Robert's Ramblings

Adelaide is basking in 40+ degree heat again and come the end of the day we all head to the beach.

Even after 9pm it's still over 35 degrees here and there are still plenty of people kicking back and enjoying the heat.

This image was made using two long exposures in order to pick up the highlights in the darkening sky in addition to the brightly lit public spaces.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 383, Basking in the Nighttime Heat' 13s f/9 ISO1600 15mm

Still summer nights are a great time to get out and do a little nocturnal photography in relative balmy comfort.

This beautiful still image of an almost mirror smooth West Lakes is amusing in that there is an island of sleeping gulls and pelicans out in the middle on pontoons. Every single bird is standing with its head tucked under one wing. Some are lefties and some are righties. All bar none are settled for the night.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 382, Bedtime on West Lakes' 30s f/11 ISO1600 110mm

Last night I watched one of the most beautiful crescent Moonsets I have ever seen.

I'm sure it was no different from the one a month before and a month before that. The difference this time was that I paid attention.

From an hour after sunset I followed the descending crescent into the fading purples of the end of twilight. I watched as the Moon's colour transitioned from white to yellow then orange and finally red as it dipped below the ocean.

I became acutely aware as its luminosity dropped and dropped and dropped at least 4 stops over its final descent.

I make no apologies for the quality of this image. I don't have the gear for this kind of photography but using a secondhand 500mm f8.0 mirror lens and a 2xconverter I believe I have faithfully captured the feeling.



Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 381, The Setting Waxing Crescent Moon' 1s f/16 ISO800 1000mm

The Bluespotted Goatfish, Upeneichthys vlamingii is a common fish through all our coastal areas and we personally include it in our list of 'usual suspects' when ask what we saw on any typical local dive.

It's not the prettiest of fish but many are striking colourful and this one looks right at home nestled in a broken jetty pylon at Rapid Bay.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 380, One Colourful Goatfish' 1/30s f/7.1 ISO200 15mm

I don't know how long this part of the Rapid Bay Jetty has been underwater but by the amount of algae covering the platform it must be quite some time now.

This was my first dive for the year and even though it was a grey rainy day and the viability was poor it was wonderful being under the water again.

This collapsed section of the jetty has created a wonderful little habitat for the critters that hang under ledges and in the shadows. I am looking forward to keeping an eye on this to see how it develops.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 379, Broken and Forgotten' 1/100s f/7.1 ISO200 15mm

Normally head to head is a battle of sorts but it this case it's just old friends reminiscing.

Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 378, Head to Head' 1/125s f/6.3 ISO800 40mm

Revisiting West Beach and looking at things from a different angle.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 377, X' 2s f/20 ISO800 200mm

The Adelaide City Council's 'Free Wall' project creates spaces for graffiti artists to express themselves in prominent public places.

This wall located under the Morphett Street Bridge has great visibility to passing traffic on North Terrace. It's constantly changing so make sure you visit often.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 376, Sign Hunting' 1/6s f/6.3 ISO1600 70mm

Moseley Square in Glenelg is a popular place on warm summer evenings where you will find a blending of shoppers, restaurant patrons, pub crawlers and beach goers. An interesting place for making images.

Just after the sun has set the scene looking to the East is a confused mix of the last of the setting Sun's warmth and cooler tones of twilight. Even in its mixed up state it is a soft and gentle light. A beautiful time for making images.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 375, Moseley Square' 2.5s f/11 ISO100 17mm

'Mo' might not be camera shy but he is deceptively hard to photograph!

This bronze statue of Roy Rene, AKA 'Mo', sculptured by Robert Hannaford was unveiled in its Hindley Street location on March 2010.

The deep creases and course textures create harsh dark shadows in the street lighting. At first glance you just perceive a very contrasty image but an after dark natural light shot of 'Mo' is just too harsh without some help.

