On behalf of the WCC Committee, I would just like to say a big thank you to those members who braved the 43 degree heat to attend the BBQ on Tuesday 14th Jan. There was around 25 people there with one or two new members who I think also had a great time. We did lots of chatting, created a meeting agenda for Friday and other photography orientated activities.
Thanks again for attending and if you didn’t make it for whatever reason, there is always next year.
The outing on the 14th Jan 2014 will be held at Brickmakers Park in Oakleigh and is the annual club BBQ. The BBQ will start at 7pm and it is a bring and cook your own event although there are BBQ’s provided.
***PLEASE NOTE*** You will need to bring along prints for the February Competition as this will be the latest date for entries. I will be collecting the prints on Andy’s behalf as he will be away and the usual boxes will be available. Prior to the BBQ, you can also deliver prints to my house (email me for the address) or drop them off at Monash City Council’s Civic Centre during working hours. If you do come to the council office, please ensure that you ask for me in person and tell the staff that you are dropping off prints for me to collect so they can contact me. EDI Images can be emailed as usual at any time.
Parking at Brickmakers is along Stamford Road which can be accessed from FTG Road. Please see the maps below. Hope to see you all at the BBQ.
We will be holding a club Sunday outing to South Melbourne on the 1st December 2013.
We will meet outside of Melbourne Camera Club at 10am, MCC is located on the corner of Dorcas and Ferrars Streets (see map) and there is street parking here. I have arranged permission with South Melbourne Market (see map) to access the market with the intentions of taking pictures and their only stipulation is that we ask the stall holders before taking pictures of any individual stalls. On the way to the market we will need to cross the tram tracks via the bridge at South Melbourne Light Rail Station, Yarra Trams have also given us the go ahead to photograph on the station and bridge (see map). Their only stipulation is that we stay behind the yellow lines at all times and that some drivers do not like their picture taken so be warned.
We will hopefully find enough to photograph at these two sites to be able to be there for lunch at 12.30 and then we will walk to the South Melbourne Town Hall (see map) via Ward Street (see map) and Dorcas Streets. Ward street has a lot of fine examples of older Melbourne Houses (see map) and Dorcas Street gives us access to the rear of the Town Hall building via Marshall and Daly Streets. I have requested access to the town hall but I suspect that it will be closed on Sunday but if on the off chance I can gain access to the building, I will let you know on the day.
Once we have finished photographing the Town Hall we can walk back along Park Street and turn right into Ferrars Street and back to the start point for about 3pm.
Apart from the market and the station, the majority of shots will probably be of an architectural nature, we might see how creative people can get with their shots. I’m not sure who is attending the outing but I will be there to help if anyone stuck or is struggling. If anyone has any further suggestions of where we can photograph in this vicinity then please let me know.
The Sunday outing rapidly approaches yet again, this time it’s a trip to Ballarat for the Ballarat Foto Biennale. There are loads and loads of exhibitions happening in Ballarat and the surrounding area for the next three weeks and it’s always worth the trip.
Meet at 9am at the corner of Sturt St and Dawson St South directly across from the church. The plan is to see as much as possible on the day. It is impossible to see everything so visiting the website and planning your day would be a good move.
For those interested in making a detour on the way home the sunset at Dog Rocks near Geelong could be very worthwhile.
To get to Dog Rocks take the Midland Hwy and head towards Geelong.
Near Batesford turn right onto Dog Rocks Rd, you can also turn on to Blackall Rd which becomes Dog Rocks Rd. Then you will see the granite outcrops on your right on top of the rise.
You can park off the side of the road adjacent to the rocks. Single wire farm fence, walk of 10-500 metres depending on which bits you go to. The familiar tree and nearby rocks are barely 10 metres from the road.
Twas raining when I walked out to my car at 05.10am for the 1 1/4 hour trip to Murchison Gap. I knew the traffic would be light at that time in the morning and I just prayed that the weather at the meeting place would be better. I went to fill up with fuel at the Shell servo and standing with the nozzle in my fuel tank ready, I realised that there was no attendant to start the pump working. Just my luck that he’d picked that moment to take a toilet break. 15 minutes later I was on my way, armed with a cup of coffee but now at least 10 minutes behind schedule. I had a clear run through Melbourne and onto the Hume which was also pretty devoid of traffic and it stayed that way until around 4 km from the turn off at Broadford. I could see lights behind me catching me up and about 500 meters before the turn off, a red Land-rover Discovery tore past me and about 10 meters ahead of me swerved into my lane and turned left where I was turning. This idiot then promptly held me up by driving at 55kph all the way to Murchison Gap where I turned off to the lookout. This and the attendant at the servo had put me 20 minutes behind schedule and the light was breaking through when I got out of my car at 7am.
