Merry Christmas, hope you’ve had a great day with food, family and festivities!

Most of 2013 has been a quiet year for me photographically, although I’ve recently returned from a trip to Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala and Belize. Stay tuned for some new galleries.

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The wet season of the Kimberley region in remote North-Western Australia usually runs from November until April. It is a time of revival for the sunburned land. After months without rain, water courses freely through the long river beds and deep rock pools. Life is renewed. The local Aboriginal tribes believe the clouds, storms and rain represent a visible expression of the Wandjina, ancestral spirits who created the world.

Each afternoon, I sat on the barren marsh surrounding the small outback town of Derby, to witness the power of the Wandjina. One day, I spotted an active storm far in the distance, moving quickly, shifting and evolving before my eyes. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the front-lit cloud turned an unusual magenta hue. On this occasion I had left my lightning trigger at home, so I shot continuously, selecting a shutter speed long enough to catch a lightning strike, yet fast enough to minimise cloud movement. I was fortunate to capture a bolt that burst through the low-level clouds with energy and vigour, in perfect counterpoint to the rising moon. I feel the elements in this photograph come together to convey the harsh beauty, remoteness and spirituality for which the Kimberley is famed.

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I’ve wrapped up my stay in Derby, and am now settled back into Melbourne life. The last 7 months have been an absolute blast, a great way to discover the ‘real’ Australia. Unfortunately I didn’t catch any famed Kimberley Barramundi, but sampled plenty whenever we ate out, becoming somewhat of an accidental Barra connoisseur. My pick for best restaurant Barra goes to the Dragonfly Cafe in Broome, delish!

I’ve tweaked the gallery layouts on the website, so the photos are bigger and bolder. After living in the beautiful Kimberley region for a long time, the Australia gallery has expanded significantly, so I’ll release a new design for showing off photography projects soon.

The post So Long, and Thanks for All the Barra appeared first on on the wild road.

A couple of days ago I was fortunate to be out on the Derby marsh, camera and tripod in hand, when the fiercest storm I’ve seen up here ripped through overhead. In some respects there is a huge element of luck in play to capture a special landscape photograph, but planning and persistence can also pay dividends.

If you’ve followed my uploads recently, you may have noticed a suspicious number of dramatic clouds and storms creeping into my portfolio. In the Kimberley at this time of the year, most of the roads between towns are flooded, and access the beautiful surrounding gorges is very limited. This means I’ve been restricted to roaming around Derby. Derby is a small town which honestly can be covered in 15 minutes, so 3 months is ample time to get to know it well. It’s charming, but not overly photogenic, so I’ve turned my attention to the sky instead.

The day before yesterday, I was out on the marsh 45 minutes before sunset, and things weren’t looking great. The sky was overcast and flat, the clouds grey and lifeless. The wind was blowing strongly, so I thought some motion in the grass would be interesting.

A valiant attempt, but not really working out. I walked out onto the mudflat which was surprisingly firm given it had been raining in recent days. The patterns in the cracked mud were great. There were some deep footprints left from an excited and probably very muddy dog which could add a little foreground interest, so I experimented with some compositions.

Eventually I found one that could possibly work.

The sky was still pretty grey, but some definition was forming in the sky. I was intrigued by the sliver of sun which peeked out under the oppressive weight of cloud.

A couple of minutes later, the sun approached the horizon, and things started to get interesting. The sky turned a fascinating blue-green. A storm front materialised and started heading in my direction! I rushed back to my previous composition.

Flashes of lightning started hitting the ground. The storm was approaching rapidly. I wanted to capture some lightning, but my lightning trigger didn’t seem to trip the shutter fast enough. In desperation, I fired off frames continuously.

As it got darker, the colours became even more vivid. I wanted to keep shooting, to capture a lightning bolt marking a special moment in time where everything comes together: the storm front perfectly timed with the sunset. However it wasn’t to be. Eventually I figured it wasn’t smart to place myself as the only object taller than half a metre on the flat marsh, and hurried back to the car.

Still, I’m quite pleased with the captures. The moral? If you’re facing a boring sunset, be persistent and stay out there, as you never know when you’ll get lucky!

Click here to see more Kimberley photos.

The post Kimberley Storm Season appeared first on on the wild road.

