2011 has been a very special year for my photography journey since I started landscape photography in 2007: I was first time being exposed to the beautiful New Zealand landscape, by attending Kah Kit Yoong’s 2011 New Zealand Photography Expedition; I visited the wonderful Li River at the fourth time in late 2011; and more interestingly, I have more landscape photograhy works been purchased by people from Australia and overseas.
I often said that doing landscape photography is more like doing scientific research in some sense, and these two have a lot in common. For instance, I think the simplest thing is usually the best yet hardest thing. This is true in both art and science. Simplicity is always an important goal in my photography. But it is also very difficult to achieve this goal. From December 2011, I started my new project which I named Ocean Spectrum. I try to shoot seascapes around Sydney area from a different perspective where purity and simplicity are the key criteria I want to meet.
This Moon Rise was taken in a clear night in South Coogee coast in early January 2012. My original idea was to take a starry sky over this small ocean pool. But when I arrived the place, just realised that it was a full moon time. It was a great experience to witness a golden moon rising from the horizon. Composition for this shot was challenging. I had to set up my tripod into the pool to achieve a lowest viewpoint – so that the pool edge merged with the horizontal line.
A New Day was taken in an early morning in Maroubra coast. I went out at 3.30am when it was still raining. I just wanted to try my luck – if it kept raining till sunsrise, I would waste this trip, otherwise, the morning light would be possibly interesting. The rain stopped before the first light occurred from horizon. In 20 minutes, the light was just beautiful. This image was blended from two successive shots, one with a fast shutter speed and one with 4 minutes exposure time while a 10 stop ND filter was used.
The following picture Alone was made in a saturday afternoon two weeks ago in Maroubra beach. It was a half sunny and half cloudy day. The beach was quite flat and I could not find anything interesting. Around 6pm, the sky started to change and an idea quickly came to my mind. Eventually, this image was a result from three successive shots: one with exposure time 0.6 second to capture the smooth wave line across the beach bed, one with exposure time 1/320 second to capture the man – that was myself, and the last one with 128 seconds long exposure to reflect the dramatic sky. The color version of this image was quite nice, but I found that turning it into black and white was much more powerful.
This image was taken in central coast of NSW – The Entrance. I have been to the Entrance countless times, because it has beautiful coast lines, beaches, a famous light house, and a big lake Tuggerah Lake. All these indicate that this place has infinite photography opportunities. However, getting a stunning shot in this location is totally another story…
I started my first blog in 2012 with Ocean Spectrum, I wish my photography journey will move further in 2012.

























