You could bring in a couple of soft-boxes and softly fill those dark and shadowy creases but soft-boxes are usually not part of a street photographer's kit. This is one of the best examples I can describe where the extended dynamic range of capturing in 'RAW' means I can be quite aggressive in pulling out the tones in the shadows.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 374, Mo's Not Camera Shy. 1/60s f/6.7 ISO1600 200mm

In this tale of two trams I wanted to tell the story of that hidden space in among the houses and streets where the tracks lay seemingly detached from the craziness of suburban streets and traffic.

Standing on the tracks during afternoon peak hour while waiting for a tram seemed surreal in how quiet and serene the setting seemed. First one tram came into view and I stepped aside to let it pass. As it departed into the distance a second tram cam into view.

I waited until the two trams were as aligned as I could tell and then captured this image.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 373, A Tail of Two Trams'. 1/250s f/2.8 ISO400 200mm

It seems every Christmas the decorations are being put up sooner and pulled down earlier.

According to Christian traditions today is the last day the festive decorations should be up and indeed they still are up in Rundle Mall. I'll check again tomorrow to see if they have been taken down!

This self portrait taken using the famous 'Rundle Mall Balls' as a mirror captures the late night cleanup of the streets after yet another retail day. My apologies for the poor quality of the image but it would seem that the Adelaide City Council is not really into polishing their balls very often, if ever!.

Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 372, The Twelfth Day of Christmas'. 1/30s f/2.8 ISO1600 200mm

... more at http://robertrath.com

Usually window shopping is for things you want to buy rather than experiences you wish to have or share.

Restaurants are a beautiful example of the later. When I pass a restaurant I have never been to (or even one I have not been to for a long time) I intermediately imagine the experience and who I'd like to share that with.

This image of 'Cosi' in in the city was a hand held shot made through the window well after closing. A few minutes later the lights were out and all was dark.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 371, All Set for Tomorrow'. 1/10s f/2.8 ISO1000 200mm

We just discovered this fantastic little bar hidden away in Finders Street in the city called 'The Second Floor Lounge'.

We nearly walked past this place looking for a cozy late night bar on the Eastern side of the city. Not only did we get to enjoy a couple of drinks away from the noise and bustle but they cooked up some great snacks for us as well.

One of the walls has this great number plate mural which was fun to explore to see if any reminded us of places we had been. It was so cool it become a part of my collection.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 370, Plated Red Wall'. 1/30s f/4 ISO3200 70mm

Every single day for the last 4.5 billion years this scene plays out over and over again. Has it always been into the West I wonder? In any case, it will always be beautiful.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 369, Into the West'. 1/160s f/22 ISO250 200mm

Harsh light does not have to mean missing out on making a good image image. Yes, there is no substitute for great light but there are ways to get something you can take home when the sun is high in a cloudless sky.

This image was created using 3 exposures 2 stops apart but unlike HDR a different technique was used to bring them together. Using Photoshop's 'Merge to HDR Pro' feature I combined all three images into a 32bit per channel tif file which I then imported back into LightRoom. The resulting 32 bit per channel image file is then recognised byt LightRoom and all tonal controls become 5 stops wider giving amazing tonal flexibility.

The result is a HDR image that looks completely natural in the same way our eyes do it.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Day 368, Pappinbarra Bliss'. 1/3s f/22 ISO100 17mm

While driving back from Pappinbarra we spent the night in Narrandera in the N.S.W. Riverina. I was taken by the beautiful street lighting of the main street but as I went to take my first image they all went out!

Not wanting to miss an opportunity I found a new subject, the Narrandera Flour Mill. While making images the plant night-shift milller John cam over to check out what I was up to. John preceded to tell me all about the mill where he has worked for the last 16 years and which produces 24 tonnes of flour per hour. Everything is shipped out by railway running directly through the site.

The mill is privately owned and one of four belonging to Dick Honan, a leading Australian bio-fuels campaigner and advocate.

Ah, the things you discover in the middle of the night!


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Narrandera Mill'. 3.2s f/7.1 ISO640 17mm

The year 2012 and my project both come to an end ( and the world did not ) with image number 366.

