Whitsunday Moonrise
Well, it has been a long 6 weeks of rest & recuperation after surgery but I am slowly getting out & about more regularly!
This is one of the first images I have shot for ages and is one I have had in my mind for quite a while,but the moon hasn’t been in the right place until last night’s full moon when it all came together at last! There is something magical about the moon rising over the Whitsunday Islands on a balmy tropical evening, reflecting across the water, a sight I never tire of!
All the Best for Christmas & New Year to you all, make it a Happy & Safe one!
Pushing my Luck!
“Whitsunday Magic” pictured here is a bit of a jinx ship! She was bought out from Turkey and for a few years was one of the largest vessels in the Whitsunday charter fleet, (I was briefly one of her skippers) before mysteriously sinking at the wharf. After refloating she was sold to someone who had plans to turn it into a floating restaurant down on the Sunshine Coast. After basic repairs they set off, only to have engine trouble shortly after and decided to return to Airlie Beach where the boat sat on anchor for quite a while until earlier this year when the remnants of TC Oswald created havoc along the Queensland Coast.
“Whitsunday Magic” was driven ashore along with many others and has stayed there since with the tide flowing in & out of her hull. I took advantage of the lowest tides of the year to walk out to her across the sand/mud flats & see if I could get some interesting images.
After this shot I waded out a bit for a different angle & that’s where it all went pear-shaped! While trying to extricate my sandal from the mud that I was slowly sinking into, I lost my balance, ended up on my knees and my 5D Mk II with 24mm TS-E came perilously close to going for a swim. Unfortunately they did get a bit of a light shower so the 5D is on it’s way to hospital as I type this!
I guess it would have looked pretty funny to anyone who might have been watching, but at the time………………….
A Big Week!
After much thought, I recently purchased a Canon 70-200 f2.8 L lens and it sat in my bag for about a week before I put it into action. What a great lens! Sharp as a tack,great contrast & colour and at a good price.
Since then it has been my main lens and has tackled everything from yacht racing & landscape to a bit of candid street photography.
The last week or so has been a busy period for the Whitsundays. Airlie Beach Race Week, Whitsunday Reef Festival and Hamilton Island Race Week and we have been blessed by some superb weather through it all. The yacht racing fleet has had to contend with light variable winds but when the days are this good who could complain?!
These images show some of what’s been happening.
All taken with the 70-200.
Rainbows
Here in the Whitsundays we have had some unseasonal weather for the last couple of weeks with strong winds & showers that just seemed to hang around forever! Not much fun if you are out on the water, but, as they say,” every cloud has a silver lining”. In this case,quite a few rainbows have appeared.
Frustrating and ephemeral things they are to capture. Firstly there needs to be rain AND sun, hopefully in the right positions relative to you. I have spent many a frustrating minute chasing rainbows over the years, with precious little in the way of ‘killer shots’ to show for it!
However, while looking through my archive I realised that I have a few nice images, so I thought I would post some of my better ones! Hope you like them.
Tip- To make a rainbow really glow with nuclear colour, a polariser is the way to go. You can even make a rainbow disappear!
Summer Colours
As we move into summer up here in the tropics Poinciana trees begin to flower adding bright splashes of colour to the landscape!
Polarised sunglasses or filters on a camera lens just add to the effect. Thought I would try out my new 5DII!
Dinghy Wharf
When this image first appeared on my computer screen I was a little disappointed in it, slight movement of the pontoon during a 3s exposure had very slightly ruined it. But, that’s what you get for doing a long exposure on a platform that floats!
I decided to see what I could do with it anyway because the composition looked good and that dinghy in the foreground looked interesting.
Not the best image I have ever shot but I have to admit it’s growing on me! What do you think?
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!
Rain, Rain, Go Away!
Weather has been totally crap over here in coastal Queensland for the last few days. It just won’t stop raining at all! In the last week we have had over 400mm of rain here in the Whitsundays and I forget the last time I saw a shadow.
Funny thing is that the Qld Government is funding a big tourism campaign to advertise that Qld is open for business. What with everything else that has happened over the last few months, this latest bout of wet weather is lousy timing if nothing else! We just keep saying under our breath that ‘the sun will come out!’ If you say it enough it will happen……..won’t it??
This image is just to show you all that the sun does shine in the ‘Wetsundays’ and when it does you wouldn’t be anywhere else!
Morning Glory
This is a monochrome rendering of a similar shot to my last post. The light rays are a little more defined in this one!
This is the image straight out of the camera.
All processing was done in Lightroom 3. Crop & Straighten,WB adjustment, B&W conversion, Graduated Filter, Beef up contrast, Split toning.
If anybody has ideas on a way to improve it, comments are most welcome as I am sure it can be improved upon!
I love this type of light!
Whitsunday Gold.
