A Walk Among the Beaches

Around Easter, A. and I took a long weekend in Wilson’s Prom. The Prom, as it’s known here, is one of Victoria’s little secrets. Well known in Melbourne as a getaway and a gorgeous spot for camping, quiet beaches and rugged hikes, it’s little heard-of outside of Australia- and I’m okay with that.

We were blessed with beautiful weather- neither too hot nor too cold, and (a rarity in Victoria) no rain to speak of. Patches of cloud made photography a little more interesting, and we spent several days exploring beaches, cliffs and walking trails up and down the coastline. We also got to know the local wildlife a little better- here, A. made friends with a Crimson Rosella, but the campground at Tidal River is also known for its population of semi-tame wombats, and there are roos and wallabies up and down the length of the trail. Not to mention Tiger Snakes. Oddly enough I didn’t pause to take a photo of the one I nearly stepped on, as I was busy scooting back down the track in a hurry, looking for a large stick.

Wilson’s Prom has been struck with a series of natural disasters over the last few years, including devastating bushfires that damaged much of the park and made many tracks unsafe to walk on. Flashfloods more recently have equally left much of the park’s infrastructure in disarray, and when we were there, many walks were still closed to the public and under repair. It was somewhat disappointing, and we were unable to walk some of the trails we’d been hoping to, but we still found some gorgeous scenery and some great hikes, so we can’t complain. Really, it just gives us something else to go back for. Not that we need the excuse.

I have to confess, we were a little cheeky. Some opportunities were too good to miss, and we ended up scrambling up a couple of closed tracks to find ourselves on secluded beaches and little coves that we had entirely to ourselves. The Prom isn’t exactly crawling with people outside of peak season, but it’s still a popular destination. However,  being the only people in some of these spectacular spots was really quite special, and we relished it.

The coastline at the Prom is rugged- rocky and wild, with coves and beaches interspersed by tall cliffheads and rocky outcrops. It’s a dramatic landscape, and one of the most beautiful along Victoria’s southern ocean shore. The Prom juts out into the Bass Straits, a long and jagged peninsula that is one of the most exposed parts of the state. Once upon a time, a land-bridge joined Tasmania to the rest of Australia, and the Prom is its last vestige. When you look at some of the rocks around the Prom and compare them to, say, the rocks of northern Tasmania, you can see the similarities.

Our favourite walk was the one that led from Darby Saddle to Tongue Point. It’s listed as a moderate hike, which is a fair assessment- lots of ups and downs. Starting well inland at the high point of Darby Saddle (always ominous, because it means you need to end the walk with a climb back to the car), it took us a good chunk of the day to complete- five or six hours, when we factored in the exploring. The views along the way were magnificent, however, and it was well worth the effort.

Towards the end of the walk, the path splits and there’s a little scramble down to Fairy Cove. We were pretty much the only people on the track that day, so we had the spot to ourselves, and it was magnificent- a glorious and footprint-free beach where we could scramble onto the rocks and watch the breakers dash themselves against the headlands, and even a little tidal pool we were able to take a little swim in- still freezing cold, but not as hostile as the ocean itself.

One of the loveliest things about the Prom is the constant drama. With the winds coming off the straits, the clouds are ever moving and shifting the light on the scenery. The sea is restless, and you can sit for hours just watching the waves pound the base of cliffs or swash up around fallen rocks in great foamy charges.

Three things I’m keen to capture on my next trip to the Prom. First off, the night skies are magical out there, so taking a tripod to do some starlight photography is a must. Second, a spot of time-lapse to catch the movement of waves and clouds would be magical. And third, I am busting to get myself a nice telephoto lens and do some nice wave photography. The above shot is about the best of the bunch I was able to get, but I’m only shooting on an 85mm, which doesn’t really have the reach necessary to get those lovely creamy breakers at their best.

Next time.

Seriously, it’s a spectacular spot, and I can’t recommend Wilson’s Prom enough. If you’re coming through Victoria as a tourist, or if you’re just a local Melbournian with a weekend to spare, make sure you get down there.

In the Gardens, Part II

The other day I posted some photos of the grounds of Werribee Mansion. A. and I really enjoyed exploring the old greenhouses that sat close to the flower beds, and the various lighting that the place offered made for some interesting portraits as well. These are some of those images.

In the Gardens, Part I

The wife and I took a day off recently and headed down to Werribee Mansion. It’s a huge old stately home which has been turned into a public attraction, and has some enormous and very beautifully manicured grounds. We spent the afternoon enjoying the patchy sunlight and exploring the gardens.

The home itself is an attractive piece of grand architecture which makes for a nice backdrop to the flower beds. The light was challenging- but this made it interesting. Shifting clouds meant that catching enough light on the foreground to reduce the difference between light sky and darkened ground (dynamic range) was tricky- but when it worked, the cloudy sky was full of movement, interest and contrast. There were a couple of classic old greenhouses beside the flowerbeds, starting to sag a little round the middle, and they made for interesting subjects as well. The day’s photoshoot was a fun mix of portraiture and scenery, full of colour and soft lighting.

