Seascapes and Kangaroos at Pebbly Beach, Australia
Recently I’ve visited one of the most scenic beaches in NSW, Australia, Pebbly Beach. It’s located in Murramarang National Park and there is a very convinient campsite just meters away from the water.
Locations like this one are great as a weekend getaway to relax, enjoy the nature and do some photography. There is no excuse for not photographing sunrise, sunset or whatever interesting nature scenes can be found in the area.
To my surprise there were many kangaroos right at the beach. Of course it makes sense, since this is part of a national park and this is not a very popular beach.
I tried to take a few photos of them in this typical Australian scenery using a telephoto lens but also a standard zoom. I could get very close to them.
Just before sunset I walked along the beach trying to find interesting compositions when suddenly the sky turned red. I quickly took a low, wide angle shot of the forest, the beautiful sky and the rushing water in the foreground.
I really liked the way the silhouetted eucalyptus trees looked with the sunset sky in the background. I took the folowing photo with a telephoto lens:
When I turned around and looked at the east, there was full moon coming out behind the clouds. I had completely forgotten about it and I managed to take a quick photo. It was too cloudy in the east to capture a clear view of the moon.
The next morning there was some very strong swell and some of the waves were very impressive. I tried to capture some of them with a telephoto lens. Though, it’s not as easy as it looks like. In the end I had maybe a couple of hundred photos and only few of them that I liked. This is one of best ones:
Some of the challenges with photographing waves are focusing and the shutter speed. Focusing is tricky because the waves move very fast and you can’t always get an area of contrast for the autofocus to aim at. The shutter speed on the other hand is an element that can be used for achieving different effects: a fast shutter speed would freeze the waves and the spray (like the photo above) but a slow shutter speed would create streaks of foam making it more like a painting. It’s fun to experiment with different speeds.
Another lesson I learned is that the best way of photographing waves is when the light is behind them. Here, the rising sun was creating beautiful back light and the backgroud was in shade.
After spending too long trying to capture the waves, I decided to try a few wide angle shots. On this photo I went low and used a slightly long shutter speed.
Needless to say I ended up soaked that day, but it was actually a great experience to wake up, 50 meters away from a beach like this with a bunch of kangaroos already having breakfast.