You know how it is, rummaging through your files, seeing if there are any little gems that you had forgotten about.
After processing a couple of new images tonight, I was just going over this particular folder when I came across this image of a sunrise at Shute Hbr. I had shot this about a year ago and like a lot of my images, I sat on it for a while.
I have to say that I quite like it because I am a sucker for crepuscular sunlight at the best of times and this a pretty good example!
I also like it for it’s simplicity, It could be composed a little better but the brick shed I was standing next to limited my options on that score. Probably look good as a monochrome which I will do another day, I’m off to bed!
Whew!!
I guess you have all heard by now that Tropical Cyclone Yasi smashed into the Qld Coast at Mission Beach last night. Rated at Cat.5 it is the largest storm to impact Qld in a century.
The coast between Townsville and Cairns copped the brunt of the storm with places such as Tully,Cardwell, Mission Beach and Innisfail sustaining major damage. Luckily no reports of major injury or death have been received so far.
The Qld Government should be commended for the planning and procedures they have implemented during this event and our Premier, Anna Bligh has been an absolute trooper during all the disasters that have hit Qld in recent times!
Here in the Whitsundays we had gale-force winds all night but once again no significant damage has occured. Early modelling suggested that TC Yasi would come ashore not to far away from the Whitsundays so everybody was prepared for much worse conditions than we actually got.
Driving around Airlie Beach this morning I was flat out finding anything dramatic to photograph apart from the “surf” in the bay.
A marked contrast to what it is normally like! A few desperate surfers even paddled out in to the mushburgers risking stingers and sharing the line-up with a yacht that had dragged anchor overnight.
Every now and then it would get nailed by a wave that would break outside it and I am amazed the anchor was holding it at all!
The vessel featured in my last two posts was getting a hammering so I thought a couple of shipwreck shots were in order just to have on file.
While we here have escaped this time many people further north have not been so lucky and will take a long time to recover.
TC Yasi
Here it comes! TC Yasi is barreling towards the tropical Qld coast as a Cat 4 system and is expected to cross the coast near Cairns sometime early Thursday morning.
Here in the Whitsundays we are expecting some serious winds and rain. The one thing about Qld cyclones is that they often recurve to the south as they approach the coast. That could put us in the firing line, so we are not out of danger yet! Everybody is apprehensive about Yasi for good reason, it’s a biggie!
In my last post I thought the grounded vessel may have been lucky by coming ashore in a sandy area. Inspection at low tide showed it managed to strike a couple of submerged rocks sustaining substantial damage underwater. Unlucky!
TC Anthony
Well, TC Anthony crossed the coast at Bowen last night at about 10:30pm. Even though it was wild evening with wind gusts up to about 130kmh,Airlie Beach escaped with minimal damage, lots of broken branches and only one boat driven ashore that I could find.
I was pretty surprised that there weren’t more boats on the bricks as Airlie Bay would have been like a washing machine at the height of the storm. This guy was lucky as he found a patch of sand surrounded by a lot of rocks!
Even though we dodged a bullet last night, we are staring down the barrel of TC Yasi which looks like it is a large and potentially destructive system forecast to impact the Qld coast on Thursday.
The next image is an attempt to capture some of the gale force gusts ripping through the trees outside my door yesterday afternoon
Anyway, it will be a nervous few days coming up, stay tuned!
Storm Warning
Well, it looks like I may have spoken a bit prematurely in my last post! As I type this, TC Anthony is making a beeline towards the Nth Queensland Coast and is forecast to cross the coast somewhere north of Bowen as a Cat 2 system, sometime early tomorrow morning.
Airlie Beach, being on the southern side of the cyclone will cop some wild weather tonight and we are expecting some heavy rain over the next few days!
Of more concern is another system forming near Vanuatu which is expected to move west and impact the Queensland Coast as a Cat 4 or 5 system later in the week.
After Cyclone Ului last year people are a little more switched on and have been stocking up with supplies and fuel. Not sure what use a car load of fuel will be when the roads are likely to be impassable?
Also, the SW of West Australia is still under threat from TC Bianca which thankfully seems to be weakening. That is one out of the box as it is extremely rare for a cyclone to be that far south! Anyway, hope you guys over there don’t cop it too badly.
Here we go again!
As Good as it Gets!
After all the monsoon weather we have had here in the Whitsundays over the last few months, Huey has made up for it with some magnificent weather over the last week!
This is the view from Airlie Beach and today it was nearly perfect conditions to capture it. The noticeable absence in this scene is people! Normally this beach would have many more people on a day like this but the tourism industry which is the town’s major industry is doing it tough at the moment. Never seen the place so quiet!
GFC, high exchange rates, flooding etc have combined to hit the area for a six. But the good news is that we are well and truly open for business!
In the immortal words of Lara Bingle “So, where the bloody hell are you?”
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