Exploring Ricketts Point with an Open Mind

Heading off to new locations in something we all love to do. Seeing a new location for the first time really gets the brain fired up. Not only looking at all the creative possibilities like compositions and framing that this new place holds, but also, at least for me, gets the technical cogs in my brain moving too. Looking at the light, understanding how it's interacting with the with the new location. Working out best aperture and shutters speeds to best convey the story within the photograph. Maybe that's a slow shutter speed to convey the passing of time and it's effect on the scene that our eyes can't pick up. Perhaps a wide aperture with it's shallow depth of field (DOF) to isolate a subject from it's surrounds. Figuring out if filters will help achieve these results, and which ones to use. All these possibilities start running around.

It's an exciting moment as a photographer having all these thoughts racing and put them all together into concept for a photograph. Then truly a magic moment after the shutter has fired and there, hopefully, on the back of the camera the LCD shows the result on all that thinking!

As you can guess, heading out to photograph a new spot is one of my favorite things to do. I do still have my favourite haunts, but more on those another time.

The other day I headed down to Rickett's Point Marine Sanctuary in Beaumaris. I'd seen a couple of photos on the internet and googlemaps satellite showed a decent rocky outcrop, so decided to check it out for a sunset shoot.

Walking out of the carpark onto the foreshore and bang! The brain fires up.Now on this occasion the weather ended up too cloudy for any real colour at sunset, and the tide was too low so the rocks were too exposed.No point dwelling on what I didn’t have, so shifting a few mind gears and I started to think about what I could do to with the conditions I had at that point in time to make some interesting photographs.Clouds were moving a little which meant using ND filters to slow my shutter speed right down could add some movement to the sky.Using reflections, concentrating on the green algae and looking at compositions to bring all these thoughts together into a photograph.

While the result were OK, I do know I’ll be back to try again.I guess that leads to another post for another day; re-visiting locations.