On Saturday after work I drove to my mates place to borrow his GPS system and then headed down to Dunsborough to attend Christian’s course and also take some photos while I was down there. When I arrived I was a little disappointed that there were no clouds in the sky but I took a few photos anyway and they didn’t turn out too bad!

After spending a few hours out and about taking photos I headed towards Christian’s Gallery (which is amazing, by the way) to learn about how he works. I enjoyed myself and would highly recommend the course to anybody who is into landscape photography. I spent the night in my car and after taking some photos the next morning, drove back up to Perth.

The first image is of Cape Naturaliste and is a 7 photo panorama captured not long before sunset on Saturday evening. The Nodal Ninja did a great job and made stitching a breeze!

The second photo is of Sugarloaf Rock and is a 6 photo panorama captured not long after sun rise on Sunday morning. Sugarloaf Rock was much larger that I was expecting and I don’t think this photo really portrays how massive this rock is - I needed somebody in the photo to add some scale.

I think I will have to head back down to Dunsborough again sometime soon and spend a few more days there when the skies are a little more interesting!

I was looking back at some old photos a couple of nights ago, from a sunrise shoot that I did with Neal back in December, and came across this one. At the time I wasn’t too impressed with the photos I took on that morning, but looking back there are a couple that I really like and this is one of them. It is now available as a print.

In other news, my Nodal Ninja finally arrived but I haven’t had time to go out and shoot any landscapes with it. I gave it a quick test run at home and produced a perfectly stitched, 6 photo image with a final resolution of 32 Mega Pixels. I can’t wait to use this baby down south tomorrow! I can already imagine the quality of prints I’ll be able to produce with this new toy…

Here’s another one from deep in the archives. I took this hand held 3 photo panorama around June 2006 while I was still living over in Queensland. I only just got around to stitching it last night and wish I had have done it a lot earlier.

The location is Mount Tamborine in the Gold Coast hinterland. It’s a popular spot for hang gliders to take off from and land far into the distance.

Today Dylan contacted me suggesting that it was a nice day for some beach shots as there were some nice clouds out. I hadn’t been out shooting in broad daylight for quite some time (normally I like to shoot around dawn and dusk) so I thought I’d give it a go.

I drove up to Trigg and found this nice little bay that I thought would be good for a pano. The photo above is a 3 photo panoramic stitch. In hindsight, I wish I had have moved the composition slightly to the right so that more of the water was in the frame. Ah well, might just have to make another trip there to try again some time.

I wasn’t sure how the stitching would work out for the water but I can not notice any joins and am happy with the result.

This is one of the first sunrise photographs I shot with my first Digital SLR almost 2 years ago while I was living over in Queensland. I still quite like this shot but it is interesting to look back on my work and see how much I have learned and how I have improved over the past couple of years. I didn’t know a whole lot about composition, exposure time, aperture or ISO, etc back then but now I use these settings every time I go out and shoot. The location is Miami Beach, Gold Coast, Queensland.

My Nodal Ninja 3 is due to arrive any day now and I can’t wait to take it out. When I ordered it back in February they were out of stock and so I received a full refund and was asked to re-order again in a few weeks. Last week Bill from Nodal Ninja sent me an email to let me know that they had some more in stock and he would post it express for free. Great customer service, in my opinion.

On another note, I am heading down to Dunsborough next weekend to spend an evening with Christian Fletcher and hopefully grab a few nice new panoramic images while I am down there. I am really looking forward to that.

I thought i’d share this find… A little promo vid on one of my favourite landscape photographers - Peter Lik. Check out his website here. One day I hope to be producing quality images like these. Until then, I will keep dreaming.

If you haven’t visited one of his galleries and you have the chance to, I highly recommend it. The quality of his prints are simply jaw-dropping. I wish there was one in Perth!

I didn’t end up going for a shoot the other night because the weather turned to crap, but I did make it out tonight. I only took a few shots as the light conditions weren’t the best. It’s amazing what a difference some nice light can do to a fairly boring scene.

To the right is one of the photographs I took tonight - a pretty boring sunset scene. In case you didn’t notice, the picture in the previous post is from the exact same spot, yet it is much more interesting (for me at least) and i’d much rather get it framed and hung than the one from tonight.

This post goes to show that you have to be patient and persistent to get great results - most of the time. You can’t always just show up to a location, press the shutter a few times and come home with something special. You may have to visit the same location a number of times over a period of a few weeks, or months, in all different lighting conditions before you get that “wow” photograph.

Thanks for reading,
Beau

I’ve let the blog go lately as I haven’t been out on a shoot for the past few weeks. I thought I had better post something from the archives just to keep the blog going, so here’s a shot from back in November last year. This was one of the best sunsets I have ever witnessed and I am glad I had my camera with me. I sat on the beach for just under an hour watching the sky turn from blue to yellow to red until darkness.

This panorama has been cropped from a single digital frame. I used a couple of stacked Graduated Neutral Density filters to darken the sky and allow for a longer exposure which blurs the water.

I will be going out on a shoot tonight so hopefully there won’t be such a long period between blog posts as there has been lately.

Thanks for reading.