This was taken at Melbourne Central one evening heading home after a few drinks. If you are going to shoot in places like this, never have a tripod that will get attention drawn to you very quickly.  But it is possible to get a shot like this (1.3 seconds exposure) hand held if you brace the camera, and always hold your breath, for that extra bit of stabilising.  In this case it was resting against the wall.

I shot this with my Tokina 11-16mm lens to get the whole tunnel in the wide shot.  This helped to get the sense of claustrophobia that is in the tunnel as well.

The next thing is to wait for the right moment.  You can feel a train coming a minute before hand and I managed to squeeze of a few shots just to get my levels about right before the train came. The start of this exposure can be seen just before the Caulfield Loop sign (click through to see the bigger version).  During the exposure the first carriage of the train moved completely out of shot.  This gave me the lines of movement that go right to the edge of the frame.

This is one of those one shot wonders. To get these lines that I have you can only do on the first shot from the headlights of the train.  That is why you should always try and get your levels right before hand for the background, remembering to compensate for the light that the moving object will create as well.

Turns out this is currently my most favoured and commented on shot both on Fickr and Redbubble. Hope you enjoy it as well

And you can buy this print here at Redbubble

…..

Details re Photography from Metro Melbourne.

To obtain a permit and see all the t&c go to
http://www.metrotrains.com.au/About-us/Photography.html

Point 18: This permit is NOT valid for photography at the City Loop Stations (Parliament, Flagstaff and Melbourne
Central). Photography is NOT permitted at these stations.

This shot is really about serendipity. Sometimes you plan a shot and mother nature well just gets in the way.  Over a huge chunk of the world we were treated to a partial lunar eclipse on Saturday the 26th of June 2010.  Now I knew this was coming and I knew even with my 300mm lens I’d be able to get a decent shot.  What I did count on was the weather.  With the eclipse due from 8:30pm that night I watched the sky and the radar to see a thick band of showers move in from 5pm.  Sure we need the rain in Melbourne, what I didn’t need was the cloud cover.

But in true spirit I didn’t give up.  I kept going outside every 10min to check the cloud cover… nope still 100%, and damned cold.  Back inside… repeat.  Then as we neared the maximum coverage of the eclipse the cloud broke just.  I had about 5min of sky where I could see the moon.  Of course the cloud kept obscuring the sky and the view was not 100%, but those lack of ideal conditions made the shot IMHO.

Lots of people got a nice clear shot of the moon around the world, but I was lucky to get a shot with real atmosphere.  And for once I was glad the weather was not perfect.  Also you will notice that the shot is not at the full 300mm. This was so I could get the star in the shot as well, which lent a bit more interest to the shot.

So remember even if it is cold, miserable and you think you are going to miss the photo you had planned, stick with it, you might just get a better shot.

And you can buy this image from Redbubble here

looking around mid July for this… Why 3 days.. cause I can stop and take photos along the way… and by photos I mean a lot of them. Winter along the coast is always a great time of year to see this neck of the woods and both the car and I could do with a bit of a head clearing as well.

Day 1 – Melbourne to Warrnambool ( 360 KM )

View Larger Map

Day 2 – Warrnambool to Kingston SE ( 386 KM )

View Larger Map

Day 3 – Kingston SE to Adelaide ( 295 KM )

View Larger Map

Adelaide to Home 727 km
Total Trip 1,774 km

plus gives me chance to reshoot this video as welll

You can vote for them and help me in the peoples choice awards… you can vote for one or all of them. Each image links through to its Star Rating page.

Alone in the Outback

Heading into the Unknown

Ripples

Too Late for Rain

Waiting for the Train

This shot is from my recent sojourn to Tasmania.  We had a few days in Hobart and decided to do something different, and something that wouldn’t cost a fortune  (of course if more of you brought my prints…. but aside).  So the plan became do a day trip down to Geeveston down in the Huon Valley.  We have toured Tasmania extensively but still hadn’t made it down that part of the island and there is a very affordable public bus that goes down there, $40 for a whole day excursion for two people is damned cheap in my books.

