Whitsundays: Underwater Animals

When you watch documentaries about the Great Barrier Reef there are fish everywhere. Schools of fish crash together and brightly colored fish hide behind every corner. It was perhaps my greatest surprise that the Great Barrier Reef was exactly like in documentaries.

Here is just a sampling of the fish that stayed still long enough for me to photograph.

Whitsundays: Underwater Landscapes

The ocean floor is full of valleys and hills that form some wonderful landscapes. Schools of fish often cling to the side of these valleys and hills. Adding an extra level of interest. Best of all, the landscapes don't move, which is a relief after chasing shy fish.






















Though not an underwater landscape, this image didn't fit in any of the other catagories. This is a combination of several exposures taken on the boat about 10 minutes after sunset.

Whitsundays: Marina During the Day

By the light of day the waters of the Abel Point Marina become brilliant blue.

Whitsundays: Marina Sunsets

The Abel Point Marina and surrounding waters at Arlie Beach were a source of many beautiful pictures during my trip. I got rides into and out of town with my wonderful hosts Jonkie and Suzette. They work at the Marina, so I spent a lot of time in and around the Marina particularly at sunset.

Whitsundays: Scenic Flight

The last day of my vacation I was determined to take a scenic flight of the Whitsunday Coast. The only aviator who had a slot free was an old gruffy Aussie who did acrobatic stunts in a bi-plane. I opted for the scenic flight, but at the end he threw in a few flips and rolls for fun.

In between loud obscenities and gasping for air I was able to shoot a short clip of the acrobatics. During the more relaxing half of the flight I shot these stills.


























The Whitehaven Beach (above and below) which is supposedly has the purest sand of any beach in the world. Looks like a man and a horse to me.

Water Drops for Santos Energy

Several months ago I ran across a nerd-toy called the Time Machine. It is an external dedicated intervalometer and sensory input triggering device. In other words, it is a box which plugs into a camera and triggers a picture to be taken at set intervals and/or when a sensor (e.g. laser, motion, noise) is triggered. Seeing some of the possibilities on the Time Machine website my interest was immediately piqued. Then several weeks ago I ran across the work of Martin Waugh who uses a similar system to take pictures of splashes from water drops.

I loved the images so much that I bought a Time Machine and made my own water-drip setup. That attempt failed miserably, mainly because I tried to setup a water drip reservoir, so that drops would fall at regular intervals without intervention. For my second attempt I replaced the reservoir with a water dropper and got some decent results. Finally, I was able to setup a water dropper system that was sufficiently repeatable that I could focus on lighting and image design.

When using a water dropper to produce a single drop, water splashes are only a few millimeters across. This size creates two problems. First you need a macro lens that can focus REALLY close. Second, with a macro lens focused that closely the depth of field is often less than the width of a splash, which means precise focusing is critical. After all the effort required to perfect a water drip I wanted to make sure to capture the result in the highest practical quality. Therefore I used my Mamiya 645 Manual Focus camera with one of my favorite lenses, the Mamiya 120mm Macro. If you are so inclined, you can experiment with the numbers using an online depth of field calculator.

As it happened, just as I was perfecting the water-drop technique, my university received an invitation to submit images to a corporate client. The client had blue/white corporate colors and wanted generic images that showed energy and fit with the feel of their current website. Water drops seemed to fit the image request quite well. Shown below are the images I submitted to the client, which they accepted for a hefty sum. The return from this investment will cover the cost of a scuba diving trip around the Great Barrier Reef that I will be going on this coming week.

UPDATE: My submission to Santo Corporation was used on the front page of the annual Sustainability Report (an addendum to the financially-focused Annual Report). I was particularly pleased that they repeated the predominate color of the image throughout the report.

Use of my photos:
As a professional photographer my photographs are my life's work.
In this case Santos Energy bought the rights to these images by paid contract, and are used here under the Portfolio Use terms of that contract. The images may not be reproduced in any form. Leave a comment if you wish to discuss the creation of similar images.

Nude Landscapes and Nude Abstracts

The less Puritan view of nudity in Australia (compared to the United States) allowed me to complete two fine-art-nude shoots. Creating compelling images using nothing but the human body and lighting is challenging. Any sexuality or awkwardness is obscured by the constant struggle to find interesting lines, shapes, and textures.

In both of these shoots I used two cameras. The first was a point and shoot digital camera which I used mainly to evaluate lighting and composition. The second was an 8"x10" film view camera. Being 8x10 this film has 80 sq. inches, a full 60 times more than 35mm. The resulting image is around 400-600 megapixels. This quality is why digital cameras won't displace film in applications requiring top-quality for quite some time. In fact, a group of photo nerds has modified an air force aerial camera to produce 1000+ megapixel images.

These models have given permission to have the images used in this blog. Please respect their privacy by not reproducing these images without my explicit permission.

Please Note:

!ARTISTIC NUDE IMAGES SHOWN BELOW!

RiverFire

A brief foreword: Downtown Brisbane is called the "City" and is surrounded on 3 sides by the Brisbane River. I live and go to school just across this river to the south in South Bank. Here is a map.

Last night was Brisbane's Riverfire celebration. Fireworks are launched from the bridges around the city and from several of the tall buildings. I was invited by a friend to view the fireworks from an apartment complex. Since the fireworks are over the downtown area and most of the large buildings in Brisbane are in the downtown area, this tall complex across the river was possibly the best place to view Riverfire! We had Pina Coladas, German beer and watched the show. I've seen some good fireworks in my day, but this takes the cake.

Yet another experience I would have loved to have experienced with Anita, my beautiful girlfriend, or with my friends and family.

The pictures pretty much say it all. Of note: The first image shows a very bright streak. Riverfire begins with two F-15 fighter jets buzzing the crowd and then ascending in a perfectly vertical line. They fly with after-burners blazing, and they are loud as hell. The camera was exposing for 5 seconds, hence the single bright point of light becomes a streak.

Use of my photos:
As a professional photographer my photographs are my life's work.
You are free to use any of the photos I blog in any non-commercial use, provided you do not change the image's content and you link to my website: www.DougPetersonPhotography.com
Leave a comment if you wish to purchase prints or for commercial use.