Erskine Falls near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road, Victorian South West coast.

This is the second time I have attempted to shoot Erskine Falls and this time we had water and after a damp season we also had some foliage growth and even a fair bit of moss around the place.

Two versions are available now as pano prints and one may even get into a frame for display at StKilda this week.

Erskine Falls is one of the best known waterfalls of the Otway Ranges and is certainly among the most visited. At 30m, the falls are the highest single drop of all the otway waterfalls, and will not disappoint visitors even in the summer months when there is little water cascading over it’s impressive rock face and into the picturesque pool below.
Large visitor numbers are due not only to the impressive nature of the falls, but also due to its close proximity to Lorne, one of the main tourist centres of the Great Ocean Road.

Night photography in Melbourne City has been something I have wanted to get started for a while. These are just the beginning of a series of night photography shot in Melbourne City CBD. Shot as 22 MegaPixel High Dynamic Range. Here are a few images from what may be a new series that shows the lanes and historic buildings in CBD of Melbourne.

For sale now online is an image of Young and Jacksons (Princes Arms Hotel) and Flinders Street Station on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets.

Well the Heads in the Cloud video podcast concept is now at the stage where we have a teaser video.
Leo Dale, Ross Daniels and myself make comment on life the universe and everything. Living with the future might be the main thrust of the discussions.

Have a look and ask a question or post a video of your own.

The Country Fire Authority has chosen an image I shot a while ago to illustrate the dangers involved in letting trees grow near powerlines.

Just a quick shot whist on assignment and a single frame HDR conversion. Photomatix normally does very odd things to power lines against a sky and this is no exception.

I have been working with Treelogic for quite a few years now producing images for their website and yearly printed calendar. Recently in an effort to raise awareness for their new service branded Logical Tree Management I shot a little HD video with the DSLR.

It describes the process of getting up a tree and the methods employed to asses the safety of a 40 m tall Mahogany Gum. During the shoot I figured one of the guys should pull the camera up by a rope and shoot some from the height of the job. So I didn’t explain that the DSLR would need to be focused manually when pointed away from the close detail focus I had preset it to but still it was at an impressive height and a dramatic angle overlooking the fairway.

Shot in 1080p Full High Definition on the Canon 5D Mk II the clarity is a pleasant change. Audio was a little difficult with on-camera Rhode Video Mic but I am experimenting with a boom mic for our next assignment.

I have to say Mick Tracy did a great job with a wide angle lens stuck very close to his face even if I had to edit out his occasional stumble. Future work along these lines may be advanced visually through the use of a Jib of some sort and I am currently trying to choose between the Kessler Pocket Jib and their KC Lite.

HDR has taken me on a journey and now I have been messing around with some textured layering in Photoshop. I have always liked that “Old Master” canvas look where old oil goes a sort of crackled sheen. I recently started uploading some images at RedBubble just to give some other options for reproduction and I found a few images from some local photographers. I was inspired to go ahead with some test.

Thanks go to Heather Hartkamp in Geelong. Have a look at some of her work from around Geelong. This image of a tree “Dog Rocks” got me started and although I am not up to Heathers standard with Photoshop yet I thought I might post an image I have attempted.

This is a little church graveyard on the road to St Marys in Tasmania. I was looking at these clouds whilst driving and stopped at every possible building as it grew and changed. Finally I came across this old place with a bit of foreground. This was shot in three bracketed exposures and a 16 bit HDR made with Photomatix Aperture plugin. Then with 4 layers in photoshop with overly complex settings I arrived at this result. The good thing is it prints up just as I wanted.

Time to start all over and shoot some more work with this effect in mind.

This print available from RedBubble.

A lot of people ask if the color in my images is real. Is it created with Photoshop or filters or some magic formula? The answer will vary depending on the image but over the last few years I have been refining a method using High Dynamic Range image processing as Tone Mapped images.

I use an application plugin for this purpose, Photomatix plugin for Aperture. The idea is to create a 32bit image from a bracket of separate exposures so that all details in a scene are captured at best exposure. The controls in the plugin allow you to re map the tones so that an 8bit or 16bit file can be created with all areas of the scene showing best exposure.
[beforeafter][/beforeafter]
There is a tendency for HDR images to look oversaturated and unreal. This is due to tones being all in the midrange and can be controlled to a large degree.

When shooting a sunset such as the one at Kilcunda above I wanted to show just how the original colors looked. All photographic reproduction calls for some remapping of tones so that very high dynamic range original scenery reproduces on the target media. For me this is a digital reproduction to photo paper for framing. HDR processing gives a much better capacity to achieve this.

In the example above the before image is auto exposure and color balance showing very little detail of the bridge itself or much density in the sunset. This is due to the image sensor not having the capacity to expose across such a large exposure range. The after image shows the result of combining 3 exposures two stops apart.

Most people are so used to seeing photographic aberrations such as low dynamic range as normal and so their impression of HDR is that there is some form of enhancement going on. While this is an enhancement HDR is as valid as any form of photographic manipulation. Everything from asking people to smile to waiting for the light to improve or selecting a specific exposure is an enhancement of sorts.

I shot the beach cliffs near Kilcunda where the Bourne Creek meets the sea and later realized that this rock formation looked remarkably like an elephant. I have made a few large prints of this shot and the effect is even more staggering. Could be an ink splotch thing I know but you tell me, can you see it?

117 km southeast from Melbourne on the Bass Highway lies the small town of Kilcunda. There is a great ocean view from the main road and the old trestle bridge over Bourne Creek make it a wonderful landscape to spend a few hours.
These 4 images are the initial trial images from the shoot a few days ago. As the sun went down it started to rain lightly and so a warm fuzz appeared in the sky as the light went yellow. Everything was wet and all the grasses had had a good year. The mosquitoes had me for dinner but I did get a range of angles and light. Not sure yet which image will go to print. The High Dynamic Range processing takes quite a while to refine and so I will trial some prints in the meantime. The actual light was extremely strong red and is taking a bit of work to manage as it tends to look a little unreal.

In amongst the two day shoot for the 2011 Golf course tree calendar, Stephen Frank from Tree Logic and I came across this Smooth Barked Apple at the Spring Valley Golf Club in Clayton South.
It is near the 15th Green and has been in its current location far longer than the golf course itself. The Smooth-barked Apple (Angophora costata) is one image I am working on for reproduction as a panoramic format framed image. These are produced from 3 sequential images each with a 2 stops bracket exposure so as to create an HDR image with a wide exposure range to work with. Subsequent tone mapping allows an image to be produced that shows every detail in optimal tone. Fine tuning this image for digital reproduction on cotton rag paper is the next step of the process and refinement could continue for a few weeks. Order one now online or come down to the market stall,  St Kilda Esplanade Sunday to have a look at the result.

You can order the calendar direct online from Tree Logic now but it is a very limited print run.

Melbourne’s sand-belt golf courses provide a green oasis within what is predominately a busy urban environment. They are designed to be aesthetically pleasing but the primary function is to provide the ultimate sporting challenge. As the turf weaves its complex path of bumps and obstacles, the use of trees define space, provide a sense of nature, privacy and comfort. And regardless of how well a golfer is hitting the ball, trees contribute to a sense of well-being and an ultimate enjoyment for the game.

Stephen Frank on Golf course trees.