Bogong Horseback Adventure

Staff and guest riders on a 'Bogong Packhorse Adventure' in the Victorian alpine country. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details: 1/250 second @ f11 ISO 400.

One hand gripping the reins and the other raised with an even tighter grip on $5000 worth of camera gear, I spur my horse into a canter. I’m anxious to capture an amazing scene: a column of riders ascending a ridgeline, silhouetted against a phenomenal blue and white autumn sky. We’re entering the Bogong High Plains in Victoria’s alpine region, two days into a five-day ‘packhorse adventure’. I’ve been invited to participate by friends who run a small packhorse tour business: Bogong Horseback Adventures. A full slideshow of the trip can be seen in the new gallery on my website. Behind me loom grey late morning clouds, threatening to kill the light. Meanwhile the brilliant white clouds that make my composition are tearing away in a rapid airstream. I need to make up roughly 150 metres for the right shot. I can’t ask the riders to retrace their steps; we have too much ground to cover for the day. Yet if they ascend much further I might lose the angle that captures the silhouette altogether. Up until this point I’d been cautious in combining riding with camera wielding but this time there was nothing for it. Taking up the reins in one hand I set off. I felt a giddy high-stakes rush observing the scene and evaluating the light at a canter. Arriving at the point where I had my angle there was just enough time to call out to the lead rider to halt and get the shots. I fired off a few in a tricky business of simultaneously holding firm the reins on my horse, supporting the camera and manually setting the exposure. Moments later the column of horses had bunched up and thick grey clouds darkened the landscape. What a relief, I’d managed to capture the moment, but only just. It was one of my first trials in what was an awesome five-day horseback adventure.

Our route followed old gold mining and cattle grazing trails through some of Northeast Victoria’s most spectacular alpine landscapes. We rode through densely forested mountain valleys, up steep ridgelines, across wide open highplains and made a  traverse of Mount Bogong, Victoria’s tallest mountain. The vast stands of dead hardwoods and snowgums were an awesome display of the forces of nature acting in the area. Equally impressive for me was the strength, endurance and sure footedness of our horses. I couldn’t help but marvel at how humans and animals could form such powerful relationships. Each night we ate around the campfire and after a beer and some wine crawled into our swags with a view straight to the stars. The trip was actually a complete circumnavigation of Mount Bogong, as you can see in the map below.

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Photographically the trip was both an amazingly challenging and rewarding experience. I was often disappointed with my results and frustrated that so many moments slipped me by without me being able to capture them. But I also managed to get some really great shots and I learned a lot about shooting with horses. Horseback photography is bloody hard work. Shooting from the saddle has to be at higher than average shutter speeds because even the slightest movements from your horse could ruin the sharpness of an image. Of course being able to keep the horse still, and retain the use of your hands for the camera is a bit of a madman’s juggle. I’d say whenever possible you should dismount before shooting, but there was rarely time for me to do so. Directing riders and packhorses in a scene was also tough work, they just never stay still! And capturing the horse in a pleasing posture for the horseman’s eye was something I had no prior knowledge of. Shooting a rider on a horse also presented compositional challenges. The dimensions of a saddled rider just don’t allow the figure to fill a frame the way a person on foot does. Overall I think I managed ok, learned a lot and had heaps of fun improving my horse-riding.

I’d like to thank Bogong Horseback Adventures for inviting me to experience the high country by horseback. I can thoroughly recommend their rides as a spectacular and quality experience. I’d also like to thank Ludovic Riffault for designing my new logo and business identity (as can be seen in the watermark on this image), cheers mate you’ve done a great job. As for my next post it remains a mystery but I’m sure I’ll be posting some more from my time in New Caledonia and also a five-week sailing voyage I did with some friends back in September last year.  Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check out the new Bogong Horseback Adventure gallery on my website.

Cheers,

Cam.

Wilsons Promontory Panorama Double

Hiking into Little Waterloo Bay, Wilsons Promontory National Park. Panorama stitch of 25 separate images using Photoshop CS4 and assisted by Jack Metier. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details for all 25 images: 1/125 second @ f20 ISO 400.

360 degree Panorama taken from a semi-submerged rock on the southern end of Waterloo Bay, Wilsons Promontory National Park. Panorama stitch of 32 separate images using Photoshop CS4. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details for all 32 images: 1/200 second @ f13 ISO 400.

It’s been a few weeks since my last post so I thought I’d make this one a double and share a couple of panoramas from a place very near to where I grew up in Southeast Victoria. In early March a friend, American film maker Jack Metier, and I went on one of Victoria’s champagne hikes: the lighthouse circuit at Wilsons Promontory National Park. For all ye not familiar with this incredible place, ‘the Prom’ as we call it, offers up some of Australia’s most amazing natural beauty. It simply can’t be beaten for the amount of phenomenal beaches in what is a relatively small area occupying the southernmost tip of mainland Australia. What makes it even more awesome is that many of those beaches can only be accessed by hiking a minimum of 10km, which generally means the crowds stay away. Those hikes also take you through some stunning mountainous terrain with spectacular views of cliffs, bays, beaches, offshore islands, dense forests and omnipresent gigantic granite boulders. Each time I go there I’m blown away and this visit was no exception.

One of my favourite things about the Prom are the white sand beaches and the sparkling turquoise water that it produces when bathed in full sunshine. I’ve always felt that the place ‘looks’ like a kind of tropical paradise. It’s an illusion that is well sustained in these two panoramas but I can tell you that the water is in fact mighty cold when compared to the waters of say Vanuatu and New Caledonia, where I had been living for three months just previous to returning to Australia. Surprisingly, this aspect of the Prom does not seem to be much taken advantage of by the many photographers who visit. Pretty much invariably the shots I see from the Prom are sunset or sunrise landscapes. These, while often incredible, don’t capture that amazing colour the water can produce at high noon. I understand that there is a real harshness to light at full noon and for many types of photography it just simply doesn’t work. But for making an alluring image of sparkling water I find that there is nothing better.

This post might just go on forever if I go into all the details of the exposures for these shots but I will just throw out a thankyou to Jack Metier (check out his impressive travel blog) who took the final image of me jumping the creek in the top panorama. I blended that shot into the scene after stitching the panorama together. I will also just mention that I used a circular polariser for these shots. The polariser helped produce the amazing colour in the water though I admit it was probably not the best choice for the sky as you may notice the unnatural looking variation in tones in the sky. I may experiment with a graduated neutral density filter in future. I will also mention that I took many panoramas at a 24mm focal length that produced a good bit of barrel distortion, giving me quite a few headaches for stitching them together. In future I’ll probably only go down to about 28mm or maybe even 35mm and be a bit more careful in giving a healthy overlap between the shots. I’ll also just say that these were handheld, no tripod was involved, which makes stitching together in post a bit more tedious. That’s also why I used an ISO as high as 400 in such sunny conditions, so I could get as sharp a hand held image as possible. If anyone wants to know more about these exposures feel free to post a question/comment/suggetion. I will forever be a student of photography and welcome any discussion!

If you’re interested in seeing the route that Jack and I did and where specifically I took these shots you can check out the route map embedded in the bottom of this post. Don’t forget that you can view these panoramas in a fuller glory just by clicking on them and they’ll open up on a separate page. Thanks again for reading, next post coming up will be from a 5 day horseback adventure that I just finished up in the Bogong High Plains in Victoria’s high country. Don’t forget to RSS the blog, If you think it’s worth sharing why not tweet it, facebook post it, stumble upon it, digg it or email it onto your friends (yes it’s true I should have easy one click links for you guys to do those things, don’t worry it’s all in the pipeline). Of course any non-photography related comments are welcome too so don’t hold back.

Finally I might also just mention that the spot in the second panorama on the southern end of Waterloo Bay is a great spot for snorkelling. I was surrounded by a large inquisitive school of black and white stripy fish as I swam around those surreal boulders, it was awesome, thoroughly recommended.

Cheers,

Cam.

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