I’m very happy to let you all know I received a commendation for my entry into this years Australian Photographer of the Year. My entry was 4 photographs from my Nightscape portfolio entered under the title, Rural Nights. With thousands of entries all competing, I’ve very happy with the result.
Astro season is starting again now, I look forward to capturing many more creative photographs using all the techniques I devised and put into practice last season. I have quite a few ideas already planned, as for me if I’m not out there taking the photos, I’m thinking about taking the photos.
Here is a copy of the award I received, and the photographs I entered. All of these photos are available for purchase as an open edition print on Acrylic, contact me for pricing and details (free shipping Australia wide!)
Photographer of the Year 2018 - Commended
Little Brown House
Midnight Express
Overgrown
Core Tractor
Let me know in the comments below which is your favourite photo!
I’m out hunting for more panoramic landscapes this weekend as we finally appear to have clouds. This morning was a failed attempt but I’ll keep trying until I get the photographs I want. That’s the fun of working with mother nature, you can never truly predict what happens next. Until next time, thank you for reading.
A friend first shared a photo of these trees with me a few weeks back. Ever since then I’ve been chomping at the bit to get out and shoot them at sunrise. The location, the vista, the rolling hills behind and the simplicity of the scene just fired my imagination. This was perfect for a panorama and I couldn’t wait!
The last two mornings have had nil cloud, a 3:30am start saw me heading to Fernvale to meet up with my mate who was going to be my guide for the morning. Thankfully permission with the landowner was organised and after parking and walking in we began to work the scene. From one vantage point, the two trees appear to be intertwined and I really liked that view point.
Lots of moving around using my panorama tool to work out framing (this “tool” is a piece of cardboard with a window cut out of it in the 3:1 ratio). This makes it super quick to work out the best angle to shoot from. I’ve yet to find an Android Phone app that can do the same ratio (if you know of one, let me know please! Most get close but not 3:1).
This was the first photo I took, very early dawn light and colour. The clouds were clearing up quickly and the next few photos didn’t really work out for me. The sun is rising to the left of frame, this causes the colour to darken across the sky, giving a lovely change in hue as it goes.
2 Rows of 8 photographs were captured to make this panorama. The end result is very big file that can be printed exceptionally large, which is my goal for all my panoramas.
There are many more spots on this property to investigate, and I think once Winter is here, add some fog, or even some Astro is definitely on the cards, magic spot.
Click to find out how to get your own copy of this photograph for your wall as an amazing Acrylic Print.
I’m a very technical photographer. I tend to research a lot before venturing into the field and sometimes you can focus on these things too much, rather than just getting out there and taking photos. This weekend was a little like that. I had a photograph in mind that I wanted to capture. Wyaralong Dam in the Scenic Rim can be stunning if you get the right sky.
Friday afternoon and there were high clouds north, but they needed to come south a few hundred kilometres in order to be where I wanted them. 10pm, I’m watching the sky, I ended up being so fixated on it I was still awake at 3am, the time I would have to leave if I wanted to get a photo, but the clouds never came so I finally slept, thinking about the photograph I haven’t captured yet.
Saturday night I took a different tack, I ignored the clouds, I got my gear ready to go, set my alarm for 3am and slept. Waking up and walking out the door, the clouds looked like they had potential, but regardless, I was going to go. Worse case this would be a good practice session to work towards mastering panoramas.
Arriving at the dam it was still dark but light would approach soon. I spent a good 30 minutes working out a composition, checking my settings, checking the tripod was level, and taking a few test series of shots. The light came through it’s various stages, from nice blue hour, to the pinks and reds of sunrise. However I had a problem. A bank of low cloud had moved across and was breaking up the great high clouds that had the colour. The end result was a bust, but I learnt a lot and was happy with that.
On the drive home, the sun had broken over the distant hills finally, some fast moving fog was rolling between the hills. Coming up over the rise of one hill I hit the brakes and quickly pulled over. The scene looked fantastic to me, the beautiful orange of golden hour was glowing across the sky and ground. Thankfully my gear was pretty much ready to go, put camera on tripod, level, focus and shoot.
A photo like this takes a long time to edit on post for me. Why? Because it’s 2 rows of 8 photographs, that is 16 full size photographs merged to one gigantic image. This will print MASSIVE and I think will look fantastic on anyone’s wall that loves a view like this. I’ve learnt that shooting two rows allows me to get more of either the sky or ground in the photograph (com-positional choice / ground for this one) and that really gives this photograph a great sense of depth. At full resolution you can see the cows feeding in the morning light way down the hill, the detail is amazing.
