Robert’s Ramblings

I have seen so many people on our beach sit or stand for ages and never seem to catch anything. It reminds me of an anonymous Polynesian proverb I once heard, “The Gods never take from a man’s life the time he spends fishing”. On the other hand I watched this beautiful Great Egret Ardea alba at the mouth of the Torrens River for about 30 minutes during which time she certainly filled her belly.

I had never seen a Great Egret on our local beach before so this was a rare treat for me. Because the light was fading and I had no tripod to steady the camera I had no choice but to bump up the ISO and shoot at 1/500 of a second.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 32 – Fish for Dinner’. 1/500 sec at 400mm f/5.6, ISO 800

I have a chilli seedling just a few cm tall now that looked to be an interesting subject to photograph. After various shots using my favourite natural light techniques, I decided to try something different.

I placed the camera strobe behind and to one side of one of the leaves, directed the camera face on and took this image. The strong back lighting has lit up each and every cell of the leaf creating this beautiful sandy texture that is not apparent with normal incident lighting.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 31 – Chlorophyll Dreaming’. 1/125 sec at 100mm f/22, ISO 100, Strobe Backlit

Sunsets can make for wonderful images and this evening I was on the lookout having missed the incredible one the night before. As sunsets go this one was pretty but nothing spectacular so I started looking around for a subject to make it more interesting.

I liked the idea of a silhouettes so started looking around for something bold. All I need to do was look up and there it was, our local scrap metal pelican. As there was no change of him flying off I took my time and captured this image.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘366 Days of 2012, Day 30 – Never to Fly’. 1/4000 sec at 140mm f/5.6, ISO 800

I followed this little seagull back forth and front to back. When I got too close he was lost in the detail of the sand, too far and the breaking water had too much detail. Too small an aperture and the background became too busy and too slow a shutter speed and I could not take a sharp hand held shot. By the time I final captured an image I liked my camera settings were so far out of sorts I did not really know where I was anymore.

Lucky for my he was as very patient as Jennifer herded him back and forth under the jetty while I got my act together!

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 29 – Patient Seagull’. 1/64000 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 640

Today we enjoyed a leisurely coffee at one of our favorite beach side cafes. The beach was buzzing with surf lifesaving competitions, with swimmers and sun-bathers and all manner of people enjoying the sand, the sunshine and the fresh ocean breeze. As we watched the world go by we became enthralled by an amazing show of shifting, roiling, exploding cumulonimbus storm clouds all around us.

I started taking shots of the dramatic and unfolding shapes above and soon realised the although the best detail could be seen in the clouds almost looking into the sun the camera lens was badly fraught with sun flare. Then the sun ducked behind some clouds for a moment and I captured this image as it was just about to re-emerge.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 28 – Cloudburst’. 1/8000 sec at 70mm f/4.0, ISO 100

What to take a photo of on our Australia day holiday?

I thought of some sort of protest image, perhaps the Aboriginal flag flying juxtaposed by some western invasion icon. Perhaps one of our native critters taken from an angle no one has ever seen before. Perhaps instead I’ll just kick back and take a break today.

With that I took another sip from my beer, pointed the camera at Steve’s handiwork on the barbecue took a few shots and settle back to a lazy afternoon with friends.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Food Forge’. 1/250 sec at 200mm f/4.0, ISO 1000

I think a lot of us would relate given a moment’s reflection.

Photography is a great medium to play in because you can never tell where a person will be taken when they look at an image. The longer you can get a person to look at an image, through surprise, curiosity or any other emotion the more opportunity they have to be taken away somewhere.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Forgotten Friend’. 1/2000 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 400

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Hide and Seek’. 1/200 sec at 200mm f/4.0, ISO 400

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Mower Fodder’. 1/3200 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 400

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Last Train Long Gone’, Murrayville VIC. 1/2500 sec at 105mm f/3.5, ISO 200