So the bus leaves town at 8:30am and we head down the coast.  (Can you see where I am getting at….) It is a beautiful sunny/foggy morning in Tasmania and what do I do… I grab a window seat, tweak the polarising filter to cut out some glare, dial the camera to Sports Mode and start shooting.  Yes this shot was done at 80kph! out a bus window. It was one of 4 that I took as we rounded a bend where the sun was not shining on the bus so there were no reflections and that Cat said “Now” to.  She called out the gaps in the trees so I could keep shooting and not waste shots on trees and powerlines.  So there you go…   you can shoot fast if the location and the camera settings are right.

And yes this image is on RedBubble for purchase as well

As a birthday present last year I was given a Trial 30 Minute flight, which is one of those things that first exhilarated me and secondly scared the crap out of me. I’m not afraid of flying by any measure and have been in small aircraft a lot of times, but to actually be flying it that is another matter.

So first things first I set out to enjoy the flight and make the most of the time in the air getting to fly the plane. All the shots I took were at the end as the pilot brought the plane into land.

Being late in the afternoon the sun was at that special angle where the light of the still water was nearly a mirror.

Technically the shot was on Auto No Flash and nothing more. I wanted to get some shots not spend time on the camera. I spotted the boat quite some distance away and knew that this was the shot I wanted.. not just and suburbs from the air.

It wasn’t until I got home I realised that I had made a beginners mistake. On friday night getting shots on the new AAMI Park stadium I had dialled up a autoshot in the rain, but pushed the ISO to 640 and the Nikon D90 doesn’t take the ISO back to auto when you go to Automode.

What this meant was that the all the shots that I took were basically to bright. The series of shot I took of the boat and water were all suffering from the same issue that the water was to bright and the shot was blown out.

As a result this is one of the more processed shots in Lightroom as well, with a crop on the left hand side to remove part of the water that was completely blown out, and then two horizontal gradients in Lightroom. The left hand gradient to darken the shot and the right hand one to lighten the shot. Then a lot of juggling to balance the overall shot with the aim of keeping it as natural as possible.

This shot has been interesting to see on flickr for what people thought it was…. which I still have trouble seeing. The first reaction of people is that it is lines in sand, not a boat on water. Which also goes to show you that the viewer of your art will never see what you did.

I am very pleased with the overall result and hope you are as well.

The EXIF Data

And you can buy this image on Red Bubble here

Firstly, Point Cook RAAF Museum do what they call Interactive Flying Days every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 1pm, so there is always one plane flying at the museum on these days.  Put that info in your diaries now if you are a plane spotter and either live or are coming to Melbourne.  I knew in advance that the Spitfire would be flying this day (by phoning the Museum they can often tell you up to a month in advance what planes will be flying).  Note there is very limited public transport to Point Cook, so far easier to drive out or get a lift from someone.

So once again like my last post a bit of research never goes astray.

The Spitfire is one of those must see aircraft – to see flying whilst you still can.  The purr of the Merlin Engine is one of the sweetest sounds you will ever hear.  Great aircraft like the Spitfire come to life when in motion, the pilot on the day describing the Spitfire as a temperamental race horse. Even if you’re not a plane spotter you’ll still love the sound and vision as the Spitfire goes screaming over head.

Sorry back to the photo…

I had my standard kit that I usually carry with me but could have just taken the D90, a fully charged battery some spare SD cards and my Nikkor 70-300mm, (because that’s all that I used).

The interactive day consisted of the pilot talking about the plane and what he was going to do, then a 10-15min flight followed by the pilot returning for questions and answers.  My shot was taken just after the intro as the Spitfire was warming up before taxing off.

The reason I only have a few in flight photos up on Flickr is that the lens is crap at doing panning shots with any movement at the longer end.  I have the non VR version and whilst it is great at steady long shots… get a long lens with VR if you are going to shoot planes in the air.  On my possible to-buy list is the new Sigma 50-500mm OS when it comes out and I have a spare $1500 or so… until then ground shots mainly for me.

I had two spots I could take photos from… one up high over the heads of people to get the in-flight shots and one where I could get right up close to the plane.  This shot was taken from the second of those spots.  As the plane takes a few minutes to warm up I could also try a number of settings to find the sweet spot especially for the prop blur effect I was after.

When trying to get a partial blur on the prop, the trick is to use a slow shutter speed of around 1/125 to 1/250.  Obviously if you want the prop to be a complete haze in front of the aircraft slow the shutter even more.  And if you want a frozen prop use a faster shutter speed.

