Space Travellers

Ever have those days where you feel like you are going in ever decreasing circles? Well here is photographic proof that you are not alone!

I have been wanting to try one of these images for ages, so tonight I decided to have a crack at it. I am reasonably happy with my first result but I learnt a couple of things along the way.

1-: You need a dark night with no moon to really make the stars stand out.

2-: make sure the batteries in your flash are fresh! (I did make an exposure of these trees with flash but I only got one flash in before my “new”batteries died. I like this one better anyway!)

3-: Try to be away from roads if possible. Car headlights can play havoc with your images!

4-: You really need a couple of hours at least to get a good range of arcs with the stars. Therfore you will have around 70 or images to process,stack and blend!

5-: Point 4 will really stretch your RAM, CPU and storage if you do this at full resolution!

I have always liked the idea that we really are space travellers without leaving this 3rd rock from the sun and this image kind of illustrates that idea for me!  Stay tuned for some more  images on this theme next  time we see the dark side of the moon.

Happy New year!

Instead of Partying Hard last night I decided that I needed a couple of decent fireworks shots, so I was good,drank water all night and stuck to the plan!

Ok, It is not Sydney Harbour or London etc but this is NYE in Airlie Beach.

In actual fact the crowd was way better than what you see here but a lot more messy as far as composition goes so I blended a couple of images.

Hope you all have a great 2012!

Mountain Storm

Well, I hope you have all been having better luck photographically than I have lately! It seems that on the rare occasions that I get out & about lately, conditions conspire against me!

Anyway, this is another one from my last trip to Tasmania. Generally I don’t bother shooting Mt Roland during the middle part of the day, the flat frontal lighting just doesn’t do it justice. On this particular day I had a couple of hours to kill so I tossed a coin to decide whether to sit in a café or see if I could scout out any new angles that I hadn’t noticed before. Scouting won.  Driving down one of the backroads in the area I saw that it looked like a storm was brewing over the highlands which was looking kind of interesting.

The farming implement was about the only interesting foreground that I could find so I set up and waited to see what might happen.

The storm clouds added some interest and drama to the mountain that would not normally be there and they dissipated shortly after this image was taken.  If I had been sitting in a café as I was thinking of doing, I would have missed it!

Hope you all have a safe & Happy Xmas and New Year!

Tasmanian Heritage

Tasmania has not only great opportunities for landscape photography but due to it’s well preserved heritage buildings, many towns have some brilliant old architecture  to photograph!

I had seen photos of this church in Evandale and seeing as I was staying my last night in Tas. close by, I thought I would swing by and check it out. Luckily the late evening sun was at the right angle and bathed the church in some beautiful golden light. Perfect timing, as I wasn’t expecting to get this lucky!

After making the most of this opportunity I looked across the road and noticed another interesting looking church.

Although the light wasn’t particularly great I took a couple of shots anyway for a record. next time I am here I will definately visit this one again. In the right light, I can see a lot of potential with this church!

Home on The Range

I may have mentioned a few times before that Mt. Roland is probably my favourite mountain. So, I am always looking for a new angle to shoot the mountain from, hopefully without trespassing on the farmland that predominates in this area.

This involves driving up every backroad that looks interesting which I rather enjoy anyway. This particular afternoon I stopped at a farm gate of a property that looked like it may have seen better days,jumped a fence and came upon this little scene.

How cool would it be to live with a view like that every day!?

Rip Rip, Woodchip

Unfortunately whenever I am doing a bit of exploring up in the high country I come across scenes like this all too often!

They remind me of old battle scenes similar to what would have been seen after the bloody battles on the Western Front during WW1 where whole towns were wiped off the map. These places where swathes of forest are literally obliterated are usually in areas where not too many tourists are found, out of sight,out of mind.

Ever since I was a boy growing up in Tasmania in the late ’60s I have seen this happening. I hated it then, I hate it now! It just seems so wasteful and pointless.

Tasmania is one of the most naturally beautiful places on earth and yet the government and some of the population seem fixated on trying to ruin that beauty, either by building Hydro-Electric dams to supply electricity for industry or clear-felling forests to sell overseas for woodchips! Even some of the old foresters and sawmillers are aghast at what is happening.

While this is a deplorable state of affairs, there are a lot of people in Tasmania that are employed directly or indirectly in forestry, many of them ar second ,third and even fourth generation forestry workers,millers etc. While it would be nice to stop logging immediately, throwing all these people out of work is not too intelligent either. Therein lies the dilemma. You can hardly say to a 45yo man who probably left school at 15 and has worked in the industry all his working life that he could re-train to do something in the tourism industry, the first sound you would hear is a chainsaw as he chases you out of his yard for being so bloody stupid!

Plantation timber will help take up the slack to some extent but they are rapidly taking over prime farming land as farmers sell their farms because their children don’t see much of a future in agriculture. Tasmania already has an exodus of young people heading to the mainland searching for better opportunities.

Unfortunately,it will take time to phase out the most destructive aspects of the forestry industry. In the meantime they will seeking to get the most out of it possible.Thankfully there are organisations keeping a close eye on them.

 

 

The Waiting Game.

G’day Gang,

First up, apologies to all for not participating in the blogosphere as much of late. My new job is to blame, early starts,long days & plenty of ‘em!  Not quite what I was envisioning but that is the marine tourism industry sometimes.  GFC, what GFC? you would not know it existed here at the moment, a large improvement on previous months!

Needless to say, I have been as busy as a one- armed paperhanger and have not had much time for photography related activities.

This image is testament to an old adage of repeatedly visiting a place until you get the shot. Every time I come to Tasmania I visit this spot at least once a day usually at sunrise or sunset, because you just never know what may transpire. Even so, I have been caught out a couple of times after packing the gear away after a fruitless wait only to see the conditions come together within minutes!

This particular morning everything came together nicely for about an hour and I came away with a good selection of images.  Enjoy!

Cradle Mt.

Only made it up to Cradle Mt. once this time around. True to form, the weather was cold,blustery and RAINING which is the norm rather than the exception in this part of the world.  I sat in the car for a while cursing my luck and eventually a break in the rain came through so hopefully I set off  to a couple of spots that I wanted to check out.

Of course, 100 meters away from the car and a light rain started. I pulled out the camera gear a couple of times in the hope of getting a shot that wouldn’t have water spots on the lens and this was the only useable image.

I call this an environmental portrait of Cradle Mt. with the mountain taking a backseat to it’s surrounding environment of buttongrass plains which cover a large part of the surrounding area.

Anyway, hope you all like it!

The Road less Travelled.

After having a bit of a look around the West Coast of Tasmania and vowing to spend more time in the area next time I am in Tasmania, I decided to head up the Western ExplorerRoad as this would cut a lot of travelling time to my next destination.

With little information about the condition of this road which has been pushed through the Tarkine Wilderness I headed into the wilderness hoping my hire car was up to the task!  As it turned out the road was in good condition but rarely have I felt more isolated, even in the Kimberley! For the next 3 or so hours I saw no sign of civilisation apart from the road I was on.  If I had any sort of problem it was going to be a long wait for any help.

About halfway I stopped to stretch my legs and saw this scene behind me which summed what I was feeling at the time perfectly!

Storm Wracked

Walking around the coastline of Western Tasmania, you notice a lot of Bull Kelp washed up onto the shore. Considering that Kelp anchors itself to rocks often in deeper water,you start to realise the power and ferocity of some of the storm driven seas that frequent this part of the world.

I think this image best captures the raw wildness of the Tasmanian West Coast for me!