What a fitting tribute, New Year's eve celebrations over Adelaide, where 365 days prior I was looking up into an Adelaide evening sky taking my first image and where most of my images were created.

I'll write more in future posts about this wonderful journey of images but for now Happy New Year everybody and all the very best for 2013


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 366 - Happy New Year Adelaide'. 30s f/8 ISO50 200mm

There were once three little piggies who were probably very cute. Now that they have grown up it seems that all they want is food and attention, in that order!

This image captures the desperation of getting into tubs of rotting strawberries which were about to be served for dinner. After dinner you can imagine what their faces looked like all covered in red!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 365 - Oink'. 1/800s f/2.8 ISO160 200mm

As the moon rose in the Eastern sky and bathed the valley in its ethereal glow I wondered how to capture the feel of the evening.

A brief thunderstorm had just drenched the valley but now it was clear again and the moon took pride of place in the North Eastern sky. Wide angle and a long exposure was the choice.

Keeping the ISO low and the aperture small this image was the result of a 15 minute exposure. The valley in the moonlight.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 364 - Near River Moonlit Sky'. 900s f/8 ISO100 15mm

Something really simple and something really beautiful. A piece of drift wood on an ancient watercourse.

Something about this image caught my eye. I really do not know if it was the slender young reeds or the textured lines of the old piece of driftwood. Perhaps even the dappled mirror of the image in the stream. To me it just want to be taken and the rest is history.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 363 - Hastings Driftwood'. 1/40 f/45.6 ISO320 107mm

I really like the bokeh of some lenses and this is not one of them!

This image was captured using the old Canon 100mm macro. I started out wanting to create some beautiful background bokeh but wide open this lens still shows impingement of the blades. This is especially noticeable in comparing bokeh images between top and bottoms of the frame.

After deciding I could not use the bokeh from this lens I decided to just play around. So this image is a fusion of 7 identical images taken at progressively smaller apertures starting at f/2.8 and ending at f/11. As I stopped down I found I had to start to shorten the exposure as the light became progressively concentrated.

If nothing else it was an interesting exercise in depth of field, light and bokeh.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 362 - Bokeh Dots'. 1/3 f/4 ISO100 100mm

Another failed image, I turn around and something unexpected happens!

This evening I tried to capture the moonrise on the eastern horizon but it was a dismal failure. The moon came up in the right place and right on cue but it was so dim as to be almost indistinguishable from the sky. In fact it had fully cleared the low hills on the horizon before I could even make it out. Added to that the heat haze coming off the land turned it into a wobbly mess. Then I turned around.

Looking back into the west I followed the convergence of the track to the horizon, swung the camera around to capture an oncoming vehicle and made today's image.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 361 - One Way or Another'. 1/1600s f/14 ISO640 400mm

Such a contrast to my 'Nativity' image but every much as Christmas in the culture I live in.

I am not going to debate the moral dilemma of Christmas feasts and festive excess, just photograph it. Curiously this image is personally significant for an altogether different reason. It marks the anniversary of when I proposed and the cupcake adorned jug is an engagement present. It's funny to find symbolic reminders hidden in images this way only to come to awareness afterwards. Actually it seems to happen often.

This image was a simple capture with no planning or intention other than to mark the day.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 360 - Please Pass the Cupcakes'. 1/200s f/2.8 ISO100 100mm

There is a story about the pieces in this nativity scene that I'd love to tell but I can't because I just don't know.

I do know that they come from Malawi and were a gift to or from a Jesuit priest which were then given to his niece. Perhaps someone else will find this post and tell the story.

The pieces are dark and beautiful and quite challenging to photograph as a set. I'm not yet happy with this result but at least it's a start to try and capture the spirit of the pieces and the story they tell. Both back light and front light are from tea-lite candles, about eight of them while I used a small LED flashlight to paint in the manger from overhead and to add a little fill light to the faces. The resulting odd combination of colour temperatures looked very awkward so in post I make the image monochrome and tinted back in the base colour as illuminated by the tea-lites only.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 359 - Nativity'. 30s f/11 ISO160 100mm

This time I was not able to jump the fence and ask for permission later. The guard, a very pleasant man named Graham, was never going to let that happen.

