Coogee - Evening HDR

A few HDRs from Coogee. I finally have a little more time for photography and writing again and hopefully I will be able to do something about the backlog - it would be sad having to go into an eventful 2011 still trying to deal with 2010.


HDR is pretty perfect for capturing the last sunlight of the day and still keep some details in the shadow Unfortunately I was out at least 20 min late so the sun had already disappeared and I had to battle very slow shutter speeds. However, with a few natural camera supports around - who needs a tripod when there are solid rocks around? - it was possible to get enough light through the lens to call it a photo. Knowing how dark is was towards the end, it is quite impressive how the HDR manages to extract colors from all the darkness.

Cape Banks with The Gang

Weather was not really good for snorkeling so the gang decided to use an early(?) Saturday morning down at Cape Banks for a healthy serve of coastal bushwalking spiced up with the chance of some pelagic action. To convince the boys to join I might have mentioned the possibility of bagging the resident Australian Hobby ... which obviously did not show!

Fantastic landscape down there and amazing that you can walk around for hours less than 3.5km from one of the busiest harbours in the southern end of the world and less than 6km from Sydney airport and have it all to yourself ... guess a bit of shabby weather increase your chances of solitude :-D


No Hobby and the shearwaters outside of binocular range meant that the Eastern Reef Egret above could proudly claim the "bird of the day"-title. But once again what really mattered was that we managed to drag our lazy bums of the couch (or out of bed) and put a bit of early Saturday excitement into a gray weekend :-)

Night Photography in Coogee

Once again I had signed up for a photowalk with Yiing, one of my Canon slinging friends. As usual there is always a surprise or two when Yiing is around :-) This time it was luckily great news .. and camera related, he had brought the Canon 50mm f/1.4! A super fast lens like that is tons of fun, the large aperture allows the photographer to take pictures that you simple cannot get with slower (cheaper) lenses.

All good! We started out by fooling around with shallow depth of field and available light shooting, but as it got really dark shutter speed slowed down and we decided to concentrate on long exposure night shooting. The secret is to have a good quality tripod, mirror lock-up option and a remote .. well, I do not have a tripod or a remote, my camera has mirror lock-up, but I cannot combine it with the timer function .. however there is quite a bit of good solid stonework around Coogee, which conveniently can be used as solid support, unfortunately, it also means that after a few nights out you end up having to take the same pictures over and over again unless the local council manages to put in some strategically well placed extra stones :-D One day I might buy a tripod .. maybe.

Good long exposure works really well with moving water, the averaging over 30 seconds (or longer) gives you this dreamy mercury look of the water, when conditions are right. This night in Coogee the waves were slightly on the large side and even cheating by retreating to the rock pool in our hunt for some steady waters was only partly successful - guess we will have to get out there another time! :-)

Royal Botanic Gardens - Macro Photography

I have hinted(!) in the last couple of blog posts that I am pretty happy about my macro lens, sorry if it is getting a bit much, but it is just soooooo fun shooting these close-ups! No matter where you go there is always stuff to take pictures of.

A rainy day down town Sydney with clouds all over the shop and still you can happily shoot away having near perfect light for all the small stuff.

The butterfly above was a good challenge, it simply would not sit still! Somehow it knew that it was being followed and in the end I had to give up on getting a "frozen" capture. The best I could get was the one above where a bit of wing blur actually works out alright.


Great flowers - very impressive shapes and colors! Since it is a botanic garden not all of the species are native, which makes the task of naming them significantly harder. Luckily I found a bit of help on the internet - the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens site actually have a "Blooming calendar" displaying pictures of what will be flowering every month during the year - great service!

With help from the blooming calender it looks like the white flower above is a Tabernaemontana cerifera native to New Caledonia ... that would have taken a long time to find out without a bit of help ;-)

Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens - Buff-banded Rail

Once again Sydney was capable of delivering a surprise bird in a very unlikely spot - meters away from some of the most busy streets of Sydney CBD we stumbled upon a Buff-banded Rail - never seen that one before :-)

The Royal botanic gardens in Sydney is a quite fantastic place, there is everything a tourist could possibly hope for; bats, birds, views of the Opera house and the Harbour bridge and weird and wonderful plants - so bring your camera!

We had actually not really planned anything specifically, but with subpar weather and some particularly dark clouds in the horizon we were thrilled to get ourselves a set of tickets for a guided tour of the Government House - how much more touristy can it be?..! :-)

The tour of Government house is free, but you are not allowed to take pictures inside. On a rainy day it can definitely be recommended! With everything wet from the rain and relative humidity hitting 100% we slowly pushed down towards the center of the park for a look at the bats and a few flower close-ups.

Bicentennial Park - Double The Fun?

Getting the jet lag under control, I managed to drag my carcass out of bed an early Sunday morning and fire up the Magna. Not having little G. here I felt that I should take advantage and visit a particular smelly, but fantastic, bird spot in Bicentennial Park - Triangular Pond.

A few specialties of the pond had returned this year, the Lewin's Rail and Spotless Crake, whom I had acquainted myself with nearly a year ago at the exact same pond. Problem is, however, that you need to time your visit; if it is to dry the birds will have left and if the water level is up high they will not need to leave their papyrus plant hideaway to eat. Well, I was too late and hence had to take the full brunt of smell fuming of the near dry pond.

Well, luckily Bicentennial Park has much more to offer and I happily left the stinking swamp for some fresher waters.

