The idea of trying out a long exposure of the sea appealed to me, so I drove the car, and all the gear, to Manly. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm, with no wind at all. Of course, the water reflected the sunlight, meaning very long exposures of the sort I managed yesterday in the shade were out of the question. However, a couple of pictures came out quite nicely, at 30s. 90s would have been better but it was far too bright for that.

If you look very carefully, a catamaran motored in just across my shot. Its path is just visible as a slightly darker blue.

Since the ND400 filter falls squarely into the “new toy” category I can’t leave it alone. So today I went across the river in search of more water to photograph. (I had a go at trees, flowers and leaves as well but on a day with almost no breeze that didn’t work so well.)

First of all, two “instructive” photographs. This picture shows a reasonably ‘normal’ daylight exposure, no filter used. The waterfall is clearly made up of independent droplets.

And now exactly the same shot, with the filter and a 60s exposure. The water becomes a silky sheet of white:

Interestingly, increasing the exposure further doesn’t help much beyond this point. Here is the same waterfall taken from the front, at 180s exposure:

Since I was in the Botanical Gardens, I had a go at photographing both lakes.

Due to the lack of wind the reflections are smoothed but still very clear — quite an achievement for a 3-min exposure.

Here, the fountain is totally washed out, and the water like a smooth, opaque surface.

Trees remain rock-solid, only the leaves are slightly blurred. The water looks painted rather than photographed.

Finally, Story Bridge. Because I could.

Hmmmm…. I wonder how Moreton Bay would look using this technique?

A couple of weeks ago I watched a short tutorial on taking long-exposure photographs in broad daylight, using a 10-stop Neutral Density (ND) filter. The long exposures smooth out slightly-moving textures (such as water), resulting in a dreamy-quality photograph that I found very attractive. I filed it under “must try out at some point”, largely because two weeks ago I didn’t own either an ND filter, or a cable release. Both are absolutely required to try this out, as is a tripod, obviously.

This morning I found that the Obsessive Mountain Biker had stopped riding trails for long enough to order the two missing pieces of equipment for me! My little surprise package contained an ND400 filter and a cable release.

ND400 is a 9-stop (rather than 10-stop) filter, and even that was hard to come by. Still, only 1 photon in 400 reaches the camera so that should surely be fine, right?

I attached the filter and the cable release and tried to take a picture. The first two learning points presented themselves immediately:

1. 1 photon in 400 reaching the sensor means you cannot frame a shot with the filter attached. For all practical purposes that’s like trying to frame a shot with the lens hood still on.
2. For the same reason, autofocus is right out as there is not enough light to use it.

So, I take the filter off again, frame the shot, put the filter on again, take off the eye piece, attach the eye piece cover. This is a sequence I will shortly become very good at.

Cable release, 1s. That’s about as short as I can manage using bulb exposure. This shot serves as comparison. The water shows clear ripples. (Click the thumbnail to see a full-size version.)

 
Optimistically, I tried the 2-min exposure recommended in the tutorial. Result: A completely white “picture”. It would seem that the difference between a 9-stop and a 10-stop ND filter does actually matter. So, I try again, using a 60s exposure. Success:

Note how the water has taken on a smooth, silky texture.

Since I was still getting far too much light I switched from using my colossal light bucket (er, I mean, 50mm prime lens) to a 18-55mm kit lens. It is far inferior to the prime lens, among other things because it captures less light, which, in this case, is exactly what I wanted. Here is the same shot taken with the kit lens, also at 60s.

This is looking good. Time to have some fun. This is Eagle St Pier, taken with a 90s exposure:

And finally, a ferry docked at Thornton St during this 60s exposure. You can see its ghosted image.

All photographs in this post were post-processed with the exposure turned down in Aperture. This is to get decent exposure for the buildings in the backgrounds without losing the silky water texture.

The Brisbane Festival started today, with the annual Riverfire fireworks. People lined the river banks hours beforehand. Since we are fortunate to live right next to the river, with angled views onto Story Bridge, we just went for a walk to South Bank to see the anticipation build up. They did bag searches and everything — even opened bottles of water were not allowed. It was a lovely afternoon with a great atmosphere.

We watched a bit of the aerial displays — helicopters and, I’m told by the military geek, FA-18s. These were loud! They flew directly over our block of apartments; the noise was deafening. The ibises didn’t like it either.

