River Mystique
Milson Island, Hawkesbury River, Sydney, NSW, Australia
NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 20 mm, 185 sec at f/11, ISO 200 + Hitech 0.9 Reverse GND
http://www.rc.au.net/blog/2014/11/21/milson-island-sunrise/
The island is located on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney and has had a very chequered history. It was first settled over 100 years ago and has been used as a farm, a mental hospital, a jail, and now a sports and recreation centre.
It had been raining almost constantly in the weeks leading up to the camp so I was a little worried about the conditions.
I’d spied this location during the first day as it was very close to where the Kayaking is done, so I rece’d the area, checked out TPE and worked out roughly what I might do. This old stone jetty, crumbling and abandoned, overgrown with grass and sticking out from Milson Island into the waters of the Hawkesbury River looked a prime candidate with it pointing eastwards towards where the sun would rise behind the peninsula of land on the other side of the river.
I woke before 5AM and since I was up and had sort of talked myself into shooting sunrise here one morning, decided to get up and head down to the nice little old stone jetty. It was a cold and very misty/foggy morning when I got outside. We’d had great weather on the first day so it was a reasonable bet to get up early the next morning and head down to the Hawkesbury River (eastern) side of the island for sunrise. As it turns out this was a good call since it rained the next morning.
This first shot is at 5:23AM – 40 minutes before sunrise – a three minute long exposure with some light painting of the foreground with a small zoomable torch and just the Formatt-Hitech 3 stop Reverse Grad to hold down the sky.
