evening at Barate beach

Barate, East Nusa Tenggara (West Timor), Indonesia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO250

The best time for landscape photography is in the evening or the morning, when the sun is a lot lower, as it provides softer light and more interesting shadows than the harsh mid-day sun. This photo was taken in the evening, with the sun low in the sky to the left, resulting in the golden light on the trees, and some interesting shadows and reflections on the wet beach sand.

This is the beach in Barate, north of Kupang, in West Timor (East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia), photographed last month. We were camping under the trees just to the right of the beach, while spending a couple of days in Barate to visit the local church, and start a school building project.

We recently spent a week on holidays in Phuket, Thailand, and had a great time with two of our children. Here are a couple of photos showing a storm rolling in over the ocean, coming towards Patong Beach.

Elephant Rocks

William Bay National Park, Denmark, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm (10-stop ND filter), 20 sec, f/16, ISO100

During a roadtrip around the southwest of Western Australia late last year, we visited Denmark, and had a look at Elephant Rocks. The name comes from the exposed rocks, which from some angles, look like elephants, particularly when viewed from the path above the rocks, as shown in the top photo.

All three photos in this post were taken with the help of my 10-stop B&W ND filter. The ND filter allows me to achieve much longer shutter speeds than normally possible during the day, by only allowing 0.1% of light through it.

banksia at the Salmon Holes

Torndirrup National Park, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @22mm, 1/80 sec, f/6.3, ISO100

The Salmon Holes is a fantastic looking beach in Torndirrup National Park, in the south-west of Western Australia, in the region of Albany, and is renowned for being a great spot for salmon fishing.

This location also has a reputation for being dangerous, due to numerous people being swept off the rocks while fishing, due to large waves and surges.

Salmon Holes

Torndirrup National Park, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO100

A one second exposure captures the movement of the waves on this windy and stormy day earlier this month. The long exposure was possible due to the 10-stop ND filter I had screwed to the front of my Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens.

The 10-stop ND filter is really just an expensive piece of dark glass that only allows a small amount of light to get through, thus allowing longer exposure photos, even in broad daylight.
On this particular afternoon, the wind was really blowing (much too strong for my kite aerial photography rig), and the waves were crashing over the rocks. The longer exposure allowed me to capture some of the movement of the water and waves.

storm clouds over Sugarloaf Rock

Cape Naturaliste, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @14mm (10-stop ND filter), 1 sec, f/8, ISO100

Late last year, inspired by some of the long-exposure photos by Tasmanian photographer Alex Wise, I bought a B+W ND 3.0 filter.
It is a neutral density filter with an ND 3.0 rating, which means it reduces the exposure by 10 stops, letting just 0.1% of light through. In other words, it's an expensive piece of dark glass!
I bought a 77mm sized filter, to fit my Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens and Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens.
An ND filter reduces the amount of light allowed through the lens, thus allowing the use of much longer shutter speeds during the day.

Here is one of the first photos I took using the 10-stop ND filter. This is a beach scene at Point Peron, taken about half an hour before sunset, in January. The ND filter allowed a 30 second exposure with a fairly wide aperture of f/5.6. A long exposure on such a scene serves to completely blur the waves, resulting in a flat ocean, and milky/smoky water where the waves were breaking on the beach. Due to the movement of the clouds during the exposure, they are also blurred, providing a streaked look in the sky.

long exposure at Point Peron

Point Peron, Rockingham, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @13mm (10-stop ND filter), 30 sec, f/5.6, ISO100

Last week I was in NSW, visiting various customer sites. I went north up to Muswellbrook, and south down to Nowra. It was a very busy week, so I didn't get much of an opportunity to get out with my camera. There were a few days of rain, which further reduced the photography opportunities.

However, I managed to get out to City Beach in Wollongong late one afternoon, and here's one of the photos I took while walking along the beach.

City Beach

City Beach, Wollongong, NSW
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/250 sec, f/10, ISO100

Having just come from a site, I felt very overdressed in a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and steel-capped boots, as almost everyone else on the beach was in boardshorts or a bikini!

This photo was taken looking southwards, and in the distance, you can see the Port Kembla Steelworks on the horizon (click the image to view a larger version).

Here's another one from a sunset shoot last week at North Beach.
The colours in this particular photo were not very inspiring, but a black and white conversion provides a more striking result.

receeding waters

North Beach, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 70-200mm f/4L @70mm, 1/13 sec, f/22, ISO100

Yesterday evening, I met up with some fellow photographers at North Beach, to shoot the sunset from the beach, using the rocks to provide some foreground interest.

Here's a long exposure, taken about 30 minutes after sunset (click the image to view a larger version).

dusk at North Beach

North Beach, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @24mm, 20 sec, f/16, ISO100