The wet season is underway here in Derby. A few afternoons every week, the oppressive daytime heat and humidity is washed away by a tropical storm.

In some ways we’re fortunate to be surrounding by marshland in Derby. There is open space in every direction to watch the storms pass by as they head out to sea. The downside is that interesting foregrounds can be difficult to find.

In the above photo, dense rain blocked out the cloud texture. The isolated bolt is elegant, yet mysterious and powerful.

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It seems the Mayans got it wrong, and the end of the world is not going to happen. With the new year rapidly approaching, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on 2012. Read on to follow my photographic highlights this year in remote North-Western Australia.

In the middle of the year I moved to the remote town of Derby in Western Australia for work. Living in a town with a population of only 3000 has provided it’s own challenges: a lack of readily available good coffee comes to mind! First world troubles, I know. Derby has a reputation for excellent fishing. Unfortunately I wouldn’t know what end of the fishing rod the bait goes on, so I’ve had plenty of time for other pursuits. Thankfully living in the heart of the beautiful Kimberley region of Australia has been a huge boon for landscape photography.

We arrived at the height of the dry season that runs from May to November. An excellent time for hiking and camping, the featureless skies made it a good time to explore the many gorges dotted along the Gibb River Road.

Broome offers good beer (Matso’s Microbrewery) and good food (though our favourite restaurant Noodlefish has sadly closed). Cape Leveque is a relatively short (for Western Australia), and sandy drive with spectacular coastal scenery.

After we had explored most of the Kimberley region, we set our sights further afield. Karijini National Park is a 15 hour drive from Derby, but thankfully we called in Shawn our enthusiatic driver! You can read more about our Karijini trip here. Karijini has amazing gorges, and while the walks are steeper than the Kimberley, they are generally shorter.

For the last month the Kimberley monsoon season has been swinging into gear. Access to many gorges and camping sites is closed as the creek crossings flood, so I’ve generally been stuck in town. Although Derby doesn’t feature in the typical tourist’s itinerary, it is a great location to watch dramatic sunsets unfold as thunderstorms roll close by. It’s absolutely fantastic having multiple great sunset locations within only 5-10 minutes drive, a luxury we don’t have in built up cities.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you stop by in 2013!

Click here to see all of my Australia Photos.

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Karijini National Park is a rare gem located in the remote Pilbara mining region of Western Australia. The Pilbara is a barren, scorched land, a harsh place reputed for hard work and hard living. Driving into Karijini, the park almost seems out of place. Suddenly, the pancake-flat land gives way to the rolling Hamersley ranges. Gorges are carved, knife-like, into the earth. Water is flowing. It’s not the most famous National Park, but for me it’s one of Australia’s most beautiful.

The traditional owners of Karijini are the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga Aboriginal tribes. The nearest town, Tom Price, is an hour away, while Newman (2 hours drive) and Port Hedland (4 hours drive) are the next closest. In a state where you can drive for 8 hours and still end up in the middle of nowhere, this is relatively close!

We visited at the end of September. The Australian Spring was underway, with the temperature inexorably marching higher toward the approaching summer. Days were a pleasant maximum of 30 degrees Celsius, and the nights were cool, but not unbearably cold. Plenty of water ran in most of the gorges.

The gorges are Karijini’s star attractions. We were fortunate to stay 5 nights, which was adequate time to explore.  We walked in the early morning, and late afternoon taking a break in the middle of the day. This was the most pleasant time to walk, and offered the best photographic light, as the gorges were shaded.

Karijini contains two main hubs, based around the two accommodation options. The first option is Karijini Eco Retreat, close to the Weano recreation area comprising the Oxer Lookout, Weano Gorge and Hancock Gorge. Joffre, Knox and Kalamina Gorges aren’t far away. The second option is Dales campground, which has basic facilities and is located 45 minutes drive from the Eco Retreat. It provides close access to Dale’s Gorge and it’s attractions Fortescue Falls, Fern Pool and Circular Pool.

Weano Recreation Area

Weano Gorge

Iron rich, red rock walls surround marshy vegetation at the top of the gorge. There are numerous waterholes to wade or swim through. Approximately halfway, the gorge narrows alarmingly and the descent becomes steeper. The final descent runs through a tiny, slippery slot canyon before dropping into Handrail Pool. There literally is a chunky handrail stuck in the rock, to assist the scramble down the last waterfall, hence the name. The rail was installed by miners who visited the waterhole on their days off.

