Lost Opportunities

Yesterday I missed the sunrise of all sunrises. The sky was on fire and I missed it all because I decided it wasn't worth driving for 1 and 1/4 hours each way if I had to be back to work by 9 a.m. It seems I'm doomed to always have diluted sunrises. In order to cheer myself up, today I made my way down to the abandoned railway tunnel at Helensburgh hoping that I could placate myself on a rainy day by photographing the waterfall which cascades down beside the tunnel.

View Helensburgh old train line, tunnels and station in a larger map

Unfortunately, the waterfall wasn't nearly as impressive as I'd expected and there was so much water on the old railway tracks that I was up to my calves in mud in no time. I've since seen the waterfall in full flow and it would probably be worth a return trip as long as I can work out how to get over those sleepers without incident 

An interesting video of the same location

I didn't have the enthusiasm to continue, so headed for Coledale beach to shoot some wave action where I had the pleasure of being swamped by a rogue wave and ended up with water up to my thighs and my gumboots full of water. Luckily I had some spare socks and a towel as it was pretty chilly down there. I was rewarded for my efforts by the appearance of a rainbow on the horizon, or to be more precise, a double one!

Coledale

Lesson learned:  always check the white balance from the shoot before and reset.  My white balance had been set for light painting the previous night and most of my shots had an unusual blue hue :-)

I met up with Carolyn, (a fellow member of the Focus Group) who had been camping at Coledale.

Coledale is a small sea-side village approximately 18 kilometres north of Wollongong along the Princes Highway in New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the City of Wollongong and lies between Wombarra and Austinmer.   I've not photographed many sunrises - too complicated to explain the reasons - today's exercise was somewhat of a tragedy as I failed to check my camera settings and the white balance was set to tungsten from a previous shoot. Initially I considered rectifying it PP but began to like the blue tones and decided to leave well enough alone. Not to be daunted I have endeavoured to resurrect some memories as best I could.


I've been experimenting with different programs for creating videos. The first is Slide.ly which is a free online creator. One of the advantages is unlimited photos and an option to select a reasonably clean interface. Other options are One True Media which also requires free subscription but has a limit of 30 images on the free version, Roxio Photo Show which supplies a basic show with greater access to sound and styles with  premium membership and You Tube which appears to allow unlimited images but makes sound tracks difficult to locate.

 Looking down on the camping area at 5.30 a.m

Bluebottles scattered along the shore punctuating large patches of seaweed.

 

   

Tankers lined up along the horizon waiting for access to Wollongong Harbour 

With a high tide of 1.9 metres, surfers had some great opportunities to catch a decent wave

 

Seagulls, oyster catchers and terns were out in force

Surfers enjoy the conditions

 

Camping is popular with many families 

The rising sun paints everything in its path with a golden glow