Waiting by the Waterfall

We were lucky enough to have my sister in law and her fiance visit us in April. Naturally we wanted to show them the best the Pilbara had to offer and that meant one thing for me - Karijini.

Not to mention, this was probably going to be one of the last opportunities to visit this wondrous place before children become a concern.

But I've got to tell you - at six months pregnant they already are!

There were some severe limits to what I could do and what I couldn't. One gorge a day seemed to be my limit and I contented myself with staying by a waterfall reading while we sent the others off to adventure.

Luckily for me I married a terrific man who stayed by the waterfalls with me. He even walked in and out of Dales Gorge an extra time to go and get me my 18mm-200mm lens when it became obvious that my wide angle lens was broken. (insert sad face...).

I took many photos though. Some with the offending lens (which was crooked - I must have accidentally hit it on a rock) some with the 18-200mm.

But I reiterate - waterfalls are the happiest places on earth.

Fortescue falls - broken lens and all.

Fortescue Falls again

Misty water in the sunlight

On this last trip to Karijini we managed to take my parents up and down each and every gorge you can visit in the park and then some.

We visited this little known gem, Kalamina Gorge. It's not really that interesting, but it does have some lovely little cascades. We were there late morning, but the shade was just nice enough to expose the cascades correctly to mist them up nicely while still getting the greenery around.

This photo actually caught me by surprise - it's one of many I took for a HDR, but I think it works just fine on its own.

Back to the Handrail

Last time I took photos here, I ended up with a canvas on my wall.

I didn't set out to recreate that photo. But my husband and parents decided to go further down the gorge. It didn't look camera safe (we had not dry bag in this gorge...not that it did us any good down Joffreys!) so I stayed on the rocks. And took photos.

Hancock Gorge - #3 (Kermits Pool)

One of the most popular spots at Karijini - Kermits Pool. Green pool, in a narrow gorge, fed by a waterfall. Paradise!

I love the colours in this shot. They have been played with a little, but only to bring out the pool's natural beauty.

The other thing I love, even though it's over-exposed, is the flash of orange and red flowing into the pool from the other side from further down the gorge. It adds a depth of colour. This shot was taken as part of a set of three with my wide angle, but when stitched together they were not as appealing! This one does just nicely I think.

Hancock Gorge - #1

We went to Hancock Gorge last time, but didn't get great photos because we went at the wrong time of day. This time, I made sure I was down that gorge in the morning, before the sun got there, and before the backpackers and grey nomads alike.

There are numerous shots of Hancock, so there will be numerous posts.

The only thing that was annoying is that I knew we were being followed by a bunch of loud backpackers. So I had to be quick. As quick as I was, they still managed to photo bomb a few of my shots! Over the next few posts, see if you can spot the backpacker...

But this one is nice and clean...I stopped to take it despite the oncoming loudness because I had not seen this section in shadow before. Seize the opportunity!

Hello Karijini...we meet again

That's right. We went to photography paradise. Karijini National Park - not the only place you can break your neck while taking photos, but in this part of the country, the odds do increase dramatically.

It's just stunning. Every time I visit, it blows me away. So this visit, I tried to take a few photos that we missed last time.

Sometimes I feel bad about making people wait for me to take photos. But not this trip and not here. How can you complain about waiting in a place like this?

So, let's kick it off with a nice little cascade from Dales Gorge, where we went the first day. I missed these cascades the first time around, and we were in the gorge just before the sun went down so the light was even. How could I resist?

I don't want to speak too soon. But I think this is a favourite. I was pleasantly surprised to come across this baby while editing.

Pilbara Gems: Hamersley Gorge

Hamersley Gorge is part of Karijini National Park (one of my favourite places on earth). Ironically, it is the closest part of the park to where we live, but we haven't been there for over three and a half years. This is a mistake. Hamersley is amazing.

It's different to the other gorges. Not only is the rock banded, but folded, creating some amazing patterns from afar, and difficult terrain to traverse in the close and personal. You can't just follow the flat rock, because all of a sudden, it gets steeper and steeper until it's vertical!

