The alarm rang at 4.15am. After a very short night, I made my way up to the Northern Beaches – about a 45 min drive from where I live – to meet up with Brent. Our destination was Long Reef (see map below) to get some photography done.
On the way there it was raining cats and dogs and Brent had to take a detour due to a collapsed tree blocking the road.


I was looking forward to some wild conditions – always good for very dramatic photos.
Armed with umbrellas, tripods and cameras we made our way down to the reef. Low tide allowed us to cross to the top end of the reef – always shooting away from the almost horizontal wind to keep the lenses away from potential rainfall.


The waves were huge and crashing on the rocks, splashing high up and, shortly after, hitting Brent and me. And our tripods.
I have a very sturdy tripod – a Gitzo 2540 – usually nothing makes this tripod move. However the surging waves had so much force that I had to hold it down with some of my weight.


We had a blast! Not only is it a good thrill to battle the storm and the waves, you also get rewarded with very special photos.
We could hardly believe our luck – for a full 1.5 hours not one single drop of rain fell down.
How is that for a great start into the weekend

And here is a satellite view of this incredible spot:

View Larger Map

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Locations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.