Robert's Ramblings

Cold winter Henley Beach jetty and a lone seagull all a flutter in the wind.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 158 - Caught All A Flutter'. 1/1000s at f/2.8 IS1000 200mm

I do a lot of technical photography around my work. Some of it for documentation, some of it forensic but rarely for the art of it.

Here is a little project I've had more than just a hand in and now that it's being publicly offered I can can finally take and publish my own image. Just for fun, this is not one of your normal commercial product images!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 157 - Stuff I Do'. 1/8s at f/2.8 IS200 100mm

Sometimes when things go wrong they actually didn't.

This image began life as I composed to take a photo of a group of workers down a pit in the city. Suddenly their supervisor came up to me from behind, yelled at me and and scared the #$#% out of me just as I was pressing the shutter. As I spun round this is the image I actually captured which I love!

For the record, as I was taking photos of roadworks from the road I was clearly doing nothing wrong however this is not the way the foreman saw it. Still best not to argue with someone much bigger and uglier so I put away my camera and moved on.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 156 - Serendipity'. 1/25s at f/4.0 IS2500 28mm

So much of how we all see the world today is presented to us as little red, green and blue dots... Even Penguins!

This 5mm x 5mm image is of a 20x20 pixel area of my LCD monitor and was taken using the 100mm macro lens + 2xTC + 60mm extension. Luckily my eyes don't notice the pixels at all!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 155 - Penguin Pixels'. 6s at f/16 ISO200 200mm

Like a tiny little fern garden unfolding these littel yellow fern-like fonds are not from a fern at all! Guess what these little things are!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 154 - Little Yellow Things'. 13s at f/16 ISO1000 200m

Never in my life have I ever wanted to be a fireman and I am always bemused when I hear of a young boy's career aspirations to drive the Big Red fire truck.

I'm not sure what this truck was doing here tonight outside of the SA Writers Centre in Rundle St. It seemed to be in the middle of a hive of road work activity so perhaps it was just on standby to assist any incident.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 153 - Big Red'. 5s at f/14 ISO100 17mm

If you had not seen the title and had thought this image was about lights or cars or Adelaide streetscapes you'd only be seeing a small part of a bigger story. If on the other hand you had thought this image was about 'time' then you'd be right up there with one of my most obsessive fascinations. Too bad I made the title so obvious!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 152 - Time Trails'. 20s at f/25 ISO100 70mm

Not sure if theses were once real trees and have been decorated in lights or they were always all plastic?


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 151 - Plastic Blossom'. 1/200 at f/6.3 ISO1600 200mm

Two days from now this scene will be but a memory as one more blight on the suburban landscape is bulldozed into oblivion.

I only know a little about the people who last called this place their home. Not personally but from conversations with others I learned of their helplessness and despair at their lot. I don't know where they are now but I hope their new home will not mirror them in the way this place may have.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 150 - Suburban Despair'. 1s + 1/5s +1/20s + 1/80s at f/16 ISO100 17mm hdr

Bravely bold Sir Robin Rode forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die, Oh brave Sir Robin. He was not at all afraid To be killed in nasty ways. Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 149 - Brave Sir Robin'. 1/8s at f/2.8 ISO 800 100mm

Just how much can you see staring into a bright light globe? Not much and perhaps even less for a while after you look away as your eyes recover. So this image is an experiment in HDR to try and look into the light to see everything.

This image is a 375W heat lamp which produces in addition to heat a lot of useful light and a prime candidate for a HDR composite image. I could have taken one image with the light turned off but the lighting would have been very different and even the filament would be different as it changes its dimension with the heat of operating. My final three images I chose are three stops apart. The difference between extremes is 64 times!

The end result, well you decide after looking into the light!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 148 - The Heat is On'. 1/8000s + 1/1000s + 1/125s at f/22 ISO 50 200mm hdr

There's not enough colour in our suburban environment. Sensible muted tones of whites, creams, browns greys and blacks abound everywhere broken by the greens of gardens, parks and street lined trees.