Hopefully this panorama gives you a sense of this amazing place.

Panorama - 3 shots. Canon EOS 50D, f/5, 1/1000 shutter, ISO 250, 10mm (Wide angle Canon lens)

The Slippery Spa

It is a rare occasion that I wake up early, let alone get up to see the sunrise. On this particular morning, I did both (largely because we were camped in a swag and once it was a teensy bit light I wanted to be up and out).

Photographs of the sunrise will come. This post is about the difficulty of traversing Hamersley Gorge and its folded rocks to reach the spa pool and shoot it before the sun crept over the gorge wall and polluted the scene with its light. (Bit of a strong description there, the sun's not all that bad!).

The spa pool is one of the most photographed pools in Karijini - it's stunning. Ken Duncan's shot it, this guy has, Ben Knapinski who is responsible for many of the Pilbara and Kimberly post cards also has a shot, as well as any other photographer - Pilbara or otherwise - who has visited Karijini. Basically, I didn't want to miss out. Some say photography brings out my competitive side. Well, maybe, but I also like to think it brings out the inspirational side as in "This place is beautiful. Look at what these people achieved! Can I do that? Let's give it a go!"

I had the 4WD boots on for this adventure. No bare feet, this was serious business!

We reached the pool. My husband took himself off adventuring further up and I placed my backpack precariously on the rocks. Let me tell you something about where I am standing - the rocks have been folded so that while they are flat they are not horizontal. Anything but! Completely uneven ground, almost impossible to make sense of.

Luckily I had my trusty $30 tripod with me. I set up, making sure that there was no chance of the camera crashing to its death on the rocks, or drowning in the deep pool. This meant I would press the button, while guarding the tripod as if my life depended on it by encircling it with my arms without bumping it. All the while having my feet in bulky boots, balancing on these incredibly uneven rocks. I changed vantage points many times as one side of the pool was already becoming more and more exposed to the sun. I also wanted to avoid the overexposure of the background. I could have experimented more with HDR I suppose, but I haven't had much success with them in the past.

Eventually it got to the point where I had to jettison the boots as they were more slippery than they were help, go barefoot into the slippery, mossy channel and crouch down for balance so I was basically sitting in the water with my camera and a deep pool in front of me. Precarious. I have never been so nervous about dropping my camera! The sun was creeping further and further into my frame so eventually I conceded that if I didn't have the photo already, it wasn't going to happen that day.

Fortunately I did manage to snap a couple I am happy with. Check it out.

Canon EOS 50D, f/14, O.8 seconds, ISO 100, 18mm, (10-22mm Canon Wide Angle)

Canon EOS 50D, f/20, 2.5 seconds, ISO 100, 10mm (10-22mm Canon Wide Angle)

Canon EOS 50D f/22, 2.5 seconds, ISO 100, 16mm (10-22mm Canon Wide Angle)

Pretty happy with these. A shout out to my husband who drove me here and put up with me photographing these spot for at least an hour before he could go for a swim. He's a legend. It was a 275km drive to Hamersley, I was up before the sun, and spent an hour shooting on completely uneven ground in one of the hardest positions I have found myself in. Worth it? Definately. The things you do in the Pilbara.

Mysteries of Misty Waters in Karijini

As promised, a second edition on the Karijini expedition. The jury is still out on the third. This trip was surprisingly good for water shots, despite the incredibly bright sun. Once down in the shade of the gorges, and the sun had started to disappear, water shots were so much fun to take. There is something so satisfying about setting up a shot, leaving the shutter open for a few seconds, and eagerly checking the LCD screen to see if the water is misty while the rocks are crystal clear.

Can I just say, I am so glad I do not have a film camera for water shots? Star trails - different story. I learnt so much from shot to shot - composition, timing, reducing camera shake, or in my case, tripod shake. Some of these things you just don't know with film until they are developed!

Once you have the settings done for a particular gorge, you can go from little run of water, to small waterfall, to bigger waterfalls, composing shots and taking misty water photos. I say again, it is so much fun. What would you do down those gorges without a camera I ask you?