Hancock Gorge

It doesn’t take long to reach the floor; a short and steep descent down rock scree is followed by a ladder climb. Hancock gorge remains very narrow with extraordinary layered rock walls. Water flows down the middle of the gorge; be prepared to clamber up the sides if you can’t afford to get wet. It’s an adrenaline rush clinging to the slippery side of a cliff, especially with expensive camera gear on your back upping the ante!  Slide down the final waterfall into the incredibly photogenic Kermit’s pool. Here, the walls are finely polished, and form beautiful lines. You can either swim through, or crawl along an adjacent rock shelf to pass. From here the rock forms incredible concentric rings overlooking Regan’s Pool. Abseiling equipment is required to proceed further. Hancock Gorge is short, sweet, and my favourite walk at Karijini.

Oxer Lookout

Easily accessed via a 5-minute walk from Weano carpark. The lookout offers views over Weano, Red, Joffre and Hancock Gorges.

Knox Gorge

The towering red walls, and narrow width make you feel insignificant. Many broken rocks litter the floor. Knox Gorge is most impressive at its narrowest point with finely layered rock bands resembling wrinkles.

Joffre Gorge

The path to Joffre Gorge passes across the top of the main waterfall, before descending steeply down the sidewall. Immense in size, and can be viewed from every angle. Joffre Gorge is usually reasonably dry; the remaining water is coloured a luminous green by algae. Best seen in early morning before direct light hits.

Kalamina Gorge

The shallowest and widest gorge. Walk amongst the flowing, mini-streams cascading over the terraced rock. Generally flat and open. Quite dry when I visited, and the least impressive gorge for me.

Dales Recreation Area

Fortescue Falls

A giant waterfall crashing into a beautiful swimming hole. Surrounded by huge tiered steps, like an auditorium.

Fern Pool

A short walk past Fortescue falls, lush vegetation surrounds a perfect, blue swimming hole. This could have been taken straight from a scene in the movie Avatar. Fern pool is a sacred Aboriginal site, so the Department of Environment and Conservation are not allowed to advertise; you won’t find any acknowledgement of its existence onsite.

Circular Pool

A beautiful blue pool surrounded by sheer cliffs. The walk into Circular Pool is just as amazing. Perfectly cut rock terraces run alongside a square channel. With water trickling over the rocks, and ferns sprouting through the cracks, it felt like a natural Water Temple.

The pools at Dales gorge are the easiest in the park to access. They seemed most popular and at times there were just too many people. Visit in the early morning before the crowds arrive.

Hamersley Gorge

Hamersley Gorge is an hour’s drive away from the main park hub. Rock bands in the walls form enormous colourful waves, and there are a number of beautiful swimming holes. The highlight is Spa Pool, an uncannily round pool bored into the rock by a waterfall. Not to be missed, despite the distance.

No outback adventure is complete without a flat tyre!

Thanks go to Nicole, Shawn, Jane and Renee for a great trip!

Click here to see more of my portfolio photos from Karijini National Park. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about visiting.

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I’ve wanted to jump ship for some a while, but never had time to rebuild the site. Now I’ve settled on WordPress as a content management system. It’s super easy to update, and to paraphrase an Apple lover – ‘there’s a plugin for that!’. I’m amazed at all the code that lies under the hood. The fact I can arm wrestle it into submission to do most things, with absolutely no IT/coding background, is brilliant.

As WordPress powers 20% of websites on the Internet, I’m confident it’s here to stay. Please feel free to let me know if there are any problems with the new design!

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I remembered the first photo I posted to an online forum. It is a sunset photo of a distant Mt Warning in New South Wales, Australia. I now know after examining the filename it was the 191^st photo I took with a DSLR. I was pretty chuffed with the results at the time. Looking back I’m embarrassed to say, but willing to admit it looks flat, dark and boring; a far cry from the warm mood and gently rolling hills I was trying to express.

For fun I decided to try improving on the image. Surprisingly I still had the RAW file on my computer. For a more subtle mood I started with a lower overall contrast, and enhanced the tonal separation in the shadows and midtones. This produced more detail and microcontrast. To emphasise three-dimensional depth, contrast was increased at the border of light and shade as the sun washed over the apex of the side-lit hills. The colour temperature was made slightly warmer and enhanced. Finally resizing and sharpening was performed.