So my lessons this week are don’t sweat it so much, just make sure you get out there and shoot. This was a completely random location and it was about being there when the light was good, and finding a scene to suit.
Let me know what you think about this photograph in the comments below, I always love feedback good or bad. Until next time, stay safe and thank you very much for reading.
Click to find out how to get your own copy of this photograph for your wall as an amazing Acrylic Print.
Olympus OMD Em5.2, Olympus 45mm. F8, ISO 200, 1/200 sec. 2 Rows of 8 Photographs
I’ve added this to my Landscape Portfolio that will gradually all become panoramas as I move towards the format, which I just love.
Well a very Happy New Year to you all. For me the start of any new year is a great time not only for a well deserved break, but a great time to reflect on the previous 12 months and have a bit of a mental review of how I saw my photography progress. The main aim of this is to work out my direction for 2019 and I’ve set myself a nice challenge as a result. I’m very happy with how my Astro photography has progressed. My weather photography is in a lull due to simply there being no storms so I’m concentrating on my landscape photography.
I’ve set myself a challenge to only shoot panoramic landscapes in the 3:1 format for 2019. Oh I’ll still get the odd normal 4:3 framed photo, but purely for Instagram. Any dedicated landscape photograph I capture in 2019 is going to be a panorama. Why? Well several reasons. I love to follow other photographers works and over the years I’ve come to admire two photographers in particular. Ken Duncan and Mark Grey, both incredibly successful Australian landscape photographers. Ken has been at it for Decades, Mark is relatively new to the scene, both having extraordinary success. It’s more than that however, it’s the resulting photographs they get. There is something about an amazingly well captured panorama that draws you in. The photograph when seen large envelopes your entire field of view, you are put into the scene with the photographer at the moment of capture.
This is what I want to explore and it actually means relearning a whole lot about photography. Composition is different by necessity as the frame is now very different and balance, viewpoint, elements all come into play in different ways.
So my journey into this field has begun and I find it very exciting. To kick off the new year with a bang I met up with my great friend Craig and we headed west to areas near Toowoomba in search of Sunflowers as word is out, they are blooming.
PLEASE NOTE : I won’t disclose the exact location of this farm at the farmers request. However, if you are looking for Sunflowers the area of Clifton on the Darling Downs between Warwick and Toowoomba has them in flower right now.
Thankfully Craig has scouted this location only the day before, also gaining us permission from the farmer to access the land fully, simply awesome work mate. 3:30am saw us standing in the back of the ute, Tripods at the ready, watching the light slowly appear. This first panorama was captured around 15 minutes before sunrise, the high cloud getting hit with the awesome colours of the approaching sunrise, that light also reflecting down onto the sunflowers. My composition here was to be very simple. Lines leading you through the fields.
Sunflower Dawn
Next it was time to really head into the fields. Another section of this farm has a great windmill surrounded by Sunflowers, well how could we resist photographing that? This field was full of bees making their merry way from flower to flower, and we did take the time out here to really just soak up the atmosphere, work our compositions and try different things.
Sunflower Windmill
Capturing panoramas is a bit of a challenge. The hardest part I find is framing. As you are stitching together multiple photographs to take one large one, you can’t see the final result in the field. Specialist panorama cameras exist but are far beyond my budget so this is my option in order to get the best quality and result. So far I’ve worked out that by setting the height of my view and ensuring I capture 5-6 photographs across I can usually get pretty close to the result I’m after with minimal loss of pixels in post production on the computer.
This final panorama was the only time the sun actually fell directly on the flowers. We had stopped to have a chat with the property owner when the sun broke through, but only on the ground, the sky was not being directly affected, awesome light! Excusing myself for a minute, I quickly setup and captured this image of the farmers old parents house, now not lived in but still maintained, which is surrounded by the wonderful sunflowers, not a bad view in my books. I think this is my favourite from the morning and I know my wife agrees with me.
Sunflower Farmhouse available as a Limited Edition Acrylic Print. Click photo for further information.
