Rodney Campbell's Blog

Coolah Aerials…

by on Oct.10, 2016, under Life, Photography

Our family headed out to Coolah to visit and stay with relatives for an extended long weekend.

Flowing Line

Flowing Line

FC330 + 3.6 mm @ 3.61 mm, 1/120 sec at f/2.8, ISO 161

Coolah is a town in the central western part of New South Wales in the Warrumbungle Shire. It’s a small town of around 1,000 people.

On the northeastern side of the area is the Liverpool Range with the Coolah Tops National Park. Most of the region is agricultural with sheep and cattle raising and crops grown along the Talbragar River and Coolaburragundy River valleys.

My wife’s parents live here as they own two farms in the region. We hadn’t been out there for quite some time so a visit was well overdue.

As we were staying for four days I took my usual landscaping camera gear along with my DJI Phantom 4 drone. I was of course hoping to get in some serious night time photography with my D-SLR rig. However what I was mainly hoping was to add to my collection of abstract landscape aerials with the drone.

Unfortunately we had quite a lot of rain during our stay (it pretty much rained for the four days). I did manage to get out for a bit of dedicated photographic work during the infrequent breaks in the weather.

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Follow the Line

Follow the Line

FC330 + 3.6 mm @ 3.61 mm, 1/190 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100

This is I guess a Behind the Scenes (BTS) shot for the area I’d found to try my hand at some abstract aerials. You can see I was drawn to this area of lovely patterned crops. It had this beautiful dirt road running through the middle which was perfect for what I had in my mind.

From up here you can instantly see what I was drawn to for the images in this post. From ground level however you can usually only glimpse a faint fraction of the final result if at all. You have to really imagine what the landscape is going to look like from directly above. It’s tricky work driving along and then deciding to stop because you “see” something with potential. You then have to unpack, setup and fire up the drone to actually get up there. It’s only then can you see if what you see in your mind will actually pan out in reality.

Over Line

Over Line

FC330 + 3.6 mm @ 3.61 mm, 1/60 sec at f/2.8, ISO 141

Then it’s about manoeuvring, adjusting the height and position and rotating to get the composition which matches your idea. At this point it’s not really in any way disimilar to the process I go through when landscaping on terra firma. You still have to take your time carefully framing and reframing compositions to get them just right before taking the shot. The only difference in this case is you’re somewhat limited by your less than 25 minute flight time :).


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