A little while ago I started a Pools of the Sea project, where I planned on shooting 100 rocks pools. A cool idea and a great chance to travel around and shoot some cool rock pools. It turned out a little harder than I thought as there aren’t as many around Sydney as I first thought, so I expended it to pools in general so that I’d actually be able to hit the 100 mark some day.
It’s still a work in progress but with Sydney in yet another lockdown it was a good chance to revisit what I have shot so far and plan for another tour when we can get out and about again hopefully soon. So here are a few of my favorites to date.
Mona ValeAustinmerBondiBronteBulliColedaleCoogeeCronulla Big PoolCurl CurlFigure 8 PoolGunnamatta, CronullaMahon PoolOak Park, CronullaPort KemblaShelly Beach, CronullaShellharbourWinifred FallsWombara
I’ll finish the 100 one day, I dont mind taking my time to finish it as Ill probably be a little sad when it’s over.
It’s probably one of the longest projects I’ve taken on, but also one of the more enjoyable ones too. There is a beautiful row of trees on the drive into the town of Camden, NSW and after driving past them and occasionally take a few pictures over the course of my career. I thought it would be cool to photograph them through the changing seasons.
I started out in the Winter of 2020 (August) and shot right up until just last week finishing in June. In all fairness I planned on continuing until this August for a complete 12 record. But as we are now in the middle of a Covid lockdown in Sydney, it feels like a pretty good time to share it.
August 2020September 2020October 2020November 2020February 2021April 2021May 2021 May 2021 LateJune 2021
All picture were shot from pretty much the same location. I tried shooting from the exact same spot early on, but having to avoid parked cars and random busses, I had to slightly alter the angle everytime I went. But it’s all from pretty much the same spot within 5-10 meters. And all shot with the same lens the 70ml-200ml which I love for landscapes pictures.
Once we get out of lockdown I still might shoot for a couple more months and then finally put it to bed. I’m not entirely sure what type of trees these are but if someone does know I’d love a comment below that would be awesome.
As the seasons changed you can really see the awesome colors of the seasons. Each had their own style and story to tell. It was just a joy to photograph this really cool site over the past 12 months.
I’ll look do do something similar again as I think with the right location you can really tell a cool story in pictures of the nature that we can to call our hometowns.
Last weeks Super Blood Moon in Sydney. It doesn’t happen too often when you get both an eclipse and a blood moon. So I guess that’s why they call it a super blood moon.
It was my first time attempting either an eclipse or a blood moon so I was interested to see how easy or hard it would be to photograph. Like everyone, I’ve seen other peoples photographs so I had an idea of how to shoot it but you never know until you have a crack at it yourself.
At around 5:30pm a pretty large and impressive full moon rose from the east as the sun set. I was using a Canon Mark IV Camera and a 400ml lens with a 1.4x converter bringing it to 560ml so it was pretty easy to shoot as the moon was full and nice and bright so my exposure was 1/1000th sec at f/4 and 400 ISO.
That was the easy part then it got progressively harder, as the nighttime kicked in and the sky turned completely black and by 7:30pm the eclipse now started.
I exposed for the bright part of the moon which was still at 1/1000th sec at f/4 at 400 ISO.
And as the shadow crept across the moon, that exposure stayed the same allowing for a nice exposure for the whole of the eclipse session.
If you tried to expose for the shadow, the moon would then look too bright to see. Almost turning into a light bulb. That’s why it’s important to only expose for the brightest part of the image. It took around 1.5 hours from the start of the eclipse to the end. A little bit slower than I thought it would be so next time I’ll bring a book.
So that part wasn’t too hard, as long as I kept my same exposure of 1/1000th sec at f/4 and 400 ISO for the duration. It all went well.
Then it got hard.
As the moon was now in a complete shadow, obviously when there is no light around things get a little trickier. And at 9:10pm the Red Moon started, lasting only 15 minutes and going peak red in the middle of that 15 minutes. So experimenting with a few exposure changes I settled on 1/50 sec at f/4 and 12800 ISO. That’s a pretty big change from the earlier exposure but that what happens when you turn the lights off. Normally I don’t like to go under 1/100th of a second for any exposure as it increases the chances of camera shake. Especially that I was hand holding a heavy 400ml lens standing on my balcony, the arms can get a little tired. But I was able to hold steady enough to not avoid any camera shake this time.
I was pretty happy with how the shoot all turned out and it was pretty cool to shoot all round. A few things I’d do differently if I was to shoot the red moon again to better help with the final image.
Things I would do differently next time
Head out to a open park, shooting on my balcony was great but pretty restrictive for space especially when the moon was super high in the sky.
Shoot with a monopod, as handy as it was handholding the lens because of a lack of space, it hurt my ability to have a lower ISO and having a higher quality final image. I might have been able to keep the ISO under 10000.
Shoot with a better camera. There’s no way around it that the better the camera the better the image. This was shot on a Canon mark IV. In daylight it’s great but when there is no light a more modern camera would do a even better job. (But when do we not want the latest camera?)
Bring a book or listen to a podcast. That’s a whole lot of time staring into space and my attention span is normally 15 minutes.
Good times all round and I’ll definitely try it again when it rolls around.
Chasing Light by Chris Lane 