I’ve found I’m quickly falling in love with the panorama format for both the challenge and the results. The quality end result I’m getting allows me to print a 60inch wide x 20inch high photograph at full 300dpi resolution (no loss of quality at all). I love to see my photographs purchased and hanging on peoples walls. Panoramas seem to lend themselves perfectly to being displayed, they work well in many different styles of rooms in peoples homes and in businesses. That’s my end game as a photographer, while I love taking photographs, and sharing them with the world, to create images that people love enough to hang in their own home to me is the ultimate.
So I’ll keep working at it, continuing to find new subjects in amazing conditions and share them with all of you. If I can get a nice portfolio of maybe 20 photographs by the end of 2019 I’ll be in heaven, and maybe a few of you will have such a connection with my work that you’ll want to own a copy for yourselves.
Finally, a quick single photo I took “doing it for the gram”. This will be up on my Instagram Feed.
A beautiful sunflower in the early morning light.
Thank you everyone for following along with my photography for 2018, I really look forward to what 2019 is going to bring. I think the photographs will be released a bit slower, but the quality should be another level higher as I continue to learn and challenge myself.
Well pretty much out of no-where some cells started forming off the range west of home heading for the coast. They moved extremely fast and chasing was almost impossible. I gave up on even trying to get a photograph, instead strategically setting up the gopro to capture one of the cells as it moved over me at a rapid rate of knots.
This timelapse is 20 minutes in total of recording time, compressed to just 20 seconds. The speed is very obvious.
That’s really it for this week, I’ve been shooting a lot more film, aim to have another roll developed sometime this week. With more storms due mid week there could finally be an opportunity to get some more photographs so keep an eye on this blog and my facebook page for updates.
Finally got around to getting a roll developed and I’m 3/4 of the way through shooting another roll. I’m starting to get the hang of shooting film. For my film of choice for landscapes, Kodak Ektar 100, I’ve found you really have to nail the exposure for your subject (usually the land) and then filter the sky to keep it to say within a stop in brightness. Film will handle a much brighter sky, but you then have to try and pull it all back in post production on the computer.
Getting it right in camera using filters etc really pays off with film and saves you a bunch of time on the computer at a later date, when you’ve forgotten what you even shot lol! I’m using a Mamiya 645 1000s medium format camera, my go to landscape lens for the wider scene is the Mamiya 45mm. Film is Kodak Ektar 100. I have a local lab develop for me (just normal develop) and then I scan the negatives at home using an Epson V550. From there it’s really just getting the colours right and some sharpening in Photoshop, as well as removing any dust and scratches, probably the worst part of film.
This first photograph has to be my favourite film photo to date. I also shot this on digital, and I’ve even done Astro photography here, but the way this has come out, the colour, the soft glowing light, yeah, really happy with this one.
Mamiya 645 1000s, 45mm, Kodak Ektar 100
I was pretty much treating this roll of film as a test case, I was bracketing most photos to see which exposure would work best (take good notes!) and photographing landscapes in various lighting conditions. On one recent storm chase I had some time so I broke out the film camera once again and captured this photograph. Those Ektar Reds are really popping in this one and the light that broke through the clouds really made this photograph work for me.
Mamiya 645 1000s, 45mm, Kodak Ektar 100
Finally, after another chase, I decided to see what I could do with a reverse sunset, that is looking east as the sun was setting west. This one didn’t quite work out for me, the main issue being if I kept colour on the landscape, none of it was up in the clouds yet, and if I waited for it to be in the clouds, it wasn’t on the landscape anymore. So this was more of a test/compromise shot, however I do know in this kind of light it would be much better to find an amazing subject I can get very close too and really highlight those colours on the landscape, wow golden hour smacks you in the face with this film!
Mamiya 645 1000s, 45mm, Kodak Ektar 100
So the plan is now to keep shooting more film and really start working on the composition and subjects. My confidence has increased a lot thanks to some major trial and error, time and of course, money, film costs every click.
Thank you very much for ready my blog this week. If you’d also like to check out a very short cool video I made yesterday with some slow motion lightning captures click below :
I sell all of my photographs as Fine Art Prints, Canvas prints and Prints on either Acrylic or Metal, if you’d like one for yourself, simply contact me and I’ll send you pricing details.
Well is a long weekend here in Queensland so heading out for a nice sunrise seemed on the cards. I had scouted this location using Google Maps, and the angle of light seemed like it would be good. Purga, which is located just south of Ipswich, is a favourite area of mine to shoot. It doesn’t take long to get there, its a nice rural area, and there are some nice peaks to the east that work as a great backdrop from the right vantage point.
