Alex Wise Photography

Wild weather on the Tas­man­ian West Coast.

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.

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.

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).

Tonight’s sun­set cap­tured at Kingston Beach, Tas­ma­nia. This was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17–40 and Cokin Z-Pro ND grads.

Cop­ping spray all over my gear but it was worth it even if only one shot of the 15 came out…

Taken win­ter 2009 at Lif­fey Falls after a week of rain.