There were another two cars at the lookout and I saw Cuc, TI and a few others and a voice from the half light told me that Craig Francisco was also there. It was raining and the view was flat and grey, umbrellas were the equipment of the moment and the talk was slowly getting around to “no sunrise” and “I hear breakfast calling”. But like I always say, you can’t judge the weather in Victoria and before we knew it the rain had stopped and the sky started to colour up, so we had ourselves a semi-sunrise. I say semi because we never actually saw the sun, only the light and its rays poking through the clouds. Unfortunately the sunrise was short lived and it soon started to grey over again and it rained again. It was at this point that people announced their departure and even after about another 30 minutes Craig and I also headed off for some food at Broadford.
The Semi-SunriseStill in My Shorts Though!!!
After breakfast at the bakery and with more rain looking imminent, Craig said he was going home and I set off back towards Strath Creek and on to Flowerdale. I got a few ordinary landscape shots here but when I stopped off at the side of King Parrot Creek for a walk along the banks, I was startled by something in the water. I saw that it was a mammal of some sort and it had gone under before I could even touch my camera. But then suddenly up it popped onto a branch at the opposite side of the creek. I fired off two shots, clunk clunk, no light and 1 sec each shot and both were blurred so I quickly whacked up the ISO to whatever number it happened to stop on which was 3,200 and I fired away. I got 8 shots before it disappeared and luckily one or two were in focus.
King Parrot Creek
I then went on the Kinglake and Mason’s Waterfall in Kinglake National Park where Parks Victoria have done a great job of making the bush like a sidewalk on Swanston Street but more importantly the viewing platform is useable (if not a little over ambitious) for a change and you can see the entire waterfall. A visit to the café in Kinglake and then a very wet and dreary drive home was all that was left of the day.
Mine and the others images can be seen on the gallery HERE
Thank you to all that made the journey and I’m sorry the sunset didn’t work this time. There’s always next time.
The Sunday outing to Cape Schanck was looming and after spending most of the day before at Geelong with Vicki and Rosie judging their end of year competition, I was not looking forward to the early rise on Sunday. As it happened I awoke at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I was actually standing in the street waiting when Stephen arrived at 5.15am.
Now all the way there Stephen and I wondered how many people would actually turn up and I kept reassuring him that there would be at least two of us. We pulled into the car park at 6.20am and immediately realised that there were two cars there already and John Ho, Anthony Yap and Richard Dabbous were eagerly awaiting others to arrive. in the next few minutes another stream of cars arrived and then there was 16 of us, what a superb turn out.
We organised ourselves and started the dark walk down the boardwalk to Pulpit Rock. Some people stopped to take shots of the lighthouse as its slow rotating lights streamed through the low cloud. I gave this a try too but to get the dark foreground with any detail, the lights were just blowing out completely. I therefore continued my way down slowly negotiating the slippery walkway. The light was just appearing as I arrived where everyone else was and one look at the sea and I knew we were in for a treat. The waves were breaking over the rocks and the tide was perfect. It is quite eerie looking across the rocks at waves that are quite a bit higher than where you are sitting with your expensive camera gear but luckily they were dissipating well before they got where we were located.
We had a bit of a wait before the light started to come good and in fact it went really flat at one point so we were a little anxious to say the least but once the sun rose over the cliffs, Pulpit Rock just lit up beautifully and so did the waves. Anthony Yap Dave Sumner
We stayed for a good while before retiring back to the car park and heading off to Flinders for Brunch. I even managed a wildlife shot back at the car park and even though nobody had any idea what sort of bird this was, I enjoyed capturing it just the same. it turned out to be a Golden Whistler I think. Golden Whistler
Now in the true tradition of WCC outings, we ran into trouble after we had eaten at Flinders. The car park that I had suggested that we all used which I presumed was a public car park and there are no signs to the contrary saw us all come under a hail of abuse from the Fish and Chip shop owner who was yelling and shouting at us for not using his shop, I wonder why we didn’t use his shop!!! we certainly won’t in the future. So here is a hot WCC tip, don’t use the fish and chip shop at Flinders, the owner doesn’t like us. Once this shop owner had retreated to his shop after some of his locals asked him to calm down, we moved down to the Flinders Jetty.
After spending around 45 minutes here we traversed the WCC convoy through the golf course and on to ‘The Blowhole’ just down the coast. This was a little disappointing, there were a lot of people here and not much blowhole action at all. So it was on to the ‘Kings Waterfall’ which is located at the back of Arthur’s Seat. This turned out to be a King’s trickle and the usual Parks Victoria useless viewing platform. Although we were entertained when we looked across the ravine to see Anthony half way down a steep banking trying to get shots of the waterfall (trickle). After this, a few people wanted some lunch so we had a quite entertaining session in the Pig and Whistle before having a quick look at Seawind’s Gardens. Unfortunately the clouds had appeared and the light was flatter than the water in the bay. So it was on to Arthur’s Seat to find that the view is now obscured by trees.