Here are a few of my favourite shots, these ones of the grounds themselves:

Fluffy

We went for a little walk around Albert Park Lake the other day. It’s mid-spring here (though you wouldn’t know it by the weather, thank you Melbourne.) Because it’s spring, there are cygnets by the bucketful swanning around, and I needed to take some photos.

This post is dedicated to friend & fellow aid worker @chasingcarly whose adventures [currently in Yemen] you can follow over at Chasing Carly, and whose adventures in cute furry animals you can follow at Travel Tails. I am fairly sure that if Carly were to become potentate of the known universe, her first decree would be to insist that furthermore, all currency transactions take place in the form of exchanges of photographs of cute furry animals.

Please enjoy the fluffiness.

For those of you needing a closer look at this cuteness, please see below:

Look at the fluffiness. LOOK AT IT.

A Short Year in Photos

The year isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. But by the dearth of fresh photos going up on this blog you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve hung up my lenses and called it a day. In fact, by the dearth of fresh anything going up on this blog you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve hung up my keyboard, too.

Happily, neither one is the case.

I have, however, been a little overwhelmed with the inconvenience that is real life, and it’s taken me a little time to get through a backlog of photos for processing, and eventually, writing some of them up. I’m hoping to remedy my general neglect of this site recently over the next few weeks. Which I’ve said before. But I do actually have a little free time coming my way. So, maybe…

At any rate, as a taster here are a few of my favourite pictures from the last ten months or so, from a few different spots round the globe. Some of these locations I might flesh out a little more as time goes on, but for now, I hope you like this little collection of images.

Top: A muggy and overcast day on Tybee Beach, Savannah, GA. Overexposed in-camera and processed for low colour and emphasizing highlights focuses on the texture and an almost dreamlike view of the ocean. Shot using shallow depth of field means the foreground is soft while the waves beyond are in sharper relief.

Above: A baobab tree rises from rusty soils and a  flowering ground creeper in fields outside a village in rural South-East Kenya. I was struck by the lovely contrast between the spray of white flowers (actually weeds), the red ground and the blue sky- all nicely lit on a fresh morning. Baobabs make for a fantastic photographic subject- stark, dramatic and instantly recognizable.

Above: Rounded rocks on a beach at Wilson’s Prom, on the southern coast of Australia, give testament to millenia of weathering at the hands of the relentless ocean. Shot in overcast light and exposing to darken the sky with some differential exposure in post-processing has kept the rocks in low contrast, emphasising their smooth shape and texture, and emphasising form over colour in the muted palette. Wilson’s Prom remains one of the prettiest corners of Victoria in my playbook.

Above: Downtown Phoenix, seen from the air coming in to land, with the high-rise central business district just off-centre and Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks, off to the right. The way the grid of small streets and roads lead in converging lines take the eye through downtown and on to the hills in the background, and the effect makes this one of the only shots I’ve taken from a plane window that I actually like.

Above: Trentham Falls, outside Daylesford, Victoria, Australia, as viewed from behind the falls themselves. Hand-held at slightly long exposure has given the falling water a slightly silky texture. Among the challenges of taking this image were the issue of shooting from a darkened vantage against a lighter sky and trying not to allow much of the image to burn out. Additionally, several plebs managed to find themselves in the frame, so I removed their pesky presence in post-processing to give the image a more serene look. I actually had to wait up here for a good six or seven minutes for a couple of kids to step out of the frame at bottom, where they had been chucking big rocks into the water. Overall I like the quiet scene and the relatively soft palette of greens and earthy tones.

Above: Highway bridge, Savannah, GA. You don’t generally get many good shots through a car windshield, but this spur-of-the-moment snap-shot (I use the term to refer to how quickly it had to be lined up and taken, not the camera it was taken on) works for me. Again the lines of the bridge struts give a great sense of motion, leading the eye into a contrasty late-afternoon sky, and a broad horizon giving the feeling of wide open spaces. It’s a shot that captures movement and an enjoyable juxtaposition of dramatic engineering and natural beauty.

Above: The sun sets directly over an intersection on a steamy panhandle night near Altha, FL. The warm tones and striking position of the sun are nicely led to by the wires of the phone lines, and I like the faint splash of reflection coming off the road.

The Play of Mists

Another collection of photos from a recent ballooning trip over Victoria’s gorgeous wine-growing Yarra Valley one early spring morning.

Perhaps the most gorgeous aspect of the trip was the mist at dawn, and how it interplayed with the landscape as the sun rose, transforming the landscape and changing the mood as it changed.

From the ground, the pattern of the mist is harder to discern, but from 3,000 feet, it’s beautiful to watch it steaming off waterways in the cool morning air, spreading like a threadbare cotton blanket over the ground, or catching long shadows from the sun low on the horizon.

