80 Seconds of Wineglass Bay

Note: The two photographs featured in this article are available for purchase in a range of formats here and here.

This photo of Wineglass Bay on Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula was taken using an extremely slow shutter-speed of 80 seconds.  With most cameras you won’t be able to keep the shutter open for 80 seconds without a) ending up with stacks of motion blur and b) ending up with a completely white image (because too much light reached the sensor).  In fact in broad daylight shooting at ISO100 and a normal 35mm (or digital equivalent) camera, you probably won’t be able to keep the shutter open for more than about 1/10th of a second without ending up with some serious overexposure issues; most of the time in sunlight I’m shooting at 1/250 and f/8, or thereabouts.

The joy of long exposure is the way in which moving elements either disappear (they don’t stay long enough in one place for the light they reflect to register on the sensor) or, if repetitive or slow moving, become blurred.  Here, while the beach and the mountains behind are static and remain relatively sharp (sadly the gusting wind meant that a little fuzziness crept in to the frame), you can see that the clouds have streaked into long wispy things, and the sea has mellowed out into a soupy azure mist.

I get this effect (one which I’m very fond of but don’t generally have much time to invest in or perfect, hence the scarcity- and frequently, paucity- of images in this style in my portfolio) by using a Neutral Density filter.  ND filters, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, are effectively colourless grey (hence ‘neutral’) gels of varying darkness that fit in front of the lens.  They come in a range of values, the most common being ND2, ND4, ND8, ND50 and ND400.  The numbers relate to the darkening factor- an ND2 halves the amount of light as would normally enter the lens, an ND8 lets in 1/8th as much light, and so forth.

The above shot was taken with my favourite and oh-so-subtle ND400.  I’ve always figured if you’re going to go for an effect, you might as well go the whole hog.  That basically means that just 1 in 400 photons that would normally reach my filterless sensor can get through the gel, or in other words, the image is 400 times darker- and the shutter needs to be open 400 times longer than in normal conditions to get the same exposure value.  To add to the effect, I’ve shot at f/22 (the smallest aperture) and stacked the ND with the polarizer to get more colour, and to stretch out my time window as long as possible to magnify the blurring effect.  It goes without saying that I had to trek my tripod onto the beach to get this image.

I’m moderately pleased with the output here.  The colours are great, though the frame was slightly overexposed, and as mentioned above the gusting wind knocked the tripod about a bit so I didn’t end up with as crisp an image as I might have liked (click the photo to see it larger).  I do truly love the effect, although shooting such a calm waterfront on such a wide-angled lens meant that the relatively gentle waves washing on shore didn’t make for as dramatic an image as a rougher sea would have done, where large portions of the beach would have been turned to mist.

Landscape photographers with a penchant for water features make use of the ND filters a lot, though generally the lighter filters (ND8, for example) which allow for just a second or two of exposure, giving the water that lovely milky texture you find on some of those wall-prints that people who actually get paid for their photography tend to produce (should I be learning something here?).  I really want to take more time and apply the neutral density technique more widely.  Unfortunately once you find an appropriate subject in the right light, it then takes time to set up the tripod, prefocus, set the camera up for long-exposure (turn off Auto-focus and Image Stabilization), get the polarizer set up, then add the ND filter (without altering the polarizer-because once the ND is on you can’t see anything through the lens- it’s too dark), plug in the cable-release, and so-forth.  It takes a couple of minutes to re-set for each shot, and in changing light you don’t get much leeway for making mistakes- especially when you really have to guesstimate the amount of time to leave the shutter open (with the ND400 stacked with a polarizer at f/22, usually between 45 and 90 seconds, depending on the light).

That’s a lot of talk about what is a pretty niche little application of some fairly uncommon photographic gear.  For those of you who have read this far- congratulations!  I appreciate your commitment.  For the rest of you, I hope you liked the photo at the top of this post before you got bored.  To reward you, here’s another shot- the same vantage, but this time shot with a 1-second exposure (by opening up the aperture to let more light in) rather than 80 seconds.

Structure- Victoria

An assortment of photographs of random buildings around Victoria.  The great thing about structures and architecture is that there is a wealth of forms and shapes, each of which changes with light and season.  This first shot is of some tower atop Arthur’s Seat, in the Mornington Peninsula.

This second shot is a church in Hawthorn East, taken from Auburn railway station.  I have since been informed by rail authorities that I am not allowed to take photographs from the train platforms without written permission.

Bite me.

I love this long-exposure shot of this tower-of-uncertain-function in Williamstown, on the harbour’s edge.  The purple hues in the sky and the sense of movement in the cloud, coupled with the somewhat eerie shape of the tower itself, combine to give this image a mood I’m very fond of.

Melbourne’s skyline is increasingly reminiscent of many North American cities, with its relatively small area dominated by shiny high-rise office-towers on a uniform grid layout.  Here, then (then-recently-completed) Eureka Tower (at right) towers over nearby buildings in Melbourne’s Soutbank.  Eureka, at 88 stories high, is one of the tallest buildings in the southern hemisphere, and at the time of photographing was the tallest residential structure in the world (although is now placed at #4).

The art-deco styled Palais Theatre was badly damaged by arson about eighteen months ago, but remains a St. Kilda landmark.  I loved the white against the blue sky in this particular shot, and the way the sun brought out the details in the architecture.

