Robert’s Ramblings

Tonight I headed down to the beach berating myself for not being ready sooner. The sun was setting through patchy cloud and I thought I was missing that golden last 30 minutes of the day. When I arrived the sun had dropped behind cloud but would appear again just on sunset.

As I readied my camera I noticed a man in a dark hoody standing in the breaking surf intently watching the unfolding sunset. As I watched I was struck by a deep sense of a silent, watchful guardian. A broad shouldered sentinel; sharply defined, motionless and watchful. I imagined it’s patient vigilance, forever on guard and ready to act.

… Robert

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Sentinel’. 1/160 sec at 190mm f/7.1, ISO 125

I noticed a large coil of irrigation hose propped against a wall which which might make an interesting subject. I tried and tried but could not frame a shot I found pleasing in its entirety. However when I got really close, no longer was it a coil of poly pipe but presented a beautiful combination of curve and tone. In the end it was as simple as framing the shot so it felt elegant and using a tight depth of field to push much of the pipe itself into negative space.

… Robert

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Poly’. 1/1250 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 400

So how to you make a trailer load full of garden rubbish interesting? Zoom in? Zoom out? Zoom while shooting!?! Well actually it’s not so simple because the effect really only works when you get a good combination of zoom movement and shutter speed. If you have a tripod, the more solid the better, then life is so much easier but in my case it was a hand held shot.

I can’t claim talent here, I was just plain lucky on my first attempt. Subsequent attempts where just horrible. This shot was taken at 1/6 of a second at F10 somewhere in the vicinity of 100mm.

… Robert

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Trailer Trash’. 1/6 sec at 100mm f/10, ISO 100

There is a beautiful vase of white lilies gracing the dining table. We try and keep fresh flowers in the house when ever we can so there is almost always a flower photo opportunity to be had.

There are two things I found awkward about taking this image. The first was the stark contrast between foliage and flower. Being stark white it is difficult to capture any detail in the white without underexposing the foliage. The second was getting rid of household clutter in the background.

The solution to contrast problem was to simply apply some gamma distortion to the raw file to effectively narrow the image latitude. The solution to the second was rather novel. I placed the the flowers in a brightly lit foyer in front of a long corridor with all rooms shut and lights off. The resulting natural light shot has all the details with the dark background as desired.

… Robert

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘White Lilies’. 5 sec at 100mm f/16, ISO 100

Tonight was a blustery night with patchy cloud. My original plan was to take some comparative images of the full moon between a cheap 500mm fixed F8 mirror lens and a good quality 200mm lens with cropping. Well that was the plan but the wind played havoc and the only way I could get a stable setup was using the tiny 500mm lens and a tripod virtually at ground level. I decided to stay with the mirror lens and try and capture the moody sky above.

Begin the technical problems…

The latitude of the image made it impossible to recover detail in the full unblocked moon and also cloud and HDR techniques were not possible as the high winds caused the clouds to move very quickly across the sky making multiple exposures impossible.

By waiting for cloud to partially obscure the moon I was able to find images which had narrow enough latitude to capture both the moon and cloud’s detail but this created a new problem of not enough light to freeze the moment of the racing clouds using an F8 lens.

The compromise was to use a combination of high ISO (3200) and 1/30s shutter at the fixed F8 of the Lens. Perhaps I should have tried the faster 200mm and cropped but despite a noisy image I quite like the final shot.

… Robert 🙂

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Moody Full Moon’. 1/30 sec at 500mm(Mirror) f8.0, ISO 3200

I thought I had lost this beautiful chess set I made when I was eleven years old in primary school. It had gone missing around the time I moved to Melbourne to live about 17 years ago. What a wonderful surprise to find it in a box at the back of the bottom of the garden shed!

I quickly drew a grid on sheet of paper, my daughter coloured it in with a highlighting pen and the games began.

… Robert

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Staring Pawn’. 1/20 sec at 170mm f/2.8, ISO 1000

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Vibration’. 1/320 sec at 200mm f/3.5, ISO 1000

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Gorgeous Jennifer’. 1/30 sec at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 1600

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Birthday Orchids’. 1/30 sec at 105mm f/4.0, ISO 1600

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Qantas’. 1/200 sec at 105mm f/6.3, ISO 1600