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Over the past weekend my daughters School had their annual campout and this year it was held on Cockatoo Island which is in the middle of Sydney Harbour.

We only stayed overnight on Saturday night but it was an absolutely awesome location and the weather was essentially very kind which was a big plus. They even had a free Jazz concert from 5 to 7PM.

Having about thirty families camping together in such an interesting and scenic location afforded the opportunity to take all sorts of photographs, including lots of portraits of our very photogenic children of course (including a number during the late afternoon and early morning golden hours with softer glowing light) and the island also supplied many other very interesting subjects to photograph.

From old abandoned machinery and buildings, tunnels, incredibly moody skies over the harbour, sunset images to a bit of kids doing long exposure light painting with sparklers and my wife waking me at 4:45AM with "the sunrise is beautiful - go and take some nice pictures of it!" - the clouds made it fabulous.

The following are a couple of the photos from the weekend (I'll post another thread with just some very nice moody skies) - comments gratefully accepted...

There's a seagull colony on the island so there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of birds around the island. Here is a view of one nesting on some eggs high on the cliffs above the campground.


NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 145 mm, 1/1600 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 200

Whilst I was wandering the island I spied the silhouettes of one of my daughters and her friends at the far end of one of the tunnels which crosses the island so with a long lens I grabbed the following image.


NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 250

In the late afternoon sun (this was taken around 6:30PM) I was able to capture some fantastic portraits of kids - as seems always the way all my best ones are of children not my own however here is one of the ones of my youngest daughter which isn't too bad.


NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 1.4, ISO 200

This last shot is an HDR converted to monochrome of one of the oldest abandoned buildings at the top of the hill on the island - in this case an old stone building with no roof and thus was open to the sky.


NIKON D90 + 18.0-200.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 9.0, ISO 200

It is a great spot. I went there with Stubbsy on one of his 2x2's. I vowed to go there for the night sometime. Still hasn't happened, Ah well, there's no time like mañana.

#1 Great shot. Though I am surprised you survived the experience.

#2 Nice concept. I think I would have liked a lower POV. You could try cropping a tad off the bottom to approximate the effect.

#3 It's a shame you don't have the entire cloud of hair. Perhaps chop off the left and right sides (square crop???). They don't add to the portrait for me.

#4 Maybe it's just my old eyes, but the fireplace looks out of focus to me, and as that is where my eyes want to go , it ruins the photo for me. I like all the angles juxtaposed with the wispy clouds. Another niggle is the round bit on the LHS wall. At the top of the nearest window one stone towards the camera. Clone it back to square stonework???

Mr Darcy wrote:#1 Great shot. Though I am surprised you survived the experience.

Yep - very protective and sqwaky - advantage of a longer lens

#2 Nice concept. I think I would have liked a lower POV. You could try cropping a tad off the bottom to approximate the effect.

Thanks I've done that and also brought up the colours in the background a little and brought up the blacks.

#3 It's a shame you don't have the entire cloud of hair. Perhaps chop off the left and right sides (square crop???). They don't add to the portrait for me.

As it happens I do so I've re-cropped to include some more above and tried the square

Thanks for the feedback - much appreciated...