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Happy new Year!

Photo taken from Rosny Point foreshore in Hobart, Tasmania. One of my favourite spots for fireworks display.

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The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race has been run and won for another year (well nearly, still waiting for the outcome of a protest that is still in session at the time of writing this. This year saw a number of happy differences from last year:

• A close race between two maxis up the Derwent River.
• Large Gennaker sails being used – the wind was coming from the south.
• Wild Oats XI did not cross the line first again.
• An Evening Finish.

As you can tell I wasn’t particularly keen on yet another S2H where the favourite wins again, so it was refreshing to see LOYAL come across the line first. What a nice way to end the year in photography.

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I even managed to take some video of the finish:

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Every year the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden holds a festival to celebrate Spring, featuring food, wine, entertainment and of course the gardens. This festival used to be known as the Tulip festival but in recent years the tulips have been flowering earlier and as a result usually finish blooming by the time the festival comes around.

This has been the first time I have taken the camera out since visiting Taiwan, and suffered some challenges including forgetting an all important step-up ring for the filters I had taken with me. oops!

It was great to see the apples were still in blossom as my tree at home has finished (and I am rather looking forward to the fruit!). I often lament about how much I would like to spend vast sums of cash on my garden and get it up to a quality level I am happy with.

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During lunch I sat underneath the shade of a golden elm tree as the temperatures were getting up there. it was nice to look at the sky through the tree.

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It was perhaps a little early to visit the conservatory, with many of the orchids not yet in flower.

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Overall, it was a fun day out, and I wasn’t the only one enjoying it.

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I teamed up with photo buddy Nigel Honey and rode down to the airport in the one and only Kombi Cam, before meeting up with our other friend Iain Best, before arriving at our destination for the evening – the Hobart Airport Control Tower. I was apprehensive the first time I went there the night before – concerned about security, however I was pleased to find that in Hobart at least they are not so uptight about people taking aircraft photos as I thought they would be.

With the wind blowing from the North and my experience the night before, I was fully prepared for all the aircraft of the evening to approach from the North, loop the airport and make a landing from the South. So when the first plane made a direct landing from the North everyone was caught off guard. Indeed the first 2 flights made direct landings.

The 3rd flight in was missed entirely as by this point convinced the planes would be landing from the North, we dismissed the light of the 3rd aircraft the be a helicopter that took off earlier and headed off into the distance. By the time we realised it was a plane, it was all too late. By the time the 4th plane came in we were already certain based on it’s height that it would be making a look, and so were prepared for the landing.

However perhaps the highlight of my night was not so much the landings as the last departure out of Hobart for the night which proved to make quite a spectacular trail into the night sky as it took off and made a lazy bank to the right, heading North to Melbourne.

And what did we do while waiting for the planes to come in? well we had this fantastic looking control tower right behind us that was just begging to be photographed too!

This was a much more successful expedition than last time, and I am sure to spend a lot more time here working on long exposure technique.

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

On the 25th of April 1915, allied Australian & New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli as part of an invasion force during the World War I. History tells the story of the catastrophe and the following year the first ANZAC Day commemoration ceremonies were held. These days ANZAC day is used to commemorate the sacrifices of Australian and New Zealand forces in a broad range of conflicts including Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. The following photos were taken at the ANZAC Day Parade & Commemoration in Hobart.

Like all photos on my site, click on the image to enlarge.

Lest We Forget.

For me, it was not a very successful night taking photos, and it reminded me that some basic preparation goes a long way.

1. Focus

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At night, planes are hard to miss when landing, they have a whopping big headlights on the front that can provide light up a field hundreds metres away. So it was rather annoying that even seeing the plane some 10 mins before it landed that this photo was taken out of focus.

This night I was using 2 lenses, this one was an Canon EF-S 18-135 f4-5.6, and like most “lower end” lenses, it was lacking a focus distance meter. AF does not work at night, there is not enough light for the camera to pick up an edge to focus on. Prior to the plane starting it’s final approach as it was so dark and I was lacking a torch, I could not see to focus manually so took a guess at where infinity was on the MF and shot. I was wrong.

Tip 1: Take a torch, even better a spotlight, that you can use to illuminate what you want to focus on in the photo. Ideally have a friend act as assistant in light coloured clothing, and get them to walk to the area you want to focus on and shine the light on themselves.

Tip 2: Torches are also very handy to find your way on uneven ground at night. I really missed having a torch.

