Robert’s Ramblings

Making ordinary everyday things look great in photos is fun but sometimes I forget just how extraordinary some of my everyday experiences really are.

Today was no exception as we pressed the zinfandel must and got a first glimpse and taste of our future wine. This is my first wine making experience and although I can’t take the credit for supervision and process at least I am involved. So far it tastes fantastic although just a little bit spritzy as it’s still full of CO2.

Looking around the lawn at buckets, funnels, sieves, drums and the press perched up on paving bricks it does all look at little ordinary, a little backyardish. With that I give my arm a pinch and remind myself there is nothing ordinary about it at all.

There are a few other images from today here on Facebook.


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 81 – Let The Wine Flow’. 1/80 sec at 82mm f/4.0, ISO 400

This project started out in a kitchen playing with food. I soon got bored and decided to experiment.

To get the light right I turned off all the lights and used a torch but very quickly discovered that white LED torches do not render the full spectrum of colour very well. Oh well, what I lost in colour I made up for in control. Part of the exposure was made momentarily from light from above and most of the exposure was made from light from the side both using the one torch.


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 80 – Contrast’. 10 secs at 100mm f/16, ISO 100

Wine, wine, wine and a Guinness or two thrown in for Saint Patrick’s Day. So I’m keeping the theme of a beverage laden weekend.

Today we were planning to press our current batch of zinfandel but decided it needed a few extra days of fermenting to really dry it out. Rather than waste a beautiful day we decided to kick back and enjoy a few bottles other winemakers had prepared earlier!

While playing with one of my favorite table appliances I had an idea. How neat it would be to use it not to open yet another bottle but instead to demonstrate how depth of field can be used to really make the pointy end of and object stand out!

So here it is, just briefly before being put back to practical use again opening another bottle!


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 79 – Screwed’. 1/160 sec at 95mm f/5.0, ISO 400

There’s been quite a bit of interest lately in ‘light painting’, a curious form of camera blur where patterns of light are created by moving bright lights around a fixed camera during a long exposure to paint images.

Well, this is not one of them! This image is the opposite: the lights are fixed and I moved the camera around.

In fact this is probably one of the most common forms of camera blur you will see as people attempt to take photos with iPhones late at night down brightly lit city streets in various states of alchohol-induced, uncoordinated staggering.

For the record I was not under the influence of any substance other than ‘fun’ when I captured this image of the Rosemont Hotel in Hindley Street, Adelaide!


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 78 – City Light Mural’. 1 sec at 15mm FE f/16, ISO 500

I love the fun bordering on craziness of a Dead Reds evening and I love that it’s also in support of a great cause. But try as I might I just can’t seem to not bring my camera!

Invariably I hide my camera in some corner and pretend that this time I have come just for the fun and the social experience. Sooner or later in the evening, however, I just can’t help myself and out comes the camera to capture what always turns out to be another fantastic night.

Last night was no exception meeting some fantastic new people in including the amazing local Adelaide photographer Benjamin Liew and South Australian wine maker Dean Leibich with whom we shared a bottle of his 1971 bronze medal winning Cabernet Shiraz.

See more photos from the evening here at Dead Reds Part 1.


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 77 – Dead Reds Twelve’. 1/25 sec at 50mm f/5.0, ISO 2500

There’s a car in my backyard that’s been parked for a very long time.

Every day I watch the cobwebs grow a little thicker. I watch the leaves pile up on the windscreen. I cringe with dismay as the paint flakes ways and the rust takes its place. If ever TLC was needed, it was need here.

The car in this image lives in someone else’s back yard. Someone else gets to watch the cobwebs grow, the leaves pile up and the paint fade away. I bet if we traded places the Morris would get the TLC it needed and the Ford would find its way to the recyclers.


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 76 – Parked’. 1/320 sec at 40mm f/5.6, ISO 1000

Almost without exception I find people like silhouettes. So what makes them so appealing?

I’m sure it would be fun to explore the psychology of visual perception. Relate the role starkness and high contrast has to perceptions of pleasure as a new born begins translating images into a visual world.

Perhaps I will one day but for now I’ll just say I love silhouettes for their crispness, their starkness and how they make me feel and not why or how they do it


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 75 – Silhouette Swan’. 1/4000 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 500

At true 1:1 macro and beyond with ordinary lenses it becomes a battle to achieve any depth of field in an image

I took a number of images over a range of apertures and with the subject at such a severe angle I found myself up at f/40.0 just to get those extra millimeters.

The combination of natural indoor lighting, a low ISO for good noise performance and an f/40.0 resulted in a long 30-second exposure – not something that would allow you to capture anything moving but just fine for my trusty old vernier that always makes millimeters matter!


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 74 – Every Millimeter Matters’. 30 sec at 200mm f/40, ISO 200

Point your camera directly at the sun and take a photo. Include some interesting subject matter if you like. Perhaps try for a nice silhouette.

If there are any quirks in your optics that you have not yet discovered, you will now.

I took a number of shots at ground level looking up through the grass into the sun. Of course I did not look directly at the sun, I just held the camera and pressed the shutter. The previews looked fine on the camera but when I got to the big screen I had hazy white dots, ghostly arcs and a funny rainbow arc out near the periphery that might have circled the entire image if it were not for the dark ground.

So now my next project will be to work out what causes these effects and what I can do to either get rid of them or make them work for me in future shots like these.


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 73 – Day’s End’. 1/400 sec at 24mm f/22, ISO 400

For the past few months we have done a lot of travelling back and forth from Adelaide to the Barossa Valley and every time I pass by this big field of treated pine posts I think how amazing it looks.

Standing by the roadside you notice the ordered pattern of posts on an empty field transition from tight diagonal rows through to spacious vertical and back to tight diagonals again as you scan from east to west.

As you drive past, the effect combines with the undulation of the hills to create beautiful geometries.

Tonight we just happend to be driving by when both the time of day and the sky combined to create perfect lighting. Click…


Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 72 – Unnatural Geometry’. 1/5000 sec at 105 f/4.0, ISO 400