With high speed jets you’ll want a fast shutter speed around 1/1600 to get the vapour off the wings during high speed banking, like this shot of a F-18 Hornet

The tone dropping was done in Photoshop CS4, even in the coloured shot the red of the prop and sharks mouth stood out so well that in my eyes this treatment just suited the shot naturally. This other blog post I did has the details on how to do the effect – Tone Dropping in Photoshop in 7 easy steps)

And the EXIF Data.

I was also trying to find the essence of the Spitfire in one shot and this really captured it.

This shot is also For Sale on Red Bubble.

Thought I would add the some of the stuff from photos to my blog, the sort of stuff that you do not find in EXIF data… the stuff that really makes a photo.

First cab of the rank so to speak will be my sunset photo from the other day…. of course if there are flickr photos you want the story behind, just drop me a line.

The basic shot was planned 3 hours before hand, when I noticed the smoke around the city from the series of burn off’s that the DSE was conducting that day.

Now smoke in the atmosphere will ALWAYS give you a red sunset. And if the smoke is thick enough, you will be able to see the whole disk of the sun with the naked eye, let alone needing ND Filters.

So I know it is going to be a great sunset, so I get home from work grab all my gear and head to my favourite place where I know that I can get the sun setting over water every time. Before I go however I have I quick scan over my flickr sunset set just to make sure I have the approx F Stops and Shutter speeds for similar photos in my head.

When I got to my location, I like always fired up the GPS on my phone to create a log file so that I can tag the photos… and because I am shooting the sunset swap to my 70-300mm lens. I’m after the sun as big as I can get in the shot (well at least very large, so am looking at the 200mm+ range)

Also I have my Hoya 62mm Circular Polariser on my lens. Now I have the cheap 70-300mm which has the problem that the front element rotates on focusing, meaning that you have to tweak the Polariser every time focus changes.

So that kind of covers the technical side of things… then that bit of luck comes into play. There was a boat with a wake boarding moving up and down the bay right opposite the outcrop I was standing on. This shot was the 4th shot I took of them.

As this shot is all manual, this is what I did. I took a practice shot of the sunset to make sure that the colour and lighting were correct. Then as the boat passed left to right I got a focus lock (single point – centre left) on the wake board rider. This gave me the opportunity to check that the first time they went passed that I could get the shot I was after. By now I already knew how far they would travel and when the return trip would be.

Next is that moment of fear… will they pass through my shot again… will they fall off, will they do something unexpected.

Lucky for me…. They didn’t… it all went to plan. I’d also put the camera into highspeed burst mode so that I could shoot more frames that I needed to capture the action. Given that it took the rider less than a second to pass through the sweet spot of the image I wanted to give myself every chance. As the rider got close to the the sun I made sure that I had focus lock on him and just panned the camera as he moved from right to left.

The biggest piece of luck however was when the rider decided to jump. Just before the reflection of the sun from my point of view.

So that is how I fill a blog post writing about a lucky image that took a lot of understanding to get.

So look at the EXIF data of peoples shots to see how the shot was done.. but really… look at the photo and that will tell you how it is really done.

(also you will find this image on Redbubble, with the Lat Long on the final image, where you can buy it from a post card to a framed print)

(oh nearly forgot)

Here is the EXIF Data:

I guess people are going to say but who cares about Geotagging photos.  That is easy… say you are on a once in a lifetime trip heading to some out of the way places or even just around town.  You take that great photo of a beach, a wall or even a person… now in 6 months time are you going to be able to find that location again are you even going to remember where it was roughly…    This is why I geotag my photos.  I can now find any location for my photos from the last 3 years, because all the photos have it stored in the Exif data.

I am going to show how using the GPS built into my phone running in the background I can do this.  So you people with phones that have a GPS that can not multi-task will have to spend some money and get a logger to be very accurate. My Nokia N95-8gb runs Sports Tracker in the background just fine so this is what I am going to use as my example. Then by using software called Geotag will add lat long and altitude to all the images, before they are uploaded to flickr.

The biggest advantage of Geotag however is that it will add the data to the RAW files as well as the JPEG/JPG files.  Formats include ARW (Sony), CR2 (Canon), DCR (Kodak), DNG (Adobe), ERF (Epson), MEF (Mamiya), MRW (Minolata), NEF (Nikon), ORF (Olympus), PEF (Pentax), RAF (Fuji), RAW (Panasonic), SR2 (Sony) and SRF (Sony).