When I first saw this bright and chirpy fence-line fronting the West Beach Caravan Park I thought wow! Colour, colour, colour and more colour running off into the perspective distance. It always brings a smile to my face, especially early in the morning with the rising sun.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 147 - Captive Colour'. 1/200s at f/16 ISO 400 100mm

Well winter has now struck us with a vengeance and its not even June yet. It's cold and blustery with sweeping showers and not at all pleasant to be out in for long without sufficient weather-proofing and thermal fortification.

Sunflowers to the rescue!! I am not not sure where they were grown but if locally then it would have to be the tail end of the growing season. In any case they remind us of summer even though it has flown north for the winter.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 146 - Winter Sunshine'. 4 secs at f/4.0 ISO 200 100mm

A few seconds later my camera seemed to float just above the swirling surf as the tripod went for a late night swim!

I am only just starting to get brave enough to expose my gear to the elements but a swim in salt water is a little more serious that rain. It was cold and wet and rainy and blustery but I was rugged up to the hilt and just love being down on that windswept beach.

I had 10 minutes, took 6 shots and this is one of them.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 145 - Blustery Henley Beach'. 30 secs at f/14 ISO 400 17mm

I know this one is a similar to day 139, St Peter's Cathedral, but the similarities rapidly end when you compare them.

This is the third HDR image in my collection and was composed of 3 exposures of 2.5, 10 and 30 seconds respectively. I just happened to be attending an event at Adelaide Uni this evening and Bonython Hall would have to be the single most impressive building on campus. How could I not photograph it?


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 144 - Bonython Hall'. 2.5+10+30 secs at f/11 ISO 400 24mm

I think that the Moreton Bay Fig, Ficus macrophylla, is my favourite when it comes to amazing trees.

From the beautiful rich dark green foliage through to the dense bushy structure, a large robust trunk and finally those extraordinarily convoluted buttress roots, they are just stunning. We have some beautiful examples here in Adelaide.

This Moreton Bay Fig adorns the grounds of Prince Alfred College where it is slowly tearing up the car park!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 143 - Wooden Lava'. 1/60 secs at f/8.0 ISO 800 28mm

I'm not sure that this year's RSPCA's Million Paws Walk count reached that magical 1,000,000 ( not by a long way! ) but it's an impressive sight all the same.

The starting grid of the Adelaide 2012 Million Paws Walk.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 142 - Million Paws'. 1/160 secs at f/8.0 ISO 200 47mm

Robert Rath How many people have seen this piece of art just East of the Adelaide University bridge on the River Torrens?

This piece by local sculptor Greg Johns is called 'Fugue' and was commissioned in in 1997. He has many pieces in similar style around Adelaide, interstate and overseas.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 141 - IRON'. 1/160 secs at f/14 ISO 200 47mm

Adelaide is known for being the 'City of Churches'.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 140 - No Smoking on the Court'. 8 secs at f/22 ISO 50 17mm

Adelaide is known for being the 'City of Churches'.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 139 - St Peter's Cathedral'. 2.5 secs at f/16 ISO 2000 20mm

It's funny how when things change slowly you can miss the obvious. All around me trees had been changing their colours from greens to yellow and crimson right in front of me and I had scarcely noticed.

When Jennifer pointed out the colours of the liquidambar tree in my parent's front garden, suggesting how nice a photo it would be, it was like opening my eyes for the first time to the colours of autumn.

The moral of this story for me that all work and no plays makes ...


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 138 - Autumn Crimson'. 1/200 sec at f/4.0 ISO 400 105mm

There is nothing supernatural about these hands by sight but over a long exposure they become but a ghostly apparition leaving behind haunting notes.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 137 - Ghostly Ivories'. 1/2 sec at f/4.0 ISO 2000 67mm

There are plenty of stories about ducks. They feature in Aesops' famous fables, early 19th century US congress and of course our local Canberra. I am led to believe however that ducks are quite intelligent!

I'm sure these three little ducks in the Greenock Tavern are having quite a spirited debate about the state of affairs!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 136 - Duck Conversation'. 1/13 sec at 85mm f/4.0, ISO 2000

This mother's day mum got something a little exotic, these beautiful pink tulips. Of course I had to photograph them first but I want to try something a little exotic as well!