Running around with the camera there is always a challenge, despite having seen nearly all (see below) of the birds that inhabits Bicentennial Park, I do not have pictures of all of them and in particular I miss good pictures for a large part of them. The Black-tailed Godwit below should be sorted now though - I have close up of the no-barred tail as well ;-)

I might have been a bit fast while claiming that I have seen nearly all of the BP birds, the one below has me puzzled and once again I would like suggestions from the readers of the blog. Seeing the barring below the wing had me thinking Cuckoo, but ...?

I think, I have said before that the ponds in Sydney Olympic Park are some of the best places around for (water-)bird in flight photos. Also, because of the constant exposure to (noisy) humans it makes it one of the best places to get really close to birds without them taking off. The male Darter below was obviously very happy with its seat and decided to try to fool me into believing that it was a part of the branch rather than having to fly away.

The photo looses quite a bit of the sharpness by being down sized to 640 * 400, but I can promise you that the original is spot on! If just all birds was that photogenic :-)

... will have to bite this post into a few postings: To be continued.

Centennial Park - Just Around The Corner

Back to wonderful long days with glorious amounts of light! Not bad at all :-) Photography wise it just makes everything so easy - hand holding the bigma at 500mm (750mm full frame equivalent) is no problem at all, give the ISO button a little tap and park the aperture at f/8.0 and you get shutter speeds so fast that you do not even need to cut down on the morning coffee.

Choosing a gentle start to the year with a visit to (underrated?) Centennial Park just up the hill from Coogee might not exactly qualify as an encounter with the wildest wild of Australian wildlife. So, claiming that Australian animals are less shy than the Danish equivalent based solely on this visit could arguably be seen as an non-random unscientific selection of data points, however, there is no doubt that a visit to the park is very rewarding when it comes to the posibility of getting bird close ups. I should point out straight away that the pictures in this post has been obtained without the help of unsportsmanlike methods .. i.e. bringing bread or making bread like noises ;-)

Apart from seeing plenty more turtles than I usually do, it was very much the usual gang of birds being in charge of the entertainment. The Little Corella is always around this time of year and on a plank in the lake was a little love triangle unfolding - the female to the left, in the picture below, seemed very relaxed about the drama when two male Hardheads started fighting over the spot next to her - the initial looks they gave each other not much different from what you see in the pub late a Friday night.


All good - Centennial Park is close and a great spot to kill a few hours, I might try to do it on the bike next time and let the camera stay home though.

What A Difference 16190 km Makes :-)

After a great New Years eve celebration in the vibrant township of Bredetved, we managed to make your way to a frosty Frankfurt via Copenhagen airport. After taking full advantage of little G's newly acquired gold frequent flyer status and the associated lounge privileges, we finally found ourselves strapped in and ready to take off towards better weather. Funnily, I finally got the possibility of seeing just how much labor is associated with the deicing of aeroplane wings - I once worked on a project aiming at making the wings ice repellent and hence self-cleaning - maybe I should take up that project again :-)

Sadly it would be night during most of our traverse across Australia, I very much like the possibility of sitting up there looking down and planning/dreaming about when I will be able to make a quick escape there taking a close look at all the exciting stuff happening down below.

Entering mainland Australia we straight away got a very real reminder of the difference between Danish winter and Australian summer. A tropical storm was raging down below hitting the area north of Broome with a cascade of lightening strikes. While sitting in safety 10 kilometers above we saw multiple bush fires starting as the result of lightening strikes - a truly amazing and scary sight.

Approaching Sydney we got one of those great accelerated sunrises where everything happens really fast, while still up high, you get the benefit of clean air and a canvas of clouds below that the sun can paint in all the warm colors.

I started getting slightly excited, since coming from the north-west, we would be passing most of the Sydney landmarks and who would not like a few pictures of the Sydney Opera House from above. Unfortunately Sydney summer mornings do not always give you crystal clear air and warm colors, instead we were treated with clouds and a mist reducing visibility significantly :-/ Under such conditions your pictures will often look very dull straight from the camera, you can make them slightly more punchy and interesting by pumping contrast and broadening the histogram i.e. making the dark darker and the brights brighter. If that sounds complicated then just push the "I'm feeling lucky" button in Picasa :-D

The difference between the two pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge above should be evidence enough :-) Below is the ANZAC bridge, where the Magna drives across twice every week day.

Sculpture by the Sea – Sydney 2009

Once a year the eastern beaches of Sydney are being utilized as showground for somewhere around 100 pieces of artwork, the event is called Sculpture by the Sea. It is an exceptionally successful way of displaying what the gang of arty Sydneysiders – and some international colleagues - have been up to during the long(?) winter months.

Sneaking your creation in between the nearly 100 sculptures displayed along the coastal walk ensures you are exposed to hundreds of thousands of viewers, tens of thousands of photographers and maybe even a potential costumer or two.

After having followed the show for a few years by now, you start recognizing the style of some of the artists and dare I say that you start getting a couple of favorites.

Also, having done the tour before, you learn the hard way that weekends are not the smartest time to make a impulse visit to the shenanigans – instead this year we very carefully planned our visit to be late afternoon during the week, which resulted in a very pleasant experience of being able to take pictures of the creations without having to battle an army of other wannabe photographers for a clean shot.

I have uploaded a selected few pictures to my picasa account. Feel free to visit the album by pressing the square picture below.

Sculpture By The Sea