This particular spot has two peaks right behind some great leading lines from the track in. I know Purga is also a local fog hot spot but wow, I was not expecting the amount of fog that I encountered this morning, nor how high it went.
I only had one sighting of the peaks, around 40 minutes before sunrise as the early dawn light and colour was pushing through and the fog was sitting just a bit lower. 30 seconds after capturing this first photograph, I lost sight of the peaks and wouldn’t see them again that morning. I zoomed in to fill the frame of this photograph, it also helps to bring all the elements closer to each other, compressing the photograph. The colour here is straight out of camera. I used a 3 stop soft grad filter to lower the brightness of the sky and balance it with the foreground.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark 2, 12-40mm Lens @ 40mm, ISO 200, F/8, 2 seconds
I stuck around for at least 20 minutes after sunrise. I really wanted the sun to break through and put direct light on the foreground. This was never to eventuate. What I did get was some amazing colour lighting up the clouds minutes before sunrise. Switching to wide angle to get as much sky in as possible, I reframed reducing the amount of ground in the photograph. You can see how the fog has moved away from me, but now risen higher around the peaks, blocking their view entirely.
This is a great little spot I’ve found, and there are some nice views south that should really come in handy during the next storm season. I really does pay to explore the back and side roads. I’ll be returning here for sure.
12mm, ISO 200, F/8, 1/20 second
I’m progressing with my foray into film photography. I should have a complete setup completed within the next few weeks. I’ll then be working my way through rolls of film and look forward to sharing my results with you.
I really hope you enjoyed this weeks blog post as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Can I suggest subscribing to my email list to receive occasional Tips, Ideas, News of Prints and Offers.
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With clear skies at night, not too cold and not too warm, conditions were absolutely perfect to chase some Milky Way photographs. It would mean a couple of late nights as the core only started to rise around 11pm, with peak time 1-2am however it certainly was worth it.
During the off season I’ve been watching a lot of videos and reading up on various techniques used by the best of the best when it comes to night time and astro photography. I had a head full of new ideas, which included changes to how I worked in the field capturing the images, as well as how I post processed the photos back on the computer.
Now I’ll be very up front about this, none of these photographs are a single image. It’s possible to do, however I don’t believe you can get the quality of file, increase of detail and control of noise in a single image, that you can get with multiple exposures. Some people get their knickers in a knot if it isn’t a single photograph, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. My simple goal was to create an image of the vision in my head, using any tools and methods I could.
I met up with a very good friend and we decided to head south of Ipswich towards the rural farming areas. I knew of a couple of barns and other items that could make for a very interesting foreground, and hopefully would line up with the Milky Way behind them. I simply cannot pick which photograph is my favourite.
First stop was a barn and god was with us as it was full to the brim of bales. The sky here is so dark you can easily see the Milky Way with your eyes and that makes framing a since. I setup my gear, firmly locked down my tripod and focused on the stars (Olympus is amazing in that you can use focus peaking on the stars, just pick a bright one and it’s done). I proceeded to capture 8 photographs at ISO 5000, F/2.8, 15 seconds per exposure, at 12mm (equivalent to 24mm on a full frame camera. The 15 seconds ensures no star movement for pinpoint lights. I really racked up the ISO as I knew I would be stacking in and that will significantly reduce noise.
Once the sky shots were done, the fun began. I switched my camera to Live Composite mode, dropped the ISO to 400 for a lot cleaner file, and let it start. I used a torch to light paint the barn, first from the left side until the exposure was where I wanted it, then added a little fill from the right to soften the shadows.
All of this was stacked, blended, merged etc in Photoshop, there are some great videos on youtube about how to do this. And here is the final result!
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, 12-40mm Pro, Multiple Exposures
Next we moved on down the road to where I had previously seen a tractor. Not knowing it was still there, I was very thankful I had spotlights on my 4wd to help light up the sides of the road, otherwise I may have missed it.
For this photograph the techniques used on the barn would be the same. This time I had to set the camera lower and closer, trying to fill the frame with as much of the tractor as possible, but still allowing room for the Milky Way around it. We could hear a pump running out in the field and before long, the Farmer who owns this land was out on his bike in the dark (stuffed if I know how he didn’t hit something!) checking his sprayers. He dropped over to say G’day (and check what we were doing). He was off to bed for a few hours nap before getting up to check the sprayers again. Life can be gruelling for a farmer, they all have my utmost respect.