As we first took off, we passed over a small flooded waterway. The sun was still below the horizon, and we were low enough that the mist still wrapped us. I took a first shot of the mist running off the water (below), and as we skimmed along its surface, snapped the image at the top of this post of reeds reflected in the still surface. Still low, I shot a third image of  a tree at the water’s edge (beneath), again enjoying the utter stillness of the water’s surface as the balloon breezed over.

As we gained height, the waterways gleamed silver against a dark green backdrop, while mist clumped over low, damp areas.

As the sun first began to rise, it sent low shafts of light across the valley, catching treetops and lighting the topside of the mist while depressions remained in shadow. These next three images show the interplay of light and shadow, of mist, tree and water. You can see the mist boiling off the top of the rivers and ponds, much warmer than the cold air sitting atop them, like steam off a cauldron.

As the sun rose further, the mist began to burn off, swirling in those pockets of sheltered vale where the air was still and the sun’s reach weaker. The patterns left in the air look like currents in a slothfully meandering stream.

In this shot, you can see the local airfield as the mist slowly burns away.

Sometimes, as in the below image, the relationship between warm water and cool air was obvious, reminiscent of boiling lakes in Rotorua or Yellowstone, circles and puffs among the striations of ploughed fields.

Poplars slice upwards through the fug and sunlight streaks between the boughs, casting long shadows across the top of the mist.

As we come back down and the sunlight grows stronger, it seeps through to illuminate the ground, where strong colours struggle through the bleaching mist. Here, rows of vines and orchard trees greet our descending balloon, and a few minutes later we’re through the mist and back on terra firma, watching the last tendrils of fog burn off to a blue sky.

The Yarra Valley from the Air

Sometimes, less is more. I don’t have too much to say about these photos, other than to let you know they were taken on a recent early-morning balloon flight over the stunning Yarra Valley, outside Melbourne. If you get the chance to balloon here, do it! We obviously had perfect weather that morning- wisps of mist beneath a blue sky and a gorgeous clear sunrise. Overwhelmingly beautiful.

Storm Footage

I shot this time lapse video from our place yesterday as a severe thunderstorm system moved across Melbourne. It was shot at an interval of 12 seconds, over a four-hour period. About 20 seconds into the movie you can see where the cold front moves across the sky from left to right. As it does, it condenses water from the warm, muggy air that’d been sitting over us for several days, forming a very dynamic band of cloud that looks like the underside of a breaking wave. Even in real-time it was one of the most dramatic cloud formations I’ve ever watched, moving and developing extremely quickly. A very exciting evening.

Painting Trains

A few weeks back, I spotted a railyard full of old freight trucks. They were old, many of them rusted, and looked pretty unused to me. They sat in a siding on the far side of an active rail line, dozens and dozens and dozens of them.

And the yard had clearly become a street-artists’ playground.

Pretty much every truck was covered in graffiti- everything from tags and scrawls through to some really beautiful pieces of scripting, cartoons and vibrant colours.

So I had to go and take a look.

Now, as a disclaimer, I have to say here:

a) I do not condone graffiti on objects without seeking permission

b) I do not condone trespassing, whether to paint trains or to take photographs of those said-same trains

c) I do not condone playing in railyards without permission, ESPECIALLY ones where trains are still in active service

That said, for some reason there was absolutely no fencing preventing you from crossing over to this particular railyard, and nor were there any “no trespassing” signs. So paying VERY careful attention to make sure I wasn’t about to kiss a passing diesel engine, I decided to take my lens for a little exploration.

And it was s great shoot. The light was a bit of a mixed bag. It was a sunny, blue-sky day, which meant high contrast in some directions, and heavy shadow on some of the surfaces. However the vibrant colours and the unique subject made for lots of fun angles and great visuals. I was pretty pleased with my time out there.

I do have to stress that I spent a LOT of time looking over my shoulder. When you’ve got a camera to your face, it’s easy to get lost in the framing and the lighting and the composition, and forget where you are. On an active rail-line, that’s not something you can afford to do. I’ve had similar experiences taking highway shots (an oddly popular theme on my blog, in terms of search-engine hits- one of my most viewed)- you have to be quite vigilant to make sure you don’t inadvertantly forget to step out of the way of an approaching car while kneeling for that perfect low-angle shot. So out in the railyard, I got pretty twitchy whenever a train roared past. But happily, photographer, camera and images all made a safe exit from the venue, with the photos below just a handful of the images I came away with.

Hope you enjoy something a little random.

Note: All photos available for purchase via my RedBubble site.

The Beach in Black and White

This series was shot on a sunny afternoon not far from Anglesea, VIC. A wooden feature designed to keep the hillside from collapsing into the sea (presumably?) cast shadows onto the sand. The intense contrast between light and dark made these images more interesting than the subject alone might have rendered them. In particular, I like the first image and the very pure texture of the sand where overexposure has driven it almost white. The differing surfaces- smooth sand, rough wood- also adds a contrast that reinforces the black/white, natural/man-made themes of opposition.