Zenith Beach & Carrington - an afternoon out!

March 05, 2016

Zenith Beach & Carrington - an afternoon out!

Well I gotta apologize for what appears to be a lack of interest on my blog of late, 2 months with no post is unforgivable!

But sometimes you get caught up doing other stuff that needs to be done and, between that other stuff and working, sleeping and eating, there is just not enough time left to dedicate to getting out and about with a camera.

Anyway, about a week ago, I managed to escape and get out and about for the afternoon.

I drove north to Port Stephens (about an hours drive from home). There is a beautiful area out at Shoal Bay called the Tomaree National Park. Lots of walks, great views overlooking Shoal Bay from the top of Mt Tomaree. At the foot of Mt Tomaree, on the other side of the peninsula from Shoal Bay, is Zenith Beach. A quiet, secluded beach that never seems to have anyone on it.

There must be a sandbar off the beach area because as the waves roll in they suddenly crash over something as if they have been tripped. This might make it a little difficult for a swim; after they hit the sandbar they certainly come crashing down hard!

It is a nice place to relax, listening to the crashing waves and looking out toward Boondelbah Island off the coast to the north east across the sea. I'd been there for about half an hour when the weather started to close in.

And that's another thing! What is it with the weather of late? It is either pouring with rain and thunderstorms or it's hot, like, 38 degrees Celsius. When it is that hot, tramping around the countryside toting camera gear is not conducive to good, clear headed thinking!

After my sojourn to Zenith Beach (which I will visit again for a sunrise safari) I headed back into town to Carrington. A suburb of Newcastle situated on the Hunter River it has an amazing wharf of fishing boats, pleasure craft and other stuff that I love to take photos of!

By now the weather had turned and I was waiting for the downpour to start. I had wanted to try and get some long exposure shots of the boats. Problem is that boats don't sit still for any man on a long exposure shot. The idea was to get 3 bracketed exposures +/- 2 EV with 2 x ND8 stacked filters. This would give a lovely soft silky water and cloud when merged and the software would remove any ghosting caused by slight movement of the boat. It worked for some, although on the longer bracketed exposures the movement of the boats was even too much for the software to adjust so, I removed the blurred photo and just merged 2 exposures. Still got some good results!

I have been planning my next photo safaris. Google Maps and the Photographers Ephemeris play and integral part in my planning. I have a couple of weeks off from the 10th March and plan to put it to good use!