Just wanted to show you Brent’s shot of the same morning. His theme was about the photographer (me) struggling with wild weather conditions to get THE shot.


What I like about shooting with other people is the variety of images that you come home with as well as the different way of processing.

Brent Pearson - Man vs. Wild

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:

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Nothing is more rewarding than those very special places on earth which are hard to get to. Antarctica is surely one of them.
Similarly Gosses Bluff in the Northern Territory (West McDonell Range) is one of those special places. Too magnificent to be captured on camera.


140 Million years ago, this massive meteorite crater formed a huge mountain range in an otherwise completely flat area in the Southern Northern Territory. It is almost perfectly circular and well worth the 30 min off-road track (only for serious 4WD’s). Not many visit this spot for the same reason – it is almost impossible (and dangerous) to get there even with 4WD.


Fortunately it was the rainy season when we visited this place and it created a beautifully and lush oasis in the centre of the crater.


The forces that were at work here (100 million times the power of the hiroshima bomb) were most likely enough to have created an ice age on planet earth.


The following shot is an 8 shot Pano stitched in AutoPano Giga.

And here is a satellite view of the very same place. Mother Nature is truly incredible!

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I went out the other day with Brent and some friends to try some light painting on actual live models.

We combined flash with torches and got very cool results from it. Brent (http://brentbat.wordpress.com) had pre-visualized the shot and we set it up to what he reckoned was very close to the shot that he had in his head.

Together with Oat (www.hangingpixels.com) who kindly provided the Pocket Wizards, flashes, umbrellas and the model, we had a very capable team on this shot and it was a lot of fun to combine the different aspects of lighting.

Fortunately Brent had a video camera and we all took turns filming.
Thanks to Brent’s video editing skills, this video has become awesome and shows you what it was like.

Click here to watch the video

We headed out to Malabar the other weekend to shoot those funky bunker graffitis.
Brought our whole set of light painting tools:
Torches, celophane, more torches, neon lights, electric luminescent lights, hair spray…

Hair Spray…?
Yes, and a lighter.

Makes for a perfect little flame thrower. Every boy knows that, right?

Brent went inside with it and gave the rusty window a cooking.
This shot is layer-blended out of 8-9 exposures. One for the outside lighting, one for the inside lighting (each floor one exposure), one for the burning window,…

A photography like that can take you 2 hours easily. It is amazing how time consuming night photography is. Especially the kind that we are doing. This is good though, it makes you think about your composition a lot more. The only problem is, when you come home and you really wish you had tilted the camera just a tiny notch more, or zoomed just that little bit more out. Oh well, there is always another day