Bruny Island, Tasmania

Wow what a busy last month, working in the retail camera business certainly gets out of control this time of year but it's all over now. As I haven't really been doing much in the last month I thought I'd just post a couple of pictures I took last year when I visited the southern area of Tasmania.

These were shot on Bruny Island. This is a great spot and well worth the visit. I'm a landscape nut and getting myself out of bed at stupidly early hours comes naturally. I was up again very early, jumped in our hire car and shot off to find a location for the sunrise I knew I'd get. I look for a clear horizon but with clouds in the sky, and this morning was perfect. 

I looked for the reflections in the water and exposed for the foreground reflection. This of course made the sky too bright and I used a

combination of Neutral Density filters to control the sky. I had a total of 4 stops of filters on this image.

This next image was shot within 5 minutes of the first image. This to me pinpoints the need to be patient and stay at a location until the morning light has finished (same applies at sunset).

Again I exposed for the foreground reflection and used a combination of Neutral Density filters to control the sky. This image had the camera swing a little more right than the first image. The clouds here really started to glow with the morning sun.
Now Bruny Island seems to be a spot a lot of people miss going to. It's on the western side of Hobart and you need to take a ferry trip to the island. My point about Bruny is, that while its not the most simple place to visit it has some very unique features. We took the charter tour around to the most southern area of the island. Well worth it and can highly recommend. You will see both Australian and NZ fur seals, as well as masses of sea birds, so take along a long lens. If you're really fortunate and go at the correct time of year, Southern Right Whales and maybe Humpbacks as well. We were about a month to early.

One other creature on Bruny Island and one I really wanted to find was the White Bennett's Wallabies. These are not Albino, being about 2 generations off we were told. Finding these wallabies isn't hard but they are only on the southern tip of the island, so be prepared to have a walk. These wallabies really show off the remoteness of the place as they have no natural predators. In fact I'm sure they also must not have the best eye sight as the one we found didn't hop away but came out and posed for us.

This was only a small part of our trip, more to come later, but I hope this gives you an insight into this wonderful island that if you plan a trip to Tasmania you will add this to your plans.

As another year comes to a close I hope you all had a great 2009 and lets look forward to what 2010 brings us.