The other thing that was really valuable from this trip is the amount I shot in RAW and had to process later. Only then did I realise I had the white balance wrong for a lot of my water shots, and it needed to be corrected in Camera RAW (a lot of my water had an odd blue tinge).

Check out some of my water shots below:

Handrail Pool, Weano Gorge Karijini NP. Canon EOS 50D (Betsy), 1 second shutter, Manual program, f/14, ISO 100, 18mm focal length. Increased contrast, vibrance, saturation in Camera Raw. Also slight warming with magenta tint.

Handrail Pool is a great spot in the park, although it is precarious going down the rail you see to the right, carrying camera gear. It's amazing this shot looks so peaceful, there were backpackers jumping off rocks on the other side! This has got to be my favourite shot of the trip. I know I said that last time about the spider, but you go to Karijini for the gorges, so this trumps a golden orb any day!

I've had people say, why not just Photoshop the rail out of the photo so it all looks natural? Well, one, that would be extremely fiddly and I think difficult (too much like hard work) and two, it's called Handrail Pool for a reason...

Dales Gorge, Karijini NP. Betsy again, with EF-S18-200mm lens set at 50mm. 1/4 sec shutter, f/25. Much the same RAW edits as above - warming and magenta tint, contrast, vibrance and saturation adjustments.

This was quite spectacular. We went down Dales Gorge hoping for some interesting light options at sunset and were rewarded with good conditions for water photos plus some really great golden reflections. I promise you, the gold has nothing to do with Photoshop. This was taken at the top of Fortescue Falls, but I thought, if I call this photo Fortescue Falls everyone is going to look at me like I'm crazy!

Knox Gorge, Karijini. Betsy once more (I only have one!) set at 18mm focal length. F/22, 2 sec shutter. Increased contrast, saturation and vibrance with a magenta tint in Camera RAW.

Just as above, the blue has not much at all to do with Photoshop (it may be slightly enhanced) - Knox Gorge really is blue in parts! This is a good example of smooth running water and gives a good indication of the terrain we were carrying camera gear over! But in all seriousness - blue rocks and purple rocks. Really impressive.

Cascades in Knox Gorge, Karijini. Canon EOS 50D with my Nifty Fifty (EF 50mm f/1.8 II), 0.8 sec shutter, f/22, ISO 100. Contrast, brightness, white balance adjustment as well as vibrance and saturation for two photos before stitching in CS4.

I realised on this trip that while the EF-S18-200mm is a brilliant all rounder lens for traveling, it does not specialise well. It's a pretty good zoom in a tight spot and the wide angle does capture a good landscape, however I do tend to miss out on those crystal clear shots. So I complemented it with my Nifty Fifty - this is literally the cheapest Canon lens you can buy. And I love it. It will take some time to master, but it's F-stop can go all the way up to 1.8. Brilliant. It doesn't give you great depth of field for landscapes usually, but I thought I would try it for some of the water photos in Knox Gorge to try and get increased sharpness. Above is the resulting photo - it's actually a panorama. I learnt to edit these RAW images by processing the first image, setting a preset of the settings so the second is processed exactly the same before stitching together.

You may have noticed a lot of talk about editing in Camera RAW in this post, and the captions on the photos indicate pretty much all my photos are edited slightly. I read once that all digital images usually require at least some tweaking in contrast and brightness. But for some purists, I may need to defend myself. When capturing a RAW image what you are actually doing is capturing a digital negative - that is, all the information collected by your camera's sensor. You then need to process them on the computer and it is not much different to developing a negative (not that I have ever done that - I'm pretty sure there are at least a few more controls...). All I really change is the contrast, brightness, vibrance and saturation. For my Karijini photos I warmed up the white balance and increased the tint to the magenta side for most photos to capture as many colours as possible. I will give you an example of what this does below:

Fortescue Falls, Dales Gorge Karijini. Betsy, at 18mm on tripod, 1/4 second, f/22, ISO 250.

This is the unedited version of this shot. One of the last I took before we headed up to the top of the gorge for the sunset. It is dark and the white balance is incorrect. Below is the processed version.

