Kosioszko Landscapes

We had our first camping outing since way back in 2007 at Girrawheen. We hiked and stayed in the Kosioszko National Park and covered 22 km in one day doing the Main Range track to Mt Kosioszko. I sure wished the camera wasn't quite so heavy, I wonder how I will go trekking with it.

Lessons I learned:
VR is no substitute for a tripod in doing panos...
trying to guess hyperfocal distances sucks - use the iphone app... or a prime with f-stop markings
50mm f1.8 rocks in portrait orientation - that's what the L-bracket is for...
be consistent with using an index frame at the start of each pano/HDR cycle - it costs nothing...
Don't go beyond diffraction limit of a lens just to get a shorter close hyperfocal distance...
Watch for the change in polarisation angle whilst panning across the scene - a bitch to fix in PP...
HDR looks fake - use a ND grad. filter where possible

On to the photos...


The start of our walk. The ascent on the other side is much steeper than it looks


Blue Lake Pano - pushed more blue into the lake as it was looking greeny-brown, maybe too much


Head waters of the Snowy River - towards the end of the day


HDR Pano - Lookout from the Alpine Way back towards the Main Range


HDR Pano - Tom Groggins Camp site - late afternoon

Now for a MANscape... Awwww Yeahhhh.

Trawling for macros - David vs Goliath

After having some fun with the Ladybug, I thought to see if I had any other macros worth posting. This one was taken two years ago with just a single corded SB-800 bounced off a white brolly (thanks girls - still using it!).

This Rhinoceros beetle was most likely the cause of death for the poor papaya tree behind the Hash house in Indooroopilly. Everyday, for a long while, it would continuously gouge holes in the major roots of the tree. I gingerly handled this monster who wasn't particularly pleased at being displaced from his tree molestation. The shot was to make the beetle's eye the focal point, but an ant wandered by to have a look.

Getting the ant in the right focal plane was just dumb luck as it was already hard to best use the limit DoF on the 90mm macro at close working ranges. Even at f9.0 it's "wafer thin"! (@ mark 4:06)

Idle lunch - Ladybug

I had some Ph.D downtime as the power to our apartment was disconnected for about an hour, good thing the flash batteries were charged! Bright daylight, but still required 2 flashes. Corded 900 from above right and slave 800 from directly below. Went for f8.0-10 with 1/160 - 1/200 shutter. Spent 1/2 hour coaxing and waiting for the little dood to be ready for it's "close up", even so, only came up with two frames worth posting.

No ladybugs were injured in these photos, last I saw was the ladybug stalking some aphids on our balcony garden.

Trawling for landscapes #5 - Girrawheen Redux

Can't remember if I have already posted this one.

Taken a while back in Girrawheen National Park. 14mm f8, no polariser. Wish I put the tree on the left and worked the crazy shadow it cast into the frame. That would have been a more even composition rather than the empty space to the left.

Having a play with it in post to see if my new found tricks can add to it.

Trawling for landscapes #4 - North Stradbroke Island

My motivation to kick out some landscapes is for my new Windows 7 rotating backgrounds, some have been successful, others a nightmare for finding icons. Plus it's a relaxing disconnect at the end of the night after bashing my head against my paper all day.

This one was taken mid this year during our "get-the-hell-out-of-Canberra" winter holiday on North Stradbroke Island. It was a fairly flat day so some licence was taken with regards to PP. I'm happier with this one as it's @ 45mm with the 24-70mm, I think it's my preferred working range rather than the 10-20mm.

Composition wise, for me I feel there is more lead-in for the eye (compared to the other 3) with a pronounced bottom to top in both colours and subject focus. Improvement suggestions? I'm wondering if I can ditch the 3:2 ratio and crop to a composition that's tall and thin?



Edit: I think both Selina and Billo are right in saying there isn't something distinctive in the foreground for inital impact (too many sticks going everywhich way). Does the new crop with the skinny aspect ratio emphasise the bottom to top flow? I'm hoping it also highlights that bottom left to middle tree branch as the key foreground content. The crop also ditches a lot of the sky which was always an understated blurgh. I also tried an almost 1:1 crop but I don't like cropping more than I have to, and need to make more of an effort to get it right in the camera 1st.



The last 4 entries have honed for me that I simply cannot run and gun with landscapes. They require far more thought to a proper composition not to mention patience as to best timing. This appears to be common knowledge on various other blogs and sites I've been reading, but I guess hubris makes me think I know better ;-) (Damn that tasty hubris!)

Thanks to all for their constructive comments, they are exactly what I wanted.

Trawling for landscapes #3 - Lake George

Eight image stitched panorama, handheld, 24-70mm in fast fading light. If I remember, I exposure locked for the middle of the frame, so there might have been some light fall off on the edge frames. Stitched in CS4 which does a pretty damn good job at auto stitching. Lightened the foreground in post and added a little punch to the colours as I have the camera set in neutral for greater flexibility in post. Given I do so much pp for colours I'm wondering if I don't use standard saturation by default rather than neutral sat. Will have to think about this. In hindsight, I should have used a 50mm and I wouldn't have that nasty distortion in the foreground... Unless I just crop most of the foreground out. Any thoughts?

My issues with this photo are lack of distinct foreground object to initially draw your eye, in fact no subject really worth mentioning save for the colour in the horizon and horizon too much in the middle. More a post processing exercise, works well for my computer desktop as it's not too busy that I lose icons in it. And the pastels are calming when I have a model crash.

For those of you who know the Lake George rest stop I took this from, it's interesting that the sun was at an angle such that the ridge of hills behind me cast a sharp shadow on the hills in the background of the frame. A few minutes earlier and the tips of those hills were a golden orange. Next time gadget!



Edit: I'll go with Ged's v. good call, the asymmetry was bothering me but in the uncropped photo, there was a pile of McDonald's wrappers (bloody bogans) defiling a memorial rest stop of a V.C. recipient during WWI so I had no choice. Good point about the downward dip in foreground being distracting. Thanks Ged, I do like it better now. Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of stitching distortions in CS4?

Trawling for landscapes #2 - Tidbinbilla

Dunno if this really counts as a landscape, but I took it with that intention so it is! Again around midday (ARGH!), again 10-20mm, again same old composition,albeit with a slight macro twist. Fiddled with it in post. Focus ain't spot on and I'm workin' off a jpg. I dunno how people make money from landscape photography. Honestly I have less than 10 landscape photos that I'm happy with in the last 3 odd years of owning this camera.