Here’s the first of my photos from my most recent trip to Cape Town. This is on a beautiful, rugged beach in Scarborough. There were a lot of kids playing and swimming here. After dipping my toe in I decided it was far too cold for my liking!
Today’s photo was taken when the days were longer and I was able to slip down to Horseshoe Bay before work. It wasn’t summer and was actually pretty chilly, I was wearing long trousers and a fleece. I was shocked to discover how many people head down to Horseshoe Bay for a morning dip each day. I spotted this man making the walk into the chilly waters, facing the sunrise, and fired off three bracketed photos. In the end I decided to let the man and cliff be silhouetted against the sunrise.
I love summer when I’m able to enjoy the sunrise on the beach before heading into work if I feel like it. It’s more likely that I’ll head out for morning photos if I have someone staying with me who wants to head out. It’s little more difficult to drag yourself out of bed on your own.
I loved this scene so much I had to create two versions. Here you have the other, tiny little flowers before a vast expanse of rock, ocean and mountainous Fjords in the Westfjords, Iceland.
This was shot at Jokulsarlon, Iceland, where icebergs come crashing down from the Vatnajokull glacier and begin their journey out to sea. Some of those icebergs, after melting down enough to escape the narrow exit to the lagoon, become trapped against the shore by the crashing waves. These three were amongst many scattered here, slowly melting away.
The icebergs take on various different colors based on the atmospheric conditions. The black one in the background is the result of volcanic ash frozen into the ice.
Once I got the weather I was after at Horseshoe I took quite a few pictures from the top of the rock there. Here’s another one, taken as the sun climbs a bit higher through the haze, spilling golden rays across the light pink sand and adding an extra glow to the cool turquoise water.
This is my first shot with the new gear I bought after those bastardos (the police taught me that) robbed me in Italy. I mentioned a little while back that I’d received my insurance check and, subsequently, my camera gear arrived on island. I haven’t really gone into what all I got and have yet to update the My Gear page (I’ve just noted that I should probably get on that). I decided to make a couple of changes though the majority of my gear has remained the same. I decided to stick with my combo of 5d mk ii and 7d camera bodies despite considering the 5d mk iii that has been released recently. In the end it came down to cost. I could buy both the 5d mk ii and 7d camera bodies used, on BH PhotoVideo, for considerably less than the cost of the 5d mk iii alone. On top of cost, I get to keep my two camera setup meaning I’ll have a backup in case I get a little too close to a waterfall or if a baboon steals one and chucks it off a cliff. I replaced my 14mm prime lens as well as my 24mm to 70mm zoom but rather than replace the 70-300mm zoom I had, I switched to 70-200mm lens. It’s just a much faster, better lens. It also seems a lot heavier, which I wasn’t anticipating. Along with it, I’ve bought an extender EF 2x II which increases it’s focal range to 140mm to 400mm.
I spent a day out in St. Georges with my new gear. Unfortunately, for some reason my ISO was set at the max and I didn’t realize, so most of the images are unusable. On the way back the sunset was starting to get interesting so I pulled off onto the railway trail at the bottom of Crawl Hill and took this photo.
Camera: Canon 5d Mk II
Lens: EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
ISO: 100
Exposure: 3.2, 13, 30 at f/18
Taking the Photo: Amongst the little bits I picked up along with my cameras and lenses was a variable neutral density filter. I didn’t actually know that they existed and just stumbled upon them. Rather than carrying numerous ND filters at varying levels you just buy one and twist it to adjust the darkness. It’s pretty cool, but I haven’t really had a chance to test it extensively. I used it for this picture and adjusted it dark enough until I got long enough exposures to totally blur the water.
Processing: Processing this photo was pretty straightforward without many issues. I combined the three exposures using Photomatix and then adjusted contrast and saturation in Photoshop before further bumping up the detail in Topaz Adjust.
Software: Photoshop, Topaz Adjust
Jokulsarlon is a large glacial lagoon in South East Iceland. Here, huge icebergs carve off of the glacier and head for the ocean. The lagoons exit is narrow and the glacier’s are bottlenecked here. They have to shrink in size before they make their way through the gap and out to sea. Once there, some of them are forced back onto the beach by the waves. It’s an incredible place, and I’ll definitely be making my way back there again.
This small chunk of ice is all that’s left of one of the great bergs that made it’s way out to sea only to get washed up on the shore again. The ice comes in a few different colours. Some are crystal clear, some are black due to volcanic ash deposits. This one is an example of the amazing pale blue glow many of the bergs possess.
I decided to overhaul the appearance of Traverse Earth about two months ago. It didn’t take me too long to design how I wanted it to look. Bending Suffusion (my WordPress template) to my will has taken quite a while though. I used DesktopServer to set up a development website that mirrored this one. I’ve now got it looking just about how I want it. So, I’ve decided to unleash it onto the world, tonight. So, as you’re reading this you my be looking at the old website, the new website, or some hideous, deformed in-between stage. Either way, I hope it works and that you like the end result.
When I first got a camera that allowed me to adjust aperture and shutter speed I got really into photographing moving water. I’d fire off loads of photos at one scene then dig through them to find the most pleasing blurring of the waters motion. Not a lot has changed, except now I’m working with multiple exposures for each image. So, getting the timing right is a bit more complicated and there’s a lot more photos to sift through!
This photo was taken early morning, shortly after sunrise down on the beach on the Southlands property.
Three out of five of our group, dissatisfied with seeing penguins hanging about in bushes, paid the cover charge to actually go down onto Boulders Bay in search of penguins on the rocks. That, at least in our minds, was where penguins should be. As soon as we came through the gate we spied a penguin lounging in the middle of a small path forking off the main one. We walked down for a closer look, the penguin didn’t seem at all bothered by our presence. We thought this penguin may be a sign of more at the end of the path. It wasn’t. There were no penguins at the end of the path, but there was this incredible view.
If you want to see more of Boulders Bay and the penguins we did find, click on this image to go through to my South Africa gallery.
