A few blog post ago I mentioned how this summer I was going to storm chase and last night I kicked it off with an impressive lightening show over Forresters Beach.

They predicted a thunder storm around 11pm and it hit around 7pm with rain and then lightening around 8pm. So I headed out to Terrigal and shot towards Forresters Beach (the headland in the background on the right) to see the best of the lightening.

I played around with iso’s, f stops and shutter speeds to get the best combination of strikes, ambient light and low noise (noise seams to be the biggest issue). Still a work in progress and learning heaps. At the end of the summer I will be publishing an article about my findings of shooting both digital and slide film which will be accompanied by a feature in the field video as well.

I am currently running a huge sale on my work comprising of a 50% off on all 18 and 12 inch panoramic images.

I also have 50% off selected 40, 50, 60 and 75 inch wide panoramic’s as well. The images in this sale are my best sellers and also some that I just personally love as well. All 40 to 75 inch wide images are printed on Fuji Flex at the Created for Life lab. All orders of this size will come with a free 18 inch photo of the ordered image.

This sale is on until Monday the 20th of December. To guarantee Christmas Delivery within Australia and overseas orders need to be in by Monday the 14th of December.

Click here for to see the range of images on sale.

Cheers

Just a quick shot I snapped on sunset as I was teaching my landscape photography workshop on Manly Beach on Saturday (7th Nov). The north part of Manly Beach is sometimes referred to as Queenscliff Beach.

The sunset was beautiful but the back light gave us the perfect dynamic range and simple beautiful colour. It’s not all about shooting where the sun is setting.

The dark sand to the bottom left of the shot was from a Volley Ball game that left in perfect time so us photographers can have our fun.

Just advising those who were interested in my Blue Mountains 29th Nov 09 Photo Workshop and Central Coast 9th Jan 2010 Photo Workshop they are currently full.

Please see my site for alternate available dates. Thanks.

Empress Falls is the first main waterfall you come to when you set out on the Valley of the Waters Walk in the Blue Mountains. The tourist / cafe spot at the top of the walk has a great range of images of the waterfalls along the route.

We (my Blue Mountains Course participants) didnt walk all the way as it is a long hard walk and when you throw shooting into it I would say it is a two day job.

This shot is a five image stitch shot at 17mm and cropped 1:1 ratio. Would have loved some more detail in the left shadow but it wasn’t meant to be.

Couple of shots taken this week while running a private course from sunrise to the afternoon.

I must say that for us photographers based on the Central Coast we really do have an amazing range of locations to shoot all within such a small area.

Both shots are from the same morning. Top one is a single image. One on the left is made from 6 shots.

For those who follow the work of Ken Duncan around this time each year he releases his latest exhibition of images.

His latest exhibition is now out and is titled Great Southern Land. Once again beautiful work from some places that take quite a bit of dedication and planning to get to like Macquarie Island.

Anyway have a look and enjoy. (Exhibition Link)

The Central Coast really has everything a photographer could want to shoot all within a short drive. Somersby Falls is about 5 minutes out of town tucked away just of the f3 freeway.

This shot was taken this Sunday (25th Oct) on a rainy day while I was running a one on one course. Perfect conditions for shooting such a location.

Earlier this week I was hired by a company to shoot wide angle shots of the city that could blend into each other on their web site. So this is what I came up with. They wanted the to have the whole city and pan around to North Sydney. About a 220 degree view. These shots are from sunrise at the bottom through to about an hour later at the top.

Amazing detail in each shot and I have provided a cut out from each shot for you to see. This kind of commercial shooting is interesting and I have done a bit of it this year. Hanging out of cranes shooting view shots for units that haven’t even been built, machinery in use on farms, standing on the top of buildings overlooking Hyde park again shooting view shots on sunrise and sunset for multi million dollar apartments and nearly getting blown off by the wind in the process and still shots for TV show magazines. Fun stuff and all in a days work.
 

Good old Forresters Beach. It’s hard to go to this place and shoot and not to come home with something to show for your efforts. On this morning I headed out with a mate Adam who shoots with a Medium format 6×7 Pentax.

We waited for a break in the weather as it was pouring down. There was some serious dark clouds and rain coming in from the coast on the right as we shot this. (Got shots of that on the GX617). This shot was on the 5D Mark II at 17mm and was a blend of 3 exposures +1, 0 and -1 and then blended in PS.