Sunday 24 November 2013

Green Point Reserve, Lake Macquarie, Australia



Green Point near Belmont on Lake Macquarie, is such a lovely place!  A great grassed picnic area, the reserve is on the shores of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales.  Walk along the reserve from Green Point along a concreted path and in a few hundred metres, come upon another large grassed open area with public BBQs and picnic tables.  Overlooking this grassed area is a series of 3 lookouts from which I have taken and posted photos from on a previous blog status.

Although I had been there before, I went again; this time taking my son Lachlan with me.  He is a budding photographer and had not been there before.

As you can see, it was a beautiful sunset, filled with those lovely golden tones and colours.  I have never seen sunsets like those over Lake Macquarie.  The lake reflects the fiery colour of the sky all over and gives a great effect for a photographer.

The main object of our Photo Safari on this particular day, was the large tree situated in Green Point Reserve.  It is a beautiful, huge tree and, every time I visit there is a family having a picnic or someone just lying underneath taking advantage of its' shade.  The Sun was in an awkward spot for my photos of the tree and when I saw how blown out the water reflection was, I decided to change them to Black & White because the silhouettes of the children looked much better in the B&W.

Once the Sun started to get lower in the sky, the water reflected the lovely golden tones from the sky.  There was a couple of blokes fishing in their tinny on the water and I managed to catch them in silhouette also against that glowing water.

I hope you enjoy these!

Regards to all

Jordy



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Tuesday 5 November 2013

Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia


I had, a short while ago, purchased an ND8 filter for my Cokin system.  I already had a screw on Marumi ND8 filter and I thought I would play around with using both filters at the same time.

Swansea Heads in New South Wales, is where Lake Macquarie (the largest permanent salt water lake in the southern hemisphere) joins onto the Tasman Sea on Australias' east coast.  At the tides, the channel can run fairly fast and so I decided that was where I wanted to be for the long exposure photos.

I arrived about 2 hours before sunset which gave me ample time to do a recon for the photos and decided that the best option was the small wharf that ran beside the boat ramp of the Marine Rescue Boat House.  I wanted a subject that would stay still whilst the long exposure smoothed out the water that ebbed and flowed around its' pylons.

Once I had that sorted, I went for a short wander over to the rocks that form part of the breakwall and shoreline of the Swansea Channel.  I set up with both ND8 filters to see what sort of long exposure I could get in daylight.  I am happy with the result, however to get that really silky smooth look to the water in sunlight, I really need to get a much darker ND100 filter.  The 2 stacked ND8 filters enabled a 5 second exposure from f22, ISO100.  It was sufficient to get a likeable effect but I would still love to have that ND100! [haha !]

I had set up on the rocks to catch the waves coming in over the top and in and around with that swirling motion.  There was a fisherman standing on a rock who was standing very still.  Murphys' Law! - I only wanted him to stand still for 5 secs but, NO, as the shutter opened he reeled in and moved off.  The subsequent photo caught his movement and that of his fishing line also, so I did salvage something from that at the end of the day!

The one thing I love about the ND8 filters is that those beautiful warm colours of the sunset are enhanced and a lot of glare is cut from the photos.

I hope you have all been well.

Regards

Jordy

Serene Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia
Swansea Heads Living - NSW, Australia.  ISO100 f22 5 second exposure.

Poles Apart at Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia.  ISO100  f22  5 second exposure.

Marine Rescue Wharf - Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia.  ISO100  f22  20 second exposure.

Marine Rescue Wharf and Breakwall - Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia

Swansea Heads Sunset - NSW, Australia.  ISO100 f22 6 second exposure

The Ghost Fisherman - Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia. ISO100   f29   8 second exposure
Long exposure on rocks.  Swansea Heads, NSW, Australia.  ISO100 f29 8 second exposure.

Catching up.

 Well it has been a couple of months since I posted a Blog article.   I don't have any Project or roll of film in particular to share wi...