I have enjoyed two weeks of holiday, last week and the week before. One week (well, 4 nights) was spent at Kalbarri National Park.
Kalbarri is where as a kid my family had many holidays, in the days of a cheap fibro cottage with no air-conditioning, where our games involved shells from the beach across the road and balls, not computers.
Kalbarri was where I met my wife over 10 years ago too (over simplifying it a little, but suffice to say we haven't parted ways since!).
It's been those 10 years since either of us have been to Kalbarri. I was keen to return and attempt some astrophotography, having good memories of the gorges from when I was a kid. My wife came along to make sure I didn't fall down a cliff face in the dark while doing astrophotography.
I have several photographs from the nights, this handful processed and another 10-15 to come, but perhaps not as many as hoped due to:
- Kalbarri has grown, light pollution is evident from the gorges now.
- One night was cloudy
- One night had 80km/hr wind gusts, which was tricky to manage on the clifftops of gorges
- Hoons interrupted my plans for one night. I'm not quite sure what they were on about but I wasn't hanging around, and it made me a bit edgy for that night.
- There was other things to do besides astrophotography.
Photo's are all:
- Canon 6D
- 6400ISO
- 60 seconds
- Canon 17-40 F/4L @ F/4
- Tracked on Polarie + non-tracked in some cases.
1) My wife sitting patiently waiting under the Milky Way while I take astorphoto's. She'd spent a few hours taking her own but this was 11:45pm, I don't blame her for getting a bit tired of it by then.
2) Venus setting at the Pot Alley gorge. 1 x 60s tracked + 1 x 60s un-tracked.
3) "Shipwreck Coast": Castle Cove (with Island Rock visible). 3 x 60s tracked + 2 x 60s un-tracked. Vertical panoramic (three landscape shots stitched vertically).
I'm still working on these and others, yet to really achieve a shot that makes me go "wow!" from the trip, but it's nice stuff still. I'm hoping for a "wow"er soon, or tweaking the processing on these.
The light pollution of Kalbarri was disappointing
So many vacant blocks of land unnecessarily lit by street lights
Read more:
http://astrophotography.com.au/venus...national-park/
http://astrophotography.com.au/shipw...t-castle-cove/
I tell you, standing there in a gusty wind above a 100m cliff with pounding waves at the bottom, and darkness all around except for the cliffs and subtle shading of the waves below, I got a very spooky feeling of what it would have been like to be wrecked on that coast. My wife felt the same as it turns out, when we were comparing notes later. A little chilling if you let the mind wander.
Enjoy the pics!
Regards,
Roger.
