Passage of Time. Moonlight Head on the Great Ocean Road
Moonlight Head is on The Great Ocean Road, south west Victoria, along a stretch of coastline known as “Shipwreck Coast”
I had heard that there were two anchors embedded into rock and wanted to see them for myself.
One anchor is off the Marie Gabrielle, wrecked on 25th November 1869, and the other is off the Fiji, wrecked in 1891.
My husband, Robert, and I drove along a dusty corrugated gravel road to an empty carpark. We took to the track to walk down to the beach but as we started to walk Robert noticed two sign posts that didn’t make him very happy. One said that there were about 320 steps down onto the beach and the other said that there were snakes around.
Still I insisted that I wanted to see the anchors, so down we went, keeping an eye out for snakes.
When we got down to the beach there were no anchors to be seen. I was disappointed but didn’t want to just give up so I searched the horizon and there they were, about a kilometre down the beach.
Once we got there I could see that it was well worth the walk. Above are some of the images that I captured on that day. The day was very dull so to ensure I captured as much detail as possible I set the ISO on to 400 with the aperture at f/11 and speed at 1-320. Looking at these images, I was able to capture not only the detail of the anchor but also the moodiness of the sky and ocean in the background.
The lesson from this adventure is to never try to talk a photographer out of venturing to her destination, you’ll never succeed!
PRINCESS PIER MELBOURNE
The images above were photographed at the now derelict Princess Pier.
It was a major arrival point for ships carrying many migrants, especially post war. I remember going there to see my grandmother off as she sailed back to England to visit family.
Due to it’s poor condition it closed in the early 1990’s. From the late 1990’s to 2004, 14 fires occurred, leaving the state government no option but to remove the damaged timber but leaving exposed wooden pylons that continue far out into the distance. They did, however, refurbish the first 200 metres at quite a cost.
Princess Pier has since become a photographer’s dream, and I, along with so many others, visited the pier to capture it’s beauty.
Photographing the image above left I ventured down onto the beach and scrambled underneath the refurbished pier, dragging my trusty tripod along with me. I set the ISO to 200, the aperture to f/25 and attached a neutral density filter #4 to the lens. I then set the speed to 10 seconds which gave the water a beautiful soft effect.
For the image above on the right I returned to the pier before sunset. Once again I attached my neutral density filter to the lens, set the ISO to 100, the aperture to f/8 and the speed was set at 25 seconds.
The two images above were captured about 10 minutes later, still using my ND filter. The ISO remained at 100, the speed I set at 30 seconds and the aperture I changed to f/5, not for any particular reason other than I was able to increase the length of exposure.
I love the silky effect that the water has, and these two would have to be among my favourite images.