Geotag should run on any operating system for which a Java SE 6 runtime is available.

Of course you can just manually add lat and long to say Flickr or Picasa but if you have a big set of photos or have travelled a long distance in a few days it is always easier to get software to do it all for you without having to guess locations.

First Step.. and most important... Make sure that the time on your Phone and on your camera are as close as possible. The software works by comparing the time stamp of the photo to the time on the track file.  You can set offsets for it.. but it is just easier to get it right in the first place.

Always switch on the logging software on your phone and wait for it to get a fix.  If you just fire up the software and hit the road and start driving it can take a much longer time for the GPS to get a fix than if you are stationary. Once you are happy that the software is working you are good to go.  Another tip is to break up a journey into a series of smaller track files, that way if the software crashes you still have a large part of the trip as a log file.  For example when I have been on my road trips I’ll often stop the GPS and start a new track when ever I got out of the car to take photos.

So lets dive in…

Getting the Log File to Geotag.

Open Sports Tracker, go to Training workouts…

Select the date you are after.	Now find the first track file you want.
Then Choose, Export, then Export as GPX. Most GPS Log file software programs handle GPX and this format contains all the info you are after.	Then Choose create file only.
	It doesn’t matter what drive you put this on.. so often Root Drive is just faster especially if you have a few track files to create. .. Repeat as needed …..

Then once you have all these files simply drag and drop from your phone on to your computer so then we can move to the next part of the process.

Once you have opened Geotag choose File > Load Tracks From File.

This will let you select all the small tracks files that you have created in one group so you don’t have to open each track file on its own.

Then you can either open up just the image files or a whole directory.  I tend to just import into Lightroom, do a quick pass to delete the dud shots, then tell GeoTag to look in the directory from the last import and work from that.

Now with the Track Files and the Directory Open, you right click, choose Find Locations > For All Images.

At this point a cup of coffee may be required if you have a few thousand images…

Once it has finished processing you will have all your images that the gps was working for tagged…

Then just choose Save All and you are done.  Now your RAW files and your Jpegs have the correct geodata embedded into them, so any time you upload to a service that supports Geocodes your photo will be mapped automatically.

You can of course get GeoTag to look up information such as lat, long, altitude, place names or get it to guess locations based on missing parts of the track file.

Another trick is to take one photo with your phone that is geotagged and then copy that information to the rest of the photos.  This is great trick if you are in just one place.  As another trick before going indoors take a photo of the front of the building, then use that as your tag if you cant get a GPS signal indoors.

Of course the easiest thing to do is to buy a GPS for your Camera, but if you don’t mind spending a bit of time the above steps should save you a bit of time money and still give you what you need.

(PS, I still have  dedicated GPS for the camera on my to buy list.. but I am a bit fussy like that )

Taken at: 26°38’11″S, 149°54’29″E

The first shot is taken with the Nikon D90 in Auto No Flash mode.

Camera:      Nikon D90
Exposure:     0.167 sec (1/6)
Aperture:     f/5.6
Focal Length:     300 mm
ISO Speed:     800
Exposure Bias:     0 EV
Exposure Program:     Auto:No Flash

As you can see this shot is to put it blunty crap.  Crap for a few reasons… firstly it is over blown and secondly it is blury as the shot is hand held on a non VR lens.  But this is what Automode does….

This shot however is not so crap   It is still a hand held shot on the Nikkor 70-300mm F4.0-5.6G lens… which the first shot was taken with, taken only a a few seconds beforehand.

Camera:      Nikon D90
Exposure:     0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture:     f/10.0
Focal Length:     300 mm
ISO Speed:     500
Exposure Program:     Manual

Here you can see the moon is nice and crisp, the craters are visible and even at 11pm I can hand hold the shot, because the object I was photographing was bright enough.

So remember get your camera off Automode every now and then and you might just get the shot you are looking for, not the one the camera thinks you are after.

Now of course the master shot to get the moon this big is still a massive crop… from 4288x2848px to 1576x1278px but still the lens has a decent reach

Now to get my hands on 500mm lens with a teleconverter