Again, I captured 8 images for the sky and one light painted one for the tractor and ground. I always recommend painting from both sides to even out the light a little.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, 12-40mm Pro, Multiple Exposures
There was one more photograph I had envisaged to capture before heading out this night, and that was of some beautiful crop lights with the Milky Way over them. Unfortunately it looks like I missed out by one day as all the fields had been just harvested. I’ll just have to wait until later in the season to get that photograph. So instead we took a drive back into Peaks Crossing where you have a clear view of Flinders Peak to the east. By this time (2am) the core was at a nice height in the sky. Again I captured 8 images to stack for the sky, and used my torch to paint in the foreground. On a clear night light this, if you are staying in an area with pretty much the same light pollution levels, you rarely need to change your settings, allowing you to spend much more time on the important things like composition and spooking yourself in the dark.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, 12-40mm Pro, Multiple Exposures
Finally as a bonus, I had headed out the night before this to South Ripley to do a test run of my settings, post techniques etc. I captured this photograph. I think it’s came out a bit dark, ISO used for the sky was 3200, which is why I upped to 5000 for the next night. Practice pays.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark 2, 12-40mm Pro, Multiple Exposures
As the season progresses, I’ll be doing a lot more astro photography. Thank you for reading.
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Well sometimes the best laid plans go completely array. When it comes to landscape photography this can happen more often than not, that’s the way of mother nature. There is a very photogenic mountain peak south of where I live. I had worked out a location I wanted to shoot from, and I was going to experiment using a long lens (in the realms of 140-200mm) to see what compositions I could get.
To get there an hour before sunrise I had to leave home at 3am for the 1.5 hour drive south. As soon as I left home I knew something wasn’t right. It has been raining, and I couldn’t see clouds or stars. A low cloud layer was blanketing the area. Never one to give up, I kept going, and started driving through intermittent rain and fog. I finally arrived at my location to be greeted with a wall of white.
Well this wasn’t what I was after. I waited over an hour and a half until after sunrise, with the faint hope some sun might break through, or the peak would at least become partially visible. This photo shows the result however, the peak was still buried in the fog. I used a long lens to compress the fence line and bring everything closer.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, Adapted Canon FD 70-210mm Lens, F/8, 1/100 sec, ISO 2000 handheld
I finally gave up on this location and decided to improvise. I began looking for scenes that caught my eye, ideally with a leading valley through the scene and a main subject to frame. This next photograph is the first one I came across. Again use the adapted long lens I was able to compress the scene, isolating the trees from the rest of the scene. Long lenses are great for when you don’t have an immediate foreground. You can still get a great result and composition, it does take some practice however to find a scene that works. Its an area I’m still learning and will be exploring more for sure.
I focused only on the trees so the background went a little soft as well. I think this one came out quite nicely and just a touch more sun was finally getting through to add some contrast to the ground.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, Adapted Canon FD 70-210mm F/8, ISO 200, 1/4 sec
The final scene I found called for a lens change, I had a foreground interest nice and close, so I switched to my Olympus 12-40mm pro lens and spent some time framing up a composition. Again the portrait orientation worked, eliminating some clutter from the sides and bringing focus to the dead wood and then the main tree in the photograph. You can see by this time a lot of the fog had cleared, but the low cloud was still incredibly thick. I never did see the mountain on this morning. A return trip is definitely on order as I think it will be an amazing photograph in the right weather and light.
Olympus OMD Em5 Mark II, Olympus 12-40mm, ISO 200, 1/50 sec, F/8
I’m still deciding whether the second or third image is my favourite from this day, comment below and let me know which one is yours.
Landscape photography can be very frustrating at times. All the best laid plans, all the pre-visualisation and effort you put into capturing a photograph can come to naught in a very short space of time. It pays to at least be somewhat prepared to seek alternatives if things don’t work out. It could be making sure you carry a few different lenses, having the tripod in the car if you are planning to shoot handheld, or even waiting a few hours to see if anything changes or improves (pro tip, have some food and drink with you always!). This day did not go the way I planned, yet I’m very happy with at least two of the photographs I managed to capture, and now I’ve done a practice run to the location, I know it will be perfect when the light and weather are right. I might not get it next time, but I will get it. Persistence pays.
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