This clock tower, also in St. Kilda just a few hundred yards from the Palais, looked good framed against the sky.  I used a neutral density filter (ND400) to block out most of the sunlight and allow for a 45-second exposure, blurring the clouds and the palms.

Here the inspirationless sprawl of suburban functionality leaves us with low strip-mall roofing, neon lights, aerials and satellite dishes beneath a warm dusk skyline.

I took this shot from directly beneath the Bolte Bridge, in Melbourne’s Docklands.  Earlier shots I took lying on my back.  In the absence of a tripod I had to use careful breathing and a steady hand, and was grateful for the ultra-wide 12mm aspect on my lens.

And the final shot in the selection- aptly named “Parting Shot” as it was the last shot I took of Melbourne before heading off on a 6-week overseas assignment- is again of Eureka Tower in the sunlight, and the gold-plated windows of the upper suites while the sun gleams off a lower angle of the superstructure.

Take Another Look at the Sky

I have to confess I didn’t really start paying much attention to the sky until I started taking photographs.  Now I can’t get enough of it.

As a landscape photographer- and even taking portraits- what the sky is doing is paramount to the end result of your photograph.  Once upon a time I figured blue skies (ideally ramped with a nice polarizing filter) were the bees knees when it came to taking a nice scenery shot.  I’ve since learned that the variety of clouds you can get- especially on a sunny day- is delightful and can add depth, texture and contrast to a photograph, and make the difference between a postcardy-type of holiday snap, and a truly stand-out image you’d like to hang on your wall.  Best of all is when cloud formations line up to mirror part of your landscape or draw the eye to your point of focus.

Sometimes, the sky itself can be a fascinating enough subject.  The array of cloud formations and styles is quite literally endless and changes every few seconds with the wind and the changing light- it is quite simply impossible to take two photos of the sky that are identical, and for that the potential is infinite.

Other times it’s nice to frame a little something against the sky just to add a dash of interest, as I’ve done with a couple of these shots.  It really depends what’s available, and what adds to an image rather than distracting from the cloudforms.

Of course, shooting clouds at sunset is reminiscent of fish and barrels.  As light passing through ever-thickening atmosphere is variously refracted into prismatic shades of the visual electromagnetic spectrum, the painting on the sky is invariably magical, and some of my most satisfying outdoors shots have been taken at dawn or dusk.

This is just a little sampler of some of the sky-focused images I’ve taken over the last couple of years.  Lots more to come, I assure you.

Photo Descriptions:

1. Cumulus clouds build up on a steamy summer’s afternoon outside Pretoria, South Africa.  It stormed later.

2. Dawn cloudscape in the South Australian outback, along the Oodnadatta Track.

3. Is that the Cat in the Hat?  Wispy formation hangs over Melbourne’s Central Business District.

4. Gumtree sky: A variety of cloudforms drift over Victoria’s Yarra Ranges near Warburton.

5. Skytrain: Clouds hang behind a crossing sign marking the abandoned Old Ghan railway line across South Australia’s outback near the Oodnadatta Track.

6. Suburban dystopia: Clouds blur above a power line, one of zillions in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.  Shot with a neutral density filter (ND8) to give several seconds’ worth of exposure in broad daylight, hence the apparent motion in the sky.

7 & 8. Stormy monsoonal clouds soak up setting sunrays over the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo.

9. Speckles of fluffy cloud spot a rich blue sky behind a Brisbane apartment tower.

10. The twin towers of Melbourne’s Bolte Bridge are backlit against a sunset cloudscape.

11. A stream of condensed exhaust pours from a factory stack in Melbourne’s industrial westlands near Williamstown.

12. Rich hues dance in the fading light of Sri Lanka’s monsoon season.

The Passage of Seconds

The above two photographs were shot a few minutes apart, from exactly the same vantage (though at marginally different angles) on a little spit of land underneath a road-bridge overlooking Noosa Lakes, along Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.  It was a beautiful sunset, and I wanted to catch the colour of the clouds turning pink as the sun lit them from below.  You only get a few minutes to make the most of that sort of colour, as the angle of the sun changes rapidly, and colour builds to intensity, then falls away quickly, and all you’re left with is grey.

The first image (actually taken second) is a regular shot taken with a polarizer, and shows the clouds, their colour, and their reflection in the rippled water.  The second shot is taken with the same lens but with what was then my new toy (and still one that doesn’t get a whole load of use, which is a shame cos I really like it), and which I showcase from time-to-time- my ND 400 neutral density filter.  By cutting out the light to 1/400th of what it is before the filter goes on but without changing the colour of that light, the ND400 means I can leave the shutter open 400 times as long at the same camera settings without overexposing the shot- thus giving cool effects like moving clouds, smoothed-out water (not that the lake needed much smoothing that evening), and under other circumstances, streaked headlamps or ghosted-out people.

It’s a faff to set up as it involves needing a tripod, a pre-focused and pre-framed image, a shutter-release, the switching round of filters, and, of course, sufficient time to actually expose the frame.  But it gives a unique photographic style and a cool effect that is one hundred percent ‘natural’ (by which I mean, produced in-camera, and not in some post-processing photography software on a computer someplace; we can debate the pros and cons of this some other time…).

I thought I’d share with you the comparison of the two styles, just for fun.