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The Aurora Australis

Aurora Australis from Mortimer Bay
Aurora Australis from Mortimer Bay

It has been while since Hobart has seen a good strong Aurora. Yesterday the numbers were looking good all day, see: ozcreations.biz, and sure enough come dark the green and red was clearly visible to the naked eye.

From about 8:30 to 11:30 I snapped a few shots, and a few panorama stitches. I will upload some more to flickr as well.

If you would like to know more about the Aurora Australis, why not join the Facebook Page?

:Update: I returned to this location the other night, and while the gum still stands it has lost the main branch shown in this shot. It’s a shame as I would have liked to shot this tree again with a stronger aurora.

The Hazards

Just a quick share of the Hazards Mt Range, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania. (Mt Parsons, Mt Baudin, Mt Dove, Mt Amos & Mt Mayson).

This shot was taken from Coles Bay. It was a fairly uneventful sunset, and it had been cloudy and raining all day. It did manage to clear out for just a few hours when I took this picture. I would have really liked to have used a 10 stop filter, but the 14mm lens I was using is hooded, and has no front thread 🙁

Hobart Town Aquaduct in HDR

Hobart Town Aquaduct 2 HDR, originally uploaded by BrendanDavey.

These aquaducts are some of, if not the oldest in Australia. Built to carry the water to Hobart from Mount Wellington. Built by convicts in the 1840’s. The history of the pipeline is a little sketchy, with the oldest known document of the water system, a tracing of an original document entitled “Map of the Proposed Line of Aqueduct for Supplying Hobart Town with Pure Water, 1841”.

The pipeline walking talk, follows the original path of the old pipe system from Ferntree to the waterworks reserve.

I used a hard ND grad parallel to the top of the aquaduct to cut they sky down a fair bit…

Two close, but not quite.

Lauderdale Beach, Tasmania
Lauderdale Beach, Tasmania

Lauderdale Beach Tasmania
Lauderdale Beach Tasmania #2

This morning I saw the best sunrise we have had for a few weeks, I’ve been waiting for just the right amount of cloud and light. I shot a few good shots, and could not decide which ones to upload. So I’ve uploaded 2.

I’m really missing my wide angle lens, but the 24-105mm is serving me well. It’s certainly not as sharp as my old 16-35mm. Most of the exposure were long in low light, so complete manual focus and no IS. At 24mm it’s not to bad, and you can still fit a fair bit in the shot, but I’m really looking forward to my new 17-40mm. I could see myself with a 24mm TS-E in the future for sure.

Just 20 mins

Ralphs Bay Lauderdale
Ralphs Bay - Towards Mt Wellington - Lauderdale

Allocating time for photography need not be costly. Today I allocated just 20 minutes to go and take some pictures. This shot was taken in Ralphs Bay, just a stones throw from the main road. The sunset was not all that great, but I enjoyed making the most of it.

It was taken with the canon 24-105 IS, because I had no other suitable lens. 2 x hi-tech filters stacked, with an f22 aperture and long 25sec+ exposure, and me, acting as a wind break.

Freycinet Peninsula

Mayfield Bay Sunrise - Tasmanian East Coast
Mayfield Bay Sunrise - Tasmanian East Coast

The Mayfield beach coastal reserve is a popular spot for campers on Tasmania’s east coast, run by parks and wildlife you can stay for only a gold coin donation, but be warned there’s no water and only a drop toilet. With an easterly view towards the Freycinet Peninsula the beach captures fantastic sunrises. I’m still deciding if I should add this shot to the shop for purchase or not.

Taroona in Landscape.

Taroona Beach

The 5D mark 2 is working great and with no more “black dots” from the firmware upgrade there is no doubt this camera will give the D700 some good competition.

The only problem I’ve had so far is ungrading just about every bit of harddrive I have. New larger flash cards to support 21MP or 20-25Mb files for each photo, an 8Gb CF card only gets about 260 Shots. I’ve expanded my Storage bringing online another 500Gb of space, so that will probably last the summer 🙂

The shot above is a HDR taken at Taroona.

Tranmere

Tranmere Foreshore, originally uploaded by BrendanDavey.

Sometimes I think a big component of photography is being in the right location at the right time. The sunset I managed to capture from the Tranmere foreshore was quite nice last night. Not the best I’ve seen, but with some post processing it matches the orange rocks quite nicely.

I’ve added a few of the pictures taken to the store. (Even a few shot in landscape) If you would like to see more visit my flickr page.