Rodney Campbell's Blog

I was taken out for a sunset shoot at the aptly named North Beach by one of the Perth locals that I’d met through Google Plus. Melissa was extremely generous to pick me up where we were staying and taxi me all the way up to North Beach for sunset.

We only just barely made it in time arriving just on sunset :). The clouds weren’t giving anything away this evening, but as with many of these Western Australian sunsets the red in the sky as the sun dips over the horizon is tantalising.

The sun had already set by the time we got on the beach so I had to work very quickly before the light faded too much. I started with a few test compositions and exposures and then settled into some long exposures. This image with the Lee 3 stop grad along with a two stop ND and the polariser got me out to over 300 seconds at ISO 50 & f/16. It’s actually a manual exposure blend of two long exposure frames – one basically for the sky and one for the very dark foreground rocks area.

The foggy mist created by the long exposure almost makes these sharp but incredibly interesting rock formations I’d walked out over look like mountains rising out of the mist and clouds.

Peeking Above the Clouds

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 322 sec at f/16, ISO 50

The green mossy covered rocks on the foreshore were really unusual, I’d have loved to have had more time to explore the compositional possibilities in this area. Some really spectacular foreground interest on offer.

It was getting dark fast (especially when taking really long exposures) so I ditched the ND’s and whacked on the reverse grad to pick up some nice twilight colour in the sky along with some light painting of those interesting spiky jagged rocks in the foreground. This one at 6:25PM and 30 minutes after sunset.

Beyond the Red Line

NIKON D750 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 19 mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 100

I’d only taken fourteen (14) shots this whole day so I was pretty happy that I got two pretty decent images out of this shoot – a more than acceptable hit rate.

Then it was off to a well earned dinner out of the freezing cold, how Melissa survived walking around in bare feet on the beach at this temperature I’ll never know :).

Thanks Melissa – I know you’ve been waiting almost a year for these :)… finally! these are for you! 🙂

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