Alex Wise Photography

A 3 minute expo­sure cap­tured on sun­set at Stan­ley, Tas­ma­nia. I took a photo soon after this with­out the sun light­ing up the rocks but decided on this one in the end.. I hope you like!

I love find­ing and pho­tograph­ing new streams like this lit­tle one from the Tas­man­ian North West. Each loca­tion is always unique with fas­ci­nat­ing rock for­ma­tions and colour from the sur­round­ing foliage. It’s relax­ing just pot­ter­ing around for a few hours fir­ing off pho­tos while get­ting my feet wet in the freez­ing win­ter water. I was for­tu­nate that the day was over­cast as this is per­fect for pho­tograph­ing water streams or water­falls as it gives you a nice soft even expo­sure. My rule of thumb is to only shoot streams when the weather is aver­age, it might sound a bit over the top but it really helps.

Cap­tured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17–40 and Cir­cu­lar Polariser. The polariser makes a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence as it reduces the glare of the water, low­ers the expo­sure by a tiny amount while increas­ing the sat­u­ra­tion a lit­tle. It’s a nice addi­tion for any­one that is look­ing to shoot streams or waterfalls.

A beau­ti­ful red sun­set just near home in 2006. Cap­tured with a Canon 350D, Canon 10–22 and Cokin Z-Pro neu­tral den­sity filters.

A taste of sum­mer on an empty beach in Mar­ion Bay, Tasmania.

Non exis­tent sun­set at Howrah Beach. Cap­tured with usual shi­daz­zle of a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17–40, Cokin Z-Pro .6 and .9 grad­u­ated neu­tral den­sity fil­ters under expos­ing the sky to give it more oomph. It occurred to me while writ­ing what equip­ment I use that it sounds ter­ri­bly wanky. I try to post my equip­ment and retain the exif data on my images in case any­one is curious.

f.16 at 1.60 sec­onds with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17–40, Cokin Z-Pro neu­tral den­sity filters.

Another shot from Kingston Beach, Tas­ma­nia on sun­set. This time cap­tured in por­trait. I find myself shoot­ing in land­scape ori­en­ta­tion more and more now, but love going back to por­trait com­pos­ing with a pow­er­ful fore­ground that leads into the background.

Just in case any­one is inter­ested, a before and after show­ing the straight out of cam­era a lit­tle under exposed which was adjusted in Lightroom.

A series of images cap­tured on a freez­ing win­ters night in 2007.  The light trails were cre­ated plac­ing coloured cd cases over the front over a torch.

Water rush­ing over rocks at Kingston Beach, Tas­ma­nia cap­tured with a 1/3 sec expo­sure at f/14.

Set timer, mad dash over wet rocks into frame, fin­gers crossed that I don’t jig­gle around, check lcd.

30 sec­ond expo­sure at f/11.

As the cloud slowly rolled in through­out the after­noon, I made plans to take a drive and get some pho­tos some­where. As I arrived at Clifton I realised I had brought my bro­ken tri­pod, fan­tas­tic! I wanted to cap­ture at least one photo of the beau­ti­ful clouds so I laid over the rocks, posi­tion­ing the cam­era on a rock and snapped away.

This is a 1.3″ sec­ond expo­sure at F.13 with the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17–40 and Cokin Z-Pro grad­u­ated neu­tral den­sity fil­ters to con­trol the expo­sure of the sky.

Recently I wrote a small buy­ing guide for neu­tral den­sity fil­ters that you may want to look at (click).

A small buy­ing guide to assist you in mak­ing the right pur­chases to pho­to­graph day­time long expo­sures. Using strong neu­tral den­sity fil­ters will allow you to shoot 1–5 minute expo­sures dur­ing the day depend­ing on the con­di­tions. If you’re bored with pho­tog­ra­phy, neu­tral den­sity fil­ters are a great way to reju­ve­nate your hobby and get pas­sion­ate again. It can be reward­ing but also some­times chal­leng­ing as you’re forced to look at a scene from the per­spec­tive of how a long expo­sure will trans­form it.

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