David Noton On Location
Sleepy Bay, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania. 05:32 local time. 18 February 2006
David travels to the other side of the world in search of a winning seascape shot
Having travelled halfway around the world to the Australian island state of Tasmania, David Noton is confronted more rain than a rainy day in Wales…
I’ve travelled 10,800 miles to be here, and it’s raining; low grey cloud obscures Cradle Mountain in a soggy dismal scene all too reminiscent of Capel Curig on a bad day in
February. At least, I think it does, as I’ve yet to see the distinctive peak; its been shrouded in the murk since my arrival. I lie in the tent, listening to the rain on the flysheet; a soundtrack I’m all too familiar with from countless damp camping trips to Glencoe, Borrowdale and Llanberis. Just a couple of days ago I was catching the warm antipodean rays of the austral summer by the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour. Whose idea was it to get on the ferry and come to this grey, wet, island? I can see why they sent the hardest of the hard convicts here; it’s godforsaken.
To any residents of Tasmania reading this, my apologies, I was having a bad day. Tassie is not godforsaken, it’s a jewel of nature. Yes, it does rain a lot here – stuck out over the Bass Strait where the Tasman Sea meets the Southern Ocean, it cops the same wet, windy weather the Roaring Forties bring to the only other bits of land inhabiting these latitudes; namely New Zealand’s Fiordland and southern Chile, both of which, I can verify, from hard experience, are notoriously soggy. But now, a week later, I’m on Tasmania’s more sheltered eastern coast investigating the photographic potential of the stunning Freycinet National Park. Here, within striking distance of my tent, is the iconic Wineglass Bay and the pink granite peaks of the Hazards, which glow in the low light of dawn and dusk. The grey skies of Cradle Mountain seem a distant memory.
I’m clambering over the rocks of Sleepy Bay in the darkness before dawn by the light of my head torch. Here is where the Hazards meet the sea in steep cliffs and isolated bays. As twilight filters through the sky from the east, the form of the twisted rocks I’m clambering over becomes apparent in a scene literally a world away from my native Dorset Coast.
To make the most of this uniquely Tasmanian setting I need to incorporate the wonderful shapes, colour and texture of the pink granite rocks in the foreground. I’m looking southwest, so the rising sun should side-light the scene perfectly; this is a job for my polarizer to saturate the colours in the sky, vegetation and rocks. Or is it? I’m going wide here, 17mm to be precise, and polarizers with wide-angle lenses don’t usually mix due to their uneven darkening effect on the blue sky. But all rules are made to be broken; I reckon that tantalizing wispy cloud will mask the polarizer’s donut effect. There’s only one way to find out.
The camera is low on a Gitzo tripod with splayed legs. The nearest rock is just centimetres from my lens’s front element, making my depth of field calculations critical. I go through the palaver of calculating my hyperfocal distance, double-check my focus point, do a test shot, zoom in to check sharpness and settle back to wait for the light. Bang on cue the sun pops over the horizon and the rocks all around me glow beautifully. A trace of mist clings to the top of the cliffs, the placid water laps and the warmth of the sun permeates my happiness as the monitor on the back of my camera shines with a capture that alone will make the near-11,000 mile journey worthwhile. It’s one of those magic mornings, the memory of which will make me a wealthy soul. What a good idea it was to come to Tasmania.