Rodney Campbell's Blog

This wasn’t actually our plan for the evening. Gerry and I had mad a last minute plan to shoot star trails over an amazing weeping tree on the Bondi golf course. Alas when we arrived the tree was now gone… First of all who’d cut down this epic little tree – one of the few trees in this area

Therefore it was Plan B time. We drove to nearby Macquarie Lighthouse. On the way we stopped at Dudley Page Reserve to shoot some silhouettes of the people awaiting sunset. The view was very nice – the photo’s… meh…

Taking in the Warmth

NIKON D750 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/250 sec at f/16, ISO 100

At the lighthouse the pastels had come out so it was time for a few quick shots and a pano. Gerry had brought his rail which made things easier. Me – nada – therefore mine’s a manual botched job 🙂

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.

Macquarie Pastels

NIKON D750 + 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm, 1/4 sec at f/8, ISO 100 x 6 Frames

… and then the spotlights came on – consequently Plan B is dashed. Time for Plan C. The last time we’d shot here was back in 2011 or something. We’d gone to Diamond Bay – which is not so much a bay as this cavernous cut in the cliffs you can scramble down. We figured it would be reasonably protected from light pollution

When we got down to the bottom and out to the ocean we weren’t really feeling it. A composition to include the stars and anything remotely useful in the foreground wasn’t coming to mind

So we did some shots with the narrow gorge and some light painting just in case :). Our intent was to light the gorge with some interesting side and back lighting and then do a steel wool spin down the middle. Alas tho I’d brought the light painting bag it had everything but a lighter to light the wool 🙁

Diamond Gap

NIKON D750 + 12.0 mm f/2.8 @ 12 mm, 217 sec at f/2.8, ISO 200

Backlighting Gerry would have to do instead. Now we know this is Gerry because of the ever present shorts and the very long legs – made super extra tall in this case courtesy of the 12mm Laowa lens 🙂

We had to change composition to make this work, so this is the only single take we did… Plus I was sick of stumbling over these boulders in the dark to light paint from afar 🙂

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