In the evening, the centrepiece that everyone had been waiting for: The Riverfire. Fireworks all along the Brisbane River, from Docklands to South Bank. The display was fantastic, and easily the equal to Sydney’s renowned New Year’s Eve fireworks. I loved every second, and took dozens of shots. Enjoy the images!

Bonus pictures on Google+ here.

The Brisbane Festival will continue until 24/09, and I’m especially interested in the City of Lights laser display. Watch for a post on that one.

After a Saturday of heavy spring rains, Sunday dawned sunny and warm. We assumed that mountain biking would be unfair to the soggy trails, hence headed over to Daisy Hills sans bikes, intending to do some trampling around the walking trails there. The Paperbark Trail was, as usual, gorgeous, especially after the rain.

After that we ambled over to the Koala Centre. On the way we found the day’s first surprise: A Noisy Miner nest, fairly close to the park, clearly with eggs in them — the mother wouldn’t leave the nest for more than a couple of minutes.

Then, an extremely photogenic young kookaburra sat just outside the Koala Centre, totally ignoring the people standing around it and pointing cameras.

Unusually, the Koala Centre was full of visitors, many with small children. I suppose even the koalas couldn’t sleep through that, hence the unusual activity:

We slowly moved back into the direction of our car, via some crows that were arguing loudly about a scrap of food.

Then, on the edge of the picnic area, a kangaroo! More to the point, a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch! This is the first time we’ve seen one since Lysterfield Lake Park in Melbourne four years ago. I’ve got dozens of shots; here are a couple:

The mother was clearly teaching youngster how to find food: 1) Approach picnic area; 2) If there are humans, look pathetically hungry; 3) if humans are off elsewhere for a moment, steal all the food. Question. What does one do if there is only a single human there, and he’s asleep? Unfortunately I didn’t get the shot when the boy woke up with a start, staring directly at the kangaroo. It’s hard to say who got the bigger shock. It was hilarious to watch from a distance. This was the initial scene.

Bonus pictures of kangaroo and kookaburra on my Google+ page. If you would like a Google+ invite, just grab one from the links on the right!

This must be one of the best opportunistic shots I’ve ever taken. On the way home from the ferry I noticed this little fellow sampling the menu. All I had on me was my little pocket camera, so I took a few shots and hoped for the best. ‘The Best’, in this case, far exceeded my expectations, so this picture deserves a spot here.

Today, let us talk about the weather. It has a certain wetness to it. This was the mini-waterfall dripping from the ceiling of our balcony.

In-between the torrential downpours, the sun made brief appearances. Here, a backlit flower.

It didn’t last long though — here is the next bank of clouds.

I put up a teaser for this post on Facebook yesterday but for reasons only known to itself, Facebook decided to eat the status update. Never mind, here is the shot that I wanted to show you: A heron in flight. I got only one chance at this shot, and certainly had no time to adjust camera settings etc. Dead pleased.

We went to Karawatha Forest again, this time to the ‘wet’ section in the south, totally different landscape from the eucalyptus forest in the ‘dry’ section further north, where we went last weekend. The hiking trail went past paperbarks, billabongs and a lagoon. The flying heron was a sign of more to come: We also found a heron fishing in a shallow pool. I hope you enjoy the gallery!

At the weekend we discovered a new location: Karawatha State Forest. Even knowing where it is, it turned out that it was extremely easy to drive past the entrance as the local council hadn’t felt it necessary to put up any kind of advance indication that a side road was coming up. Having driven past the first time, we turned around at the first opportunity (easier said than done), and very nearly managed to drive past again. Saved by the iPad, again.

Once in the park it was lovely though, dappled sunlight filtering through the eucalypts. This park has only walking trails — for mountain biking one has to go to nearby Daisy Hill, and frequently we do. We picked a walking trail and set off. The weather was perfect for walking, 25C (as in, not yet too hot). Large butterflies fluttered by, so naturally we went hunting for a shot.

Everything is dry after a dry winter. We crossed some river beds where only the shape and arrangement of stones hinted that water might be present some of the year. And the trail had some oddly-shaped trees on it. Do pay attention to the captions; I sometimes try to produce puns….

In an effort to bring a coherent theme to my blog posts, today will be about the colours I found while wandering around the neighbourhood. Admittedly in some cases I was ‘reaching’ a bit with the colour names.