The Adelaide City Council puts up this Christmas Tree in Victoria Square every Christmas. This year I thought a really cool image would be to get a vertical perspective effectively creating the a horizon using the tree itself. I considered jumping the fence but thought better of it as the watchful guard stood his post. Instead I chose a traditional wide angle panorama placing the tree directly in the middle. This is one time that rule of not putting your main subject in the middle was never going to work!

To capture the dynamic range in this scene I used 6 exposures 2 stops apart and then used exposure fusion to combine them. No tone mapping was done in this case and it shows in having very clean halo free edges.

Maybe I will get permission and come back again to get the shot I really wanted even it if does require a written application to the council, a police check (to confirm I'm not an unsavory character) and an arm or a leg. We will see!


Photo: Robert Rath, 366 Days of 2012, Day 358 - 'Oh Christmas Tree'. 2s f/7.1 ISO320 15mm

For those familiar with the Myer Centre here in Adelaide, the next time you are there, look up!

As part of an exploration of photographing retail spaces as discreetly as possible I have used the old trick of leaving the camera on the floor for the shot It is amazing how a crowd will naturally part to avoid treading on a camera lying prone on the ground. These are the very same people who wouldn't give a second thought to a hip and shoulder bump to secure their unobstructed passage.

This image took two attempts. During the first attempt some random shopper decided to briefly peer into the lens as they waled on. The second was like clear of any visible life form!

In all attempts I use the 10 second timer giving me enough time to press the shutter first, place the camera on the ground and then back off to a clear distance for the configured exposure.



Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 357 - Temple of Retail'. 1/60s f/11 ISO160 17mm

For those familiar with the Myer Centre here in Adelaide, the next time you are there, look up!

As part of an exploration of photographing retail spaces as discreetly as possible I have used the old trick of leaving the camera on the floor for the shot It is amazing how a crowd will naturally part to avoid treading on a camera lying prone on the ground. These are the very same people who wouldn't give a second thought to a hip and shoulder bump to secure their unobstructed passage.

This image took two attempts. During the first attempt some random shopper decided to briefly peer into the lens as they waled on. The second was like clear of any visible life form!

In all attempts I use the 10 second timer giving me enough time to press the shutter first, place the camera on the ground and then back off to a clear distance for the configured exposure.



Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 357 - Retail Atrium'. 1/60s f/11 ISO160 17mm

For those familiar with the Myer Centre here in Adelaide, the next time you are there, look up!

As part of an exploration of photographing retail spaces as discreetly as possible I have used the old trick of leaving the camera on the floor for the shot It is amazing how a crowd will naturally part to avoid treading on a camera lying prone on the ground. These are the very same people who wouldn't give a second thought to a hip and shoulder bump to secure their unobstructed passage.

This image took two attempts. During the first attempt some random shopper decided to briefly peer into the lens as they waled on. The second was like clear of any visible life form!

In all attempts I use the 10 second timer giving me enough time to press the shutter first, place the camera on the ground and then back off to a clear distance for the configured exposure.



Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 357 - Retail Atrium'. 1/60s f/11 ISO160 17mm

Like all urban spaces, Rundle Mall finds ways to make itself unique.

Somewhere near the middle you will find four pigs ignoring the crowds and going about their business. They are however not real but part of a bronze sculpture by Marguerite Derricourt, officially known as 'A Day Out'.
This particular pig's name is Oliver and at a glance you'd swear he was real as he rifles through a very real bin.

To make this image I wanted a very over exposed shot without losing too much depth of field. To achieve this I set a very high ISO so that I could keep a small aperture for good depth of field and a reasonably fast shutter speed for the hand held shot. The result pulls out a very bold version of Oliver from the harsh flat light of full sun midday.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 356 - Meet Oliver'. 1/160s f/11 ISO4000 40mm