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A polarizer is often the first filter recommended to a new photographer who is interested in taking up landscape photography. It’s a versatile tool that can add punch to almost any landscape scene, and some professional photographers even leave them permanently attached to their lenses.

There are quite a few articles around describing the effect on an image that polarizers may have, however the best way to make effective use of your photographic tools is to have a grasp on how they work. Hopefully this guide will give some insight into the optics and application of this filter. By the end of this tutorial you’ll understand why this is one of the few photographic filters that cannot be duplicated in photoshop.

Nature of Light

Light is unique in that two theories are needed to explain its behaviour – particles and waves.

The particle theory of light encompasses the notion that a beam of light is made up of little packets of energy travelling through the air called photons. This seemed to explain shadows, as the photons are blocked by an intervening object. Each photon can also transfer energy (or react with the digital sensor).

However certain phenomena cannot be explained by the particle theory: 1) light can also interact with other rays 2) bend around corners and 3) spread out when shone through a small aperture (diffraction). Waves however, do maintain these properties; some other real world examples include ocean waves and sound waves.

With regards to polarizers, we’re more interested in light as a wave and it’s important to understand how this would appear physically.

If we took a straight beam of non-polarized light and viewed it side-on, the wave would look something like below:

This wave can be simulated in reality if you grab a skipping rope and wave it up and down while the other end is held still by someone else.

However keep in mind if this were a ray of light, it’s not a simple sine wave depicted in two dimensions. If we then cut it in half, and looked at it end-on, there would be more waves vibrating in every possible angle.

For simplicity’s sake, I have only shown the oscillation in six meridians, but there would be many more waves distributed in between these. If this were a real beam of light, it would be travelling perpendicular to your computer screen (towards you).

Optics of Polarizers

A polarizing substance only transmits light rays vibrating in one plane, and stops the rest. Think of it physically as a picket fence, or a set of jail bars.

What would happen if you put this in front of our ray of non-polarized light from before?

You can see that the horizontally aligned rays won’t fit through the screen (they’ll hit the sides), but the vertical rays will be able to slip through. Be mindful that in reality, many light rays will be heading towards you, right next to each other (I have only drawn one). Therefore, the resulting polarized light will look something like this:

The light rays will be only vibrating in one plane (vertical) and will be parallel to each other; everything else filtered out. This is polarization. You will still see the object through the filter as the newly polarized light is allowed to pass, however you’ll lose a bit of brightness as you’re getting rid of the rays that can’t slip through the gaps (accounting for the 1 1/3 stop loss that many filters advertise).

Polarizing filters can be rotated, which rotates the orientation of the picket fence, and the idea is to give us control over which orientation of light rays are allowed through to the camera sensor.

Polarizers in Photography

The main uses of polarizing filters in photography are to reduce reflections, and deepen blue skies. Next we’ll look at how these effects are achieved.

Polarizers Cut Down Reflections

When light hits any object three things can happen. It either passes through (transmission), is absorbed (which may gives us different perception of colour, or how bright an object is) or bounces back (reflection). Light will do all three in different ratios depending on the properties of the object. Glass appears clear as it transmits most light, but it still reflects a small proportion. Metals are usually highly reflective, and light bouncing off such a surface may appear as below.

It’s important to note that reflected light is also polarized! If we looked at the ray end-on, after it has reflected it would look like this:

Reflected light is polarized horizontally!

Unwanted reflections interfere with the object behind that we are actually interested in, reducing colour and contrast. It makes sense that if we oriented the picket fence of our polarizer vertically, it will screen out these polarized horizontal rays, and completely suppress the reflections (unlike the previous example where we put the filter in front of unpolarized light – in that case, since vertical rays were getting through, we’d still see the object, just a bit darker.)

In addition to this, if we wanted to let the reflections show up on the photo, we could rotate the polarizer so the slits were horizontal and would therefore have minimal effect.

Image taken with polarizer set for minimal effect (no post processing). Light filtering from the canopy above is reflecting off the leaves of the underbrush, showing up white spots everywhere. This has the effect of reducing the contrast of the leaves, turning them an ugly pale green.