I wanted to back light but I also wanted to show off the beautiful colour. I took many shots with strobe only with a mixed bag of results. Again this was a daylight shoot so I needed to swamp the image with light so keep the background black. In the end I got the effect I wanted by hand holding the strobe behind and using a soft reflector in front to through back a little light to bring out the colour

This image is also a little larger than before as I am experimenting with new sizes for web publishing.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 135 - Tulips for Mum'. 1/200 sec at 100mm f/22, ISO 400

Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 134 - Beautiful Boats'. 8 secs at 65mm f/4.0, ISO 1000

Adelaide just sparkles when it's all lit up! Just pick anywhere along the Torrens in Elder Park, put your camera on a sturdy tripod and take a long exposure.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 132 - Twinkly Adelaide. 13 secs at 15mm f/13, ISO 400 crop

No matter how cold, or how late or how windy you will almost alway find fishers on our local jetties.

I once heard what I was told was an ancient Polynesian saying that 'the gods do not take from a man's life the time spent fishing'. It would seem this old couple might just know something.

I love natural light night photography because images taken this way really draw me to the place and the occasion. They are of course quite challenging however to do well. Working with low light, long exposures and moving images is simply is all part of the fun and sometime a little luck works its magic as well.

A very sturdy tripod is mandatory for long exposures and I cannot stress how important this really is. A flimsy tripod will wobble in the slightest breeze blurring long exposure images. I have even seen some enthusiasts use tripods made of steel and concrete for extreme telephoto astronomical photography where stability really matters.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 132 - Lamp Lit Fishers'. 5 secs at 17mm f/11, ISO 800 crop

I think it's amazing the variety of styles and materials and states of care that suburban front fences cover.

While out and about today I was noticing how there were fence themes in clusters as I made my way while out driving through the suburbs. There were brush themes, colourbond themes, wrought iron themes and stone pillar themes just to name a few. The clusters clearly showed how neighbors like to copy each other's ideas.

As I drove through down one particularly lovely and shady tree line street one fence really stood out. I guess it was quite an ordinary fence really but the combination of painted wrought iron, sandy stone pillars, immaculate garden and beautifully maintained old bungalow just worked!

I pulled over, jumped out of the my car and framed one image!! My fastest photo shoot ever!


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 131 - Iron Pickets'. 1/100 sec at 40mm f/4.0, ISO 160

If you spent six months in this leaky boat you'd be be well fed, have a fantastic water view but the rest of the experience would deteriorate rapidly from there!

The challenge is to work out where it is!

This is my third HDR image and I must admit that it is a lot of fun with endless possibilities for artistic input. This is however my first image with my image workflow under control. It goes something like this.

1. Capture the raw frames and store in my primary workspace.
2. Edit the render settings for the raw images and export them as temporary 16bit tiff input files (discarded later).
3. Process the HDR image and then export both the XMP settings file with the tone mapping details and the HDR output file as a 16bit TIFF back to be stored with the original raw files.
4. Complete any post processing treating the HDR output files as a new raw file.

Basically this process ensures I can recreate verbatim the same processing from raw files to final rendered JPG again in the future so I never ever need to store a range of rendered JPG files. I simply render the JPG files I need when I need them and I can revisit the HDR process if I need using virtual copies of the original raw file in order to distinguish different HDR processing paths. This last point is imported as I may want to use multiple HDR images in a layer stack for more artistic control. Then again maybe I won't.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 130 - Leaky Boat'. 1/(125,640,2500) sec at 40mm f/11, ISO 500 hdr

Adelaide has some wonderful graffiti artists whose talents are evident in any number of public places. This is not one of them!

Here this grotty opportunistic scrawl in the makeshift canvas of grime on steel has more to do with attitude than art. Strong words, names and filth marked this place.

I felt the need to capture this scene but not to linger any longer than I needed.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 129 - Grimy Graffiti'. 1/5 sec at 17mm f/22, ISO 200