Same shot, only the colours have been corrected by adjusting the white balance and it's brighter and clearer. You particularly notice it in the water - the water has a slight blue tinge in the first shot, and is white in the second.  Could I have done this with my camera on the day I took the shot by adjusting settings? Good question. I like to think not as it was a custom white balance I set on the computer - I already have my camera set to capture slightly saturated images and as I said before, my 18-200mm lens is great at everything but a master of nothing. With more time and fiddling, I could have set a custom white balance on the camera that day, but when you are standing precariously on wet slippery rocks, with your camera pointing down this waterfall and you have to let it go for a few seconds - you want to make as little adjustments as possible!

As I understand it, it is no different than photographers who used to develop their own negatives and get all arty-farty with contrast and colour. Occasionally I mess with hues and gradients but with digital editing I have come to realise that less really is more.

Photographer's paradise

Karijini National Park, formerly known as the Hamersley Ranges. If you don't know where it is, frankly, I'm not telling because there were too many people there when we visited at Easter time!

None-the-less, this place is a photographers paradise - despite the constant threat of you falling down a gorge or dropping your camera off a cliff. For those of you who followed my previous blog while we were traveling, you will have seen shots of this place before, and heard a couple of stories about how treacherous but rewarding this place can be! They advertise a five or something days trip out here, just for photographers for, I kid you not, around $3,000. Better to just visit it yourself.

We visited with some friends of ours, camping at Dales Gorge for four nights. Karijini is one of the largest National Parks in Australia, and consists of several subterranean gorges. These are great fun to climb down, swim in and just admire. They are full of colour in the banded rocks and interesting rock formations carved out by water. But the colours, oh the colours, are just sensation. Deep, vibrant reds against clear deep blue skys, with white silhouette of snappy gums. Purple, blue, grey, red rocks are prolific.

Your typical Karijini banded rocks - how mind blowing are those colours? Taken with Betsy and my Nifty Fifty down the bottom of Joffre Gorge. Minor editing in RAW - increased warmth and slight magenta hue to bring out the purple rocks. Increased contrast and brightness

It is very isolated though, so being prepared is crucial. I took two batteries and two CF cards. I used both.

This trip was not what I expected. I went with the full intention of getting great photos of huge, impressive gorges - one in particular down the end of Hancock Gorge, however twas not to be - the sun was so blinking bright! I am convinced that the sun is more concentrated in the Pilbara. There is simply, more of it here. Makes it very difficult to take photos during the day.

As it turned out, I had some success with the water shots (after the sun started making its way to bed), which I will write a separate post about, but also a couple of wildlife shots, shown below.

Taken with Betsy and my 18-200mm lens, focal length 187mm. f/5.6, ISO 250, 1/400 shutter.  Minor adjustments in Camera RAW - contrast, exposure, clarity, vibrance and saturation.

 This shot of the golden orb is, ironically, one of my favorites from the trip. I also snapped one of him sucking a dratted fly dry, however is front legs were slightly out of focus on that one. A good zoom is great for shots like this. I may not have needed to go to Karijini to get a shot like this, but this harps back to lesson one: be prepared for every opportunity!

Betsy and my long lens again - 1/640 sec shutter, f/5.6, focal length 200mm ISO 250. Increased contrast, vibrance and saturation in Photoshop.

 This little guy visited the camp one morning. Unfortunately, I ran out of room on my CF card, so instead of shooting in RAW+S JPEG just shot in LG JPEG. This shot was just a JPEG but still came out ok. Plus, this guy is just way too pretty!

Betsy and long lens - 200mm, 1/2500 shutter, shutter priority program. f/5.6, ISO 250. Slight adjustments in Camera RAW - contrast, brightness, warmth, vibrance, saturation.

 Spinafex pigeon! Back in QLD, these guys are grey and called top knots and are considered quite, well, ordinary. But these guys have terrific colouring and cruise around the rocks and the spinafex - it's quite amazing to see these little guys getting around in such a harsh environment!

Keep an eye out for the second Karijini edition - water.