking through below and above the low clouds on the horizon. So it was time to move back down onto the sand and incorporate the fantastic display above the horizon into the shot with my rocky greenery.

For this shot and the next I actually merged two exposures in Lightroom – normally I don’t do this and rely on using my grad filters to control the exposure differences between sky and land in my shots. I like to get things as right as I possibly can out in the field, both so I have the best data to play with when I get back into the digital darkroom but also so that process of editing my shots afterwards is much quicker.

In this case I was already using all slots on my Lee filter holder (the Heliopan CPL out front with the Lee 0.9 grad in the front filter slot and the Lee LittleStopper in the back slot). The 0.9 grad wasn’t enough to hold down the sky in the shot so I ended up taking two exposures. One 27 second shot to get a good deep exposure for the sky (but a very underexposed foreground) and another at 56 seconds to get a better foreground and a slightly washed out sky.

Either shot was probably rescuable in Lightroom but having good RAW data is handy so I opened the two images as layers in photoshop and used some masking to blend them.

Second Rising

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 56 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Then I switched to the longer lens (the 24-70) for a tighter view on that fabulous God ray display on the horizon and moved to the walkway above the pool for this. Again it’s a blend of two exposures – one at 15 seconds and one at 25 seconds. This time I also got even trickier – again I have the Lee LittleStopper stacked with a Lee 0.9 Grad ND and the Heliopan CPL but I’m also handholding and moving a Lee 0.6 grad diagonally across the frame in front of everything to hold down the sky and water a little further.

Sunlights Grin

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm, 25.00 sec at f/11, ISO 50

Last shot of the morning – the sun was well up by now so it was time for harder shadows and time for the Lee BigStopper.

Coogee Tee

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm, 144.00 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Took my Tamron 90mm macro lens out for a spin at the Australian Garden Show here in Sydney’s Centennial Park. I hadn’t had the opportunity to use this lens for a very long time so it was good to give it a run for half a day.

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.

The light wasn’t ideal (fairly clear blue skies) for macro flower photography so most of the shots suited a monochromatic conversion…

Islands

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/100 sec at f/8, ISO 280

Tendrils

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/100 sec at f/4, ISO 160

Stacks and Layers

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/100 sec at f/8, ISO 200

Replicant

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/100 sec at f/8, ISO 180

and of course a non monochromatic look at two of my daughters 🙂

Floral

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/250 sec at f/5, ISO 100

Located at the southern end of Coogee beach, Ross Jones Memorial Pool is a man made ocean pool. It was built in 1947 and is located next to the Surf Life Saving Club. Waves from Coogee Beach spill over the concrete walls of the baths during high tide and rough seas.

I’d shot at Ross Jones Pool here in Coogee once before with the Focus group but my friend Gerry hadn’t been here before so we met up here early one morning for a shoot.

The clouds looked somewhat promising early on but the tide was crap (a mid tide and rising) – I reckon this place would be much better at either high tide (preferably) or maybe low tide with more rockage next to the pool exposed.

Complimentary

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm, 154 sec at f/9, ISO 100

Firstly – there’s this unspoken etiquette amongst landscape and seascape photographers. You don’t just go putting your tripod in front of other peoples setups and you make sure when you’re moving to new spots in the scene that you’re not getting in other peoples shots – ask first – it’s just plain polite…

This place must be cursed… the first time I was here I was setup with half a dozen other photographers all in a row along one side just above the pool. We had cameras on tripods taking shots when a small film crew arrived with their RED camera and they just came down and without a word setup their tripod and stood literally directly in front of ours – I’m talking just 1m away right in front of my tripod. How rude is that…

Fast forward to today and this time it’s a photographer who arrived after us (by this time there were four togs here already shooting) and this guy just waltzes in and sets up his tripod right out in the middle of the scene. If you look in the horizontal shot below you see there’s this main pool which is filled with water and then on this side there’s a second pool (which is not because the tide is too low). He sets up right out in the middle of the second pool up near the front corner with his tripod up as tall as it can go and he stands there so he’s basically in everyones shot. He must have been in the zone because subtle jabs about being in peoples shots, etc had zero effect.

So the rest of us had to make do with trying to compose him out (or compose so I can clone him and his tripod out)… Sigh… some people are just thoughtless and rude…

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.

The first shot above is from way up on the walkway above the beach and pool shooting down. I was looking for a simplified composition with just part of the unique telltale Ross Jones pool wall jutting into the corner of the frame. I think the colour version is too busy for what I was trying to achieve but still I found the colour effect was interesting. We have the deep blue of early twilight (it’s 5AM and about 40 minutes before sunrise) and at the bottom a mass of yellow toned scene tinged by the very strong flood lights which light the pool at night.

The following shot is from the walkway on the next level down and much closer to the level of the pool. It’s only 15 minutes later but the ambient has brightened significantly.

Golden Wall

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm, 62 sec at f/11, ISO 100

A couple minutes layer and the high powered pool spotlights have turned off and we’re left with just a little light pollution from the street – it’s Lee LittleStopper time…

Blue – Light and Dark

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm, 216 sec at f/8, ISO 100

and who can resist a little selfie action with those cool concrete blocks surrounding the Ross Jones pool

Me & Myself

NIKON D600 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm, 1 sec at f/11, ISO 100