Image taken with polarizer set for maximum effect (no post processing). The reflections have largely been filtered out by the polarizer, allowing the natural colour of the leaves to come through with better colour and contrast.

As an exercise, grab a polarizing filter and put it between your eye and the monitor. Notice how you can turn the filter completely black in a certain orientation – this is because the output from your monitor is polarized!

Polarized driving glasses use this principle to screen out glare from the sun reflecting on the road, and therefore aid vision.

A lot of the time we can’t see through a lake as the light reflected off the surface means it is essentially acting like a mirror and we see the sky instead of the rocks or fish underneath. If we get rid of the intervening reflections, then the water will become transparent, and we can see straight through.

The following two photos demonstrate this effect.

Unpolarized. The water surface is reflecting the sky above, obscuring details underneath.

Polarizer set to max. Reflections have been minimized, and the creek bed underneath can be seen.

Polarizers for the Sky

White light is a mixture of all the visible wavelengths of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (longer to shorter wavelengths).

Light from the sun is not polarized, and contains all of these wavelengths. As the light travels down towards us, it must pass through the earth’s atmosphere which contains particles. Rays of light which hit these particles are scattered (bounced off in a random direction).

Scatter is another method of polarization, and the effect is strongest at 90 degrees to the direction of the sun.

The sky appears blue as the shorter wavelengths of light (blue) are scattered more by the atmosphere (Rayleigh scattering) than longer wavelengths (red). By the time blue light reaches our eye, it is likely to have scattered multiple times, which means that at this time, it is less polarized than other colours.

So if we put a polarizing filter up at 90 degrees to the sun, we are not really screening out the blue wavelengths as it isn’t polarized. However we are removing the accompanying polarized light (which serves to wash out the colour), thus leaving blue by itself so it appears deeper and more saturated.

Unpolarized

Polarizer set to max: 1) Deeper, more saturated sky, 2) Whiter clouds, 3) More saturated water, slightly easier to see through, 4) More contrast/colour in bushes

You may have heard that polarized wide angle lenses have a problem with patchy blue colouration across the sky. Hopefully you can now appreciate why this happens. As previously discussed, the polarization of light is greatest at a 90 degree orientation to the sun, and gradually falls off either side. The wide angle lens catches light from a wider arc of the sun, so there will be a greater difference in the quality of polarized light across the scene, as in the next photo which was shot at 10mm.

Circular or Linear?

Both linear and circular polarizers exist, which gives rise to confusion about which is appropriate to purchase for photography.

Polarized light as discussed in this article is linearly polarized – the waves of light are all parallel to each other.

The significance of this is related to the autofocus of modern camera bodies.

To take a photo, light from the scene enters the lens and camera body. In the body it needs to go to a couple of different places: 1) The eyepiece so we can actually see what we are taking pictures of, 2) The autofocus mechanism.

The camera uses a beam splitter to direct light to different parts of the camera. This works by polarizing the ray into two axes, and sending them in different directions.

If the light entering at step 1 is linearly polarized, we’ve only got one axis to work with (as the oscillation is 2D), and therefore can only be sent one way – to the eyepiece. In practice this means that your camera’s autofocus will not function, as it is not receiving light.

To get around this limitation, circular polarization is achieved by combining a linear polarizer with a quarter phase wave plate. Without going into too much detail, after polarizing the incoming light, the quarter phase plate slows down one axis (eg. horizontal) relative to the other (eg. vertical). Therefore rather than a simple up-and-down oscillating wave in 2D, the output looks more like a corkscrew (see here for an animation). If we took up our skipping rope again, and spun the free end around in a circle, this is how the light wave would appear.

The corkscrew can be split by the beam splitter (as it is vibrating in 3D), so autofocus will work, but still retains the initial polarizing effect.

In other words: Unpolarized light enters camera –> Linearly polarized –> Transformed to circular polarization –> beam splitter

Nowadays circular polarizers are more readily available and have no disadvantage other than cost. Linear polarizers are generally cheaper and will still work, but you’ll have to manually focus the scene.

Conclusion

Polarizers are an essential part of the landscape photographer’s kit. While the sky effect may be duplicated somewhat in photoshop, there is no method of digitally removing reflections and revealing underlying detail (not possible as this information isn’t recorded by the sensor). In the foreseeable future, the polarizing filter is here to stay.

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