The trip is nearly over!!!

Well this is my last night in the USA on my photographic trip with Dad.

We just finished up a trip to Monument Valley and Canyon De Chally. To be honest I was a bit dissapointed with both of these locations compared to the wonderful places we went before.

Part of my dissapointment lies in the Navajo guides that we were reliant upon to take us to places in both parks. In Monument Valley they were charging us a fortune for a private photographic tour. Before booking we absolutely confirmed that our guide was experienced at taking landscape photographers around Monument Valley and new how to chase the light etc.

Well, our guide was supposed to be Carol.... she didn't turn up, so we got Larry.

We gave Larry the third degree and he assured us that he was a photographic expert.... then all of a sudden he was busy, so we got Patsy.... I was skeptical but Patsy assured us (as did her boss) that she was skilled at guiding serious photographers.

Guess what!!! They lied to us! I don't think Patsy knew that the sun set in the West much less the ideal locations for various shots. I was so dissapointed. My advice to any other photographers looking to shoot in Monument Valley or Canyon De Chally (where you need guides to take you through)..... Do your own research, and assume that your guides are just drivers.

Tomorrow morning I am going back to upper Antelope Canyon for one more quick shoot before racing for the airport. I feel I have not done this spectacular location justice.

What a fantastic week so far!!!

I'm about half way through my photographic trip and all I can say is "wow". I have seen some incredible locations and captured some wonderful images. Talk about photography overload. So far the trip has been

• Mono Lake
• Bodie Ghost Town
• Bryce National Park
• Escalante National Park
• Antelope Canyon
• Glen Canyon Recreation Area

Here are a couple of my favorite images so far. I loved the abstract shapes of Antelope Canyon.

Tonight I drive back to Page, AZ where I meet back up with Dad. Then we are heading out to Monument Valley and Canyon De Challey.

While I haven't been taking many black and white photos, I did manage to grab two black and white photos that I was pretty happy with. Funnily enough both of them had Dad in them as the focal point.

I am going to have a lot of processing to do when I get back to Sydney, but so far I am pretty happy with the images that I have been getting.

More soon.

My USA trip is finally here... I'm off!

Sitting at the airport waiting to board the plane. Can't think of anything I have forgotten.

The next two weeks are going to be fun, exciting, tiring, probably a bit overwhelming.... It will be interesting to see whether I get into photographic overload by the end of it.

Beach and Pool During Storm

Beach and Pool During Storm, originally uploaded by brentbat.

This weekend was an awful one from a weather perspective... 3 Days of storms. However as they say every cloud has a silver lining. I got out on Sunday morning and shot some interesting photos at Mona Vale pool. The sky was very dramatic and moody, and the sun peeped out from the clouds for a just a few minutes, I ventured out on to the rocks and sand and shot some pictures before the heavens opened again. Lucky I had my umbrella close by or my camera would have got a drenching.

Port Botany

I have been thinking about photographing Port Botany for a while now. In fact I had a go a couple of months back, but didn't research the location very well and suffered from a corrupt CF card, so ended up getting no usable pictures from that shoot.

This time things were a bit different, I conducted a recce of the location on my way back from the airport last Monday. Found a perfect location that had some great old piers that would work well as foreground.

On Sunday I morning I went out, didn't run around snapping away like a headless chook, instead I already decided on two different compositions and just set up to capture them when the lighting was right. Here's the results of the shoot.



I like this one because it is quite dramatic. It was still dark when I snapped this and the light mist in the air higlighted the alien-like lights of the port.

The second one below was shot about 30 minutes later when there was more ambient light around. I used 7 frames @ f4 with exposures ranging from 0.5 of a second to 28 seconds. The lens was the Tokina 12-24mm @ 18mm.