Day 3 - Well today stated at 5.30 am as I prepared the motor home to move to the location I scouted yesterday afternoon. I left my Swim Cart Beach free camp and arrived around 6.30 ready for the rise. I set my tripod up, attached the L Plate to my camera body and mounted my 16-35 F/4 lens and waited for the suns first light. Now there is something very peacefully will waiting for the rise and I must admit it is a very special time of the day. The sun started to rise with a few low lying clouds around and took on was a very orange ball shape. Coming up through the clouds the suns rays split and went up and down from the cloud in a fan shape and I was so fortunate to see it do this. Now the little lone tree image was in the bag I worked my way around some other areas close by and managed to get a few more landscape and also some bird images. All in all a very successful outing.
So it's 9.30 by now and it's a 3 hours and 45 min drive to my friends house in Hawley Beach so better get a wriggle on. I headed out through Binalong Bay and climbed over the range from St Marys into Fingal, Avoca and Conara then onto Highway 1 up to Hawley Beach. Going through Avoca the temperature dropped to 0 degrees and a thick fog appeared that lasted for 20 odd minuets of driving. I was told it go down to -4 that morning in Avoca and that fog is usually there this time of year. After meeting up with my friend Jacqui we had a chat and a cuppa and caught up on what we had been doing since we Last met at a 2 day photography workshop back in Nov 2015. Jacqui's family has a spare block of land near there house which they allowed me to park the motor home on and we met up later for a sunset shoot and then a astro shoot.
Day 4 - I was up early again for a sunrise shoot and this time Jacqui was with me and showed me her favourite spots for sunrise images and they are spoilt for choice in her area. We picked a good spot where there was lots of wet sand for reflections and rocks that we being covered in water by the waves coming in. We split up and started capturing the rise and while it was not the best rise I have seen, it very pretty none the lest. I was using a 16-35 at the started and then swapped it out for a 24mm with a 10 stop ND filter on it to get some very dreamy water shots. Jacqui like to just use her wide lens with no filter and as you would know, anything below a 1/60 of a second will cause motion blur. Jacqui had to go and get her daughter to school so I stayed down the beach to get some more images as the rocks around Hawley beach have an orange hue to them as well.
Now my plan was to go to Cradle Mountain but a quick look at the web cam at the mountain showed low cloud cover with a high chance of rain. So plan B came into effect, let go chase some water falls :) So we took the 60 min drive to Guide Falls and it was a beautiful sight when we got the and we had it all to ourselves. We started setting our shots and capturing some awesome images and then we saw another spot that was a little better but we had to traverse some very slippery rocks. Well Jacqui made it over ok but I was not so lucky and ended up filling my boots with water and going home with wet and cold feet. But in the end the shots we got were worth it. We got back around 4 and then I checked into the Lions Port Sorell caravan park for the night as I needed some power to charge the laptop.
More to come ....