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Over the weekend White Bay Power Station open days including one day set aside for photographers (tripods allowed).

White Bay Power Station at Rozelle, in Sydney’s inner west is a heritage listed former coal-fired power station and was the longest serving of the city’s five metropolitan power stations. Construction began in 1913, and went through a number of expansions before the station was de-commissioned in 1983.

My daughter and some friends and I braved the crowds of other photographers late in the day and we spent about an hour exploring some of the site and taking some images.

I knew before going that the dark interior and gritty machinery and building structure would lend itself perfectly to some HDR treatment so I planned to bracket many of my shots with that in mind.

Even late in the day (3 to 4PM) the softer sunlight streaming in the very high windows created bright highlights up in the vaulted ceiling but didn't do anything to pierce the darkness at ground level - life was very interesting when shooting with the ultra wide as the dynamic range from absolute white above to absolute darkness below was "challenging". Where the machinery was in the Boiler House was in near total darkness - the "normal" shot even with my 8mm ultrawide at f/5.6 was 4 seconds or more.

We spent all of our limited time inside and just outside the Boiler House (we didn't arrive early enough to get in a long queue for the Turbine Hall).

All of the following images start life as a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image created from at least three bracketed images shot at -2, 0 and +2EV (Grey and Gold also included a fourth image at -4EV).

This first is the view straight up on the taller window lit side of the Boiler House

Channel Up

NIKON D7000 + 8.0-16.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 8 mm, 1/3 sec at f / 11, ISO 100

Industrie

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 19 mm, 1.3 sec at f / 11, ISO 100

Grey and Gold

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 20 mm, 2 sec at f / 11, ISO 100

Just outside the boiler house are two huge stacks tethered to the building - the blue sky and moody wispy clouds were crying out for a monochrome treatment

Sky Stack

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/125 sec at f / 9.0, ISO 100

I think this over-the-top treatment is quite nice for these!

#4 is the strongest as there is something to anchor the eye. The others are good but don't have a good anchor point.

nice idea with the HDR, i reckon every man and his dog turned up with the same idea given the number of images floating around. The first and last are the stronger ones in the set - the middle two just look like an effect for teh sake of it. They also remove an sense of depth to the image which in my eyes is confusing to look at. Take the first on the other hand, it has some good depth and an interesting composition. I personally would have gone with a diagonal compo, but thats me.

The last is nice, and the treatment works well, some distortion control is probably the only suggestion i have.

surenj wrote:I think this over-the-top treatment is quite nice for these!
#4 is the strongest as there is something to anchor the eye. The others are good but don't have a good anchor point.

Thanks - I think both the conditions and the material sort of suited that style.

biggerry wrote:nice idea with the HDR, i reckon every man and his dog turned up with the same idea given the number of images floating around. The first and last are the stronger ones in the set - the middle two just look like an effect for teh sake of it. They also remove an sense of depth to the image which in my eyes is confusing to look at. Take the first on the other hand, it has some good depth and an interesting composition. I personally would have gone with a diagonal compo, but thats me.
The last is nice, and the treatment works well, some distortion control is probably the only suggestion i have.

There were lots of people shooting small details (people with macro's, 50/1.4's and telephoto lenses). I was only there for a short while so I just stuck with wides.

#2 is as you say for the effect - although that was sort of what I was going for - a stylised almost hand drawn look for a real industrial look (like down in the underground catacombs in blade runner sort of feel).

If people will indulge me I have a few more

The first a more vertical look of #1



A monochrome version of #3 (when I first went through the images before had really processed any this was actually one of my gut feel favourite picks)



Here's just a shot of one of the boilers:



and a (HDR) view back into the main area (fenced off):

surenj wrote:I think this over-the-top treatment is quite nice for these!

#4 is the strongest as there is something to anchor the eye. The others are good but don't have a good anchor point.

#4 is great!