Sunset was out so the remaining people decided to get a few last shots at the viewpoints below Arthur’s Seat and then forget sunset as the light was gone. Overall I had a great day out, some good and some not so good photography but great company.
There are other photographs from the day in the gallery HERE Please have a look and comment if you feel the need, I’m sure that the less experienced amongst us would appreciate your feedback.
Next outing is a trip to the snow and details will be sent out soon I hope.
As you know, the July Sunday outing was destined to be a ‘trip to the Snow’ but a visit to Mt Donna Buang last weekend revealed that was no snow at all. We have since discovered that the Victoria ‘Snow Watch’ website doesn’t start reporting snowfall until the 24th June. Therefore, we have decided that there would be more chance of snow in August and we are switching around the Mornington Peninsula outing with the snow trip.
So, Sunday 7th July 2013 will be a trip to the Mornington Peninsula and after exhaustive talks between the President and the Secretary we have decided to make a day of it. So, as members you have a choice as follows:
Option One: Meet at 06.30 prompt at the Cape Shanck car park for a walk down to Pulpit Rock for the 7.37 sunrise. Then back to the cars and on to Flinders to meet up again at 10.30 for brunch followed by some jetty and rocks photography on the shoreline. Then between 1.30 – 2.30pm we will move to the bay side of the peninsula and possibly visit Arthur’s Seat and Sea Winds Gardens for a sunset shoot at 5.13pm
Option Two: Same as option one but missing out the sunrise shoot and meeting at 10.30 at Flinders in the car park near the Art Gallery (see image).
***NOTE*** Just to clarify, the two options are not a vote to choose one or the other, they will both be happening and you can choose which you wish to attend. Option 1 is for the real die hard photographers amongst us and Option 2 is for the part time happy snappers.
It was early on Sunday morning when I found myself with a quickened step up Swanston Street toward the State Library, I was hurrying as I was running a little late but I knew there would be people waiting because I had already had two phone calls. As I rounded the last building before the library I saw not two but seventeen members waiting patiently, wow!! what a turn out.
We quickly realised that none of the organisers were going to turn up so we made a group decision to head into Melbourne Central to photograph the shot tower before the crowds gathered. This was a great decision because the place was about deserted and the security man had no problems at all with us being there. There were club members by the escalators, down in the basement and up by the cinema. All in all we had every angle covered.
Hello There
From there it was onto the Old Mint building where we explored the gardens then onto Flagstaff Gardens which didn’t look that appealing so we headed to Victoria Market. In the market we took lots of images and then we gathered for coffee and a break in the food area. From here some people went home and others headed back towards the State Library where we visited laneways. Once back at the library we went inside and photographed the reading room and investigated the galleries.
Now it was 2pm and after another well deserved coffee we headed back home having had a great day out. Sorry a lot of you missed out, there’s always the next Sunday outing which will be a sporting event of some sort.
I arrived 10 minutes late at the meeting point at Barwon Heads to find 4 members looking distraught as they thought they were the only ones there. I had seen others about as I looked for a parking space and in the end there were 9 of us. We discussed what to do and agreed that regardless of where anyone went, we would meet up at Clifton Springs at 5pm for the sunset (if there was one). After a few shots under the bridge a few went on to point Lonsdale whilst several of us went along and made something of the waves that were crashing into the sea wall past the famous ‘At The Heads’ café.
After a while taking shots here, of the 4 of us that remained at Barwon Heads, 3 of us went further on to Point Lonsdale, whilst 1 went to another location. the 3 of us at point Lonsdale set up on the pier to shoot back towards the lighthouse. the light wasn’t brilliant but we did get a slight glimmer of nice light for about 30 seconds.
Time was getting on and at 4.20 we set off on the 30 minute drive to Clifton Springs saw us there for 4.50 and just in time to setup for a few images of the old jetty. The sunset wasn’t brilliant and we only got a sliver of nice sky on the horizon but the clouds worked well for our images. The stormy looking sky working well for a lot of our shots. We were all secretly hoping for some lightning from the approaching black skies and although we did hear a rumble of thunder, the clouds dispersed and we were rewarded with some great clouds as a backdrop instead. I re-affirmed that my next purchase has to be some graduated ND filters after wrestling with my variable ND affair which I have found to be not worth the money I paid for it, thanks HOYA.
All in all, we had a really good time and it was worth the trip, just a shame it wasn’t supported by a few more members.
Please remember that we now have a website for posting images from outings which can be found HERE