2. Aperture and Stability

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Having changed location, we were definitely in position that offered a much more interesting photo, but being up on a hill was windier. For this photo I swapped to a Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 DX which did have a focus distance meter. The photo to the right was the result of a 5 minute exposure @ f18.

Three things are wrong with this photo. First and obvious one is that it is too dark, and much of low-light airport detail is lost. Second is at some point during the exposure the photo the tripod was bumped, which has resulted in the lit objects being double exposed. Finally in the lower right, you see the viewfinder of a friend’s camera. Oops.

Tip 3: Long exposures at night do not necessarily require stopping down the lens to oblivion, the smaller the aperture the more significant the fall-off between light and dark will be.

Tip 4: Stand clear of the tripod when taking long exposures. Make sure friends stand clear of the tripod when taking long exposures. In windy conditions your tripod will be more stable the lower the camera is to the ground, so adjust tripod legs accordingly.

Tip 5: Once you start exposing, make sure nobody with any torches, phones etc walks into your field of view.

3. Crop

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Semi-convinced that the IS functionality of the 18-135mm lens would still provide a sharper image in the windy conditions, I swapped back to this lens, adjusted the aperture and with the final landing of the night shot the photo to the left, around 2m30s at f 6.3.

From an exposure perspective and sharpness perspective, this was a definite improvement on previous photos with crisp clear lights, and more of the airfield detail on display with the low light.

But no matter how careful I was trying to get everything into view, the two most critical parts of the image when the plane turns, have been cropped.  The second fault with this image is that the lit areas were overexposed. I did attempt to recover those areas in post-processing but it still is not ideal

Tip 6: It doesn’t matter how good the lens’ sharpness and exposure is if the focal length is not short enough to capture the entire scene.

In all it was an interesting night, and as the airport is far from busy (usually only 2-3 inbound flights after 8pm) you have to try and make every photo count. I am hoping to visit again in the very near future and having learnt my lessons will get the photo I am after.

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It would seem another weekend, another festival in Tasmania. This weekend saw both the New Norfolk Autumn Festival and the Longford Revival, the previous weekend was the Focus on Franklin, 2 weeks before that was the Taste of the Huon, and I am sure that there will be a heap more festivals in the near future.

Today I was at the festival at New Norfolk to give myself some time to play with my brand spanking new EOS 60D Camera. Whilst I have aspirations of owning a full-frame sensor camera, the 60D is a good compromise given my limited use of camera recently and price.

The Festival itself has been much like many of the counterparts in regional areas – a cross between a limited carnival rides (3 jumping castles in a row? really? thats all sideshow alley rides these days?), special interest group stalls, the usual food vans and a few performance stages.

Alpacas

Indeed, there were alpacas there, which with their large eyes and curious behaviour were fun to watch and to photograph. However perhaps the highlight for me happened as we were leaving, because as we passed the main stage the Taiko Drums performed.

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Not only was it fantastic to listen to drums, but it gave me opportunity to test the video recording functionality of the camera. Needless to say I am pretty damn happy with the result and will try to put together more video montages as part of my portfolio. I have included the test clip below Don’t forget to try clicking on the HD view!

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The wooden boat festival was tied in with the Royal Hobart Regatta. As is tradition, on the evening of the public holiday associated with the regatta, there is a fireworks display to mark the end of events.

Usually the best vantage points for the fireworks are by boat, anchored by the regatta grounds, or the surrounding shores opposite. This night while waiting for the fireworks to begin, I found that the iconic landmark of Hobart, Mt Wellington, was beautifully silhouetted  against the fading light, so took a few snaps.

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What an incredibly busy weekend! Many events were on the go that would keep a photographer busy. the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, the Royal Hobart Regatta, not to mention Valentine’s day as well!

I sort of managed to juggle all 3, and as a result now have quite a few photos to share over the next few weeks.

Above is a photo taken at the Wooden Boat festival from the main Pier.

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Indeed it has been nearly 3 months since my last post. How time flies. Truth of the matter is I have had some changes in my life that has meant I have had less time to spend on photography. This is not necessarily a bad thing

This picture was recently taken from Natone Hill on Hobart’s Eastern shore, facing south. I was demonstrating how aperture, ISO and shutter speed interact to expose a photo. I still think the Tasman bridge is very pretty, but it is rare that all the lights appear to be working at any time, as demonstrated on the left of this photo.

This is possibly my last post before Christmas, so I wish everyone a safe holiday season and a happy new year.