Portugal bound

 

Only a month to go before we head off to Portugal and Spain. We are looking forward to it but I do have some reservations. On my previous visits in 2016, 2018 and 2019 we had a rental car and were free agents. This time sadly there is no rental car and the travel will be more structured. I just hope that I find as many photo opportunities as I did previously.

Photo taken early morning in Marvao, Portugal in 2016 on an early morning walk using my Leica X Vario.

Terrigal Ocean Classic Swims

Due to the big seas on Saturday the 1km and 2km Terrigal Classic Ocean Swims scheduled for Saturday morning were moved to Easter Monday morning.

I went down to watch the start of the 1 km swim and hopefully take a few photos showing the atmosphere of the event. It's not an easy event to photograph nowadays as most of the spectators, with their smartphones, are now budding photographers jostling for the best photo positions.

Also previously there were massed starts to both events. Now they have more sophisticated timing gear and start groups of 3 in rapid succession which makes for much less of a spectacle but fairer races.

I used the Q2 43 and came away with the photos below. I tried to get some photos of finishers crossing the finishing line but I'm not happy with them due again to those pesky smartphone snappers crowding me out.

 

More big seas

To our surprise we awoke to huge seas here at Terrigal and all along the local coast. The surfers must have thought it was Xmas, not Easter, and they were out in force from early morning.

For scale see the two people at the lookout on the cliff top on the RH side of the photo.

Photo taken from the top deck of the house at 1.30pm so the waves were still big into the afternoon. I used the Leica SL2, with the Lumix 70-200mm f2.8 lens and the 2x converter, mounted on a monopod.

It's the big competitive Ocean Swim here at Terrigal Beach tomorrow, Saturday, morning. There will need to be a much calmer sea for it to go ahead.

A walk on a beach

 Cloudless, sunny, hot days are not a photographer's friend and this summer we've had a lot of them . Not that I'm really complaining but a change is always welcome so when last Tuesday turned out to be a partly overcast day I picked up my camera and two lenses and drove to nearby Bateau Bay to try my lucky.

I always approach these locations, even if I've been there many times before, full of hope but inevitably come home disappointed without a photo worth keeping.

The renowned American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams is reputed to have said that if you take ten good photos in a year then it's a good year! So maybe my expectations are too high.

This trip I surprised myself by coming home with two keepers.

The first was sheer luck- a shot of a very tame magpie which carried on searching for stuff amongst the grass and seaweed on the fringe of the beach even when I got down on my knees to photograph it.

The photo was taken with my Leica SL2 using the superb APO 50mm Summicron ASPH lens. 

The second photo was a seascape from