What’s going on

With no races booked in this weekend I decided on a quiet weekend at home. I didn’t realise the East Coast Titles were on at Greenvalleys MTB Park which would have been fun but sometimes a bit of downtime is needed anyway. My relaxation however usually involves getting out and taking photos somewhere. This weekend I kept it close to home. I took myself out to the local trails and caught up with the local crew that I hadn’t seen for a while.

The guys were doing shuttle runs up and powering it back down the track. I found myself a nice location and shot them as they went on by. Each lap they did I changed it a bit and found another spot. It’s a great little corner with plenty of features to shoot all within a stones throw. But a note, be sure and take your mosquito repellent. There seems to be a great swarm that lives around there. I also managed to find a tick chomping down on my leg. Bug season is upon us!!

I find getting out on the local trails is a good chance for me to practice playing with some lighting setups.  It also helps me to just keep my eye in. I find it amazing how quickly I start to get rusty if I don’t go out shooting a particular sport on a regular basis. One of the things I am trying at the moment is to step away a bit from using my flashes. I love using my flashes and they certainly have their place but I am always aware that I use them at times to an excess. So one of my projects at the moment is to try and define to myself when to use them and when to go with out. 

Here’s a couple of shots from the morning. Some more can be found in the galleries here

Last week I went out with mountain biker Steve from Little Rider Lane. Steve messaged me saying that he had a new light from Full Beam Australia, the Trail LED Halo, that he needed to test and wondered if I would like to join him. I have been looking to add to my mountain biking series, Night Riders, so thought it was a good chance to do so. We met at 9.30pm when it was nice and dark at a trail near Belrose and headed out from there.

The Halo light was a beast of a machine. So much so that for most of the shots we had to power it down so we wouldn’t over-expose the landscape around him. I had a couple of other lights from my little bag’o’tricks with me as well. I decided against taking my big strobes out with me and instead took only a couple of speedlights and my Nao headlight from Petzl. This is a great little light as it adjusts to level of brightness it needs to be. For those that understand speedlights it is like having your speedlight set on TTL.  I used this for the shots of the Steve with the big streams of light behind him. I used the flashes when I wanted to freeze him in place.

The first shot below was a test shot done without flashes. You can see the rider but only if you look really closely. On the next shot we took some levels and set the flashes. The third is the final shot picking up the trail of his headlight and the flashes freezing him in place.

For the next couple of shots I threw on my headlight and lit Steve as he went by me which creates the nice wide light trails. Again I used the flashes to freeze the rider. Unfortunately, the light from his headlight lit the trail so well that I am missing the bike in the shot. The final shot is a faster exposure and lit with just the flashes and his headlight.

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I had a couple of days off over Christmas and decided to head away. Knowing that this can be a crazy period for camping with the Christmas crowds I wasn’t overly thrilled by the idea but needed to get out of town for a couple of days anyway. We decided to head west and give Kanangra Boyd National Park a try, it’s an old favourite of mine. Thankfully there wasn’t many people set up at the campsite so we pitched our tent and made base.

Kanangra Boyd is a beautifully rugged national park to the west of Sydney. It is part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area. It is a designated wilderness area which means if you are don’t know what you are doing it certainly doesn’t pay to stray far from the path as there is a high chance you won’t be seen again.  The National parks and wildlife service describe wilderness areas as “large, natural areas of land that, together with their native plant and animal communities, remain essentially unchanged by modern human activity.”We spent a couple of days here and just had a good look around although we didn’t stray from the paths ourselves.

One day was also spent driving out to the silver mining ghost town of Yerranderrie. Considering its close proximity to the outskirts of Sydney (probably around 50-80kms as the crow flies) this is one little remote town. It took us around 2.5 hrs to drive there from the nearest town along some beautifully scenic roads. Though a 2 wheel drive vehicle can make it a 4wd is suggested and would probably be a must on bad weather days. It’s an interesting little piece of history. As there is a campsite out there and it is such a long drive I would suggest to anyone looking to visit to spend a night out there and have a good look around. There is not a huge amount to see but it is a wonderful drive and you would almost certainly have the place to yourself as the sun starts to set.

The trip was finished off by what was supposed to be a quick visit to Jenolan Caves but it took a lot longer than we thought it might. We wanted to top out water bottles with some of the cave water and be on our way but we picked the wrong day for a quick visit. It seemed like half of Sydney had also picked that day to visit, all carparks were full and people were jamming the roads as they drove around looking for places to park. we just pulled over by the side of the road higher up and waited for the crowds to thin a bit.

Jenolan Caves is the one of the subterranean limestone jewels near Sydney.  Being the most easily accessible it attracts the crowds, especially on the weekends and holidays. Its a beautiful spot and well worth a visit though I would recommend doing so through the week if it is an option. Another nearby option is Wombeyan Caves which though can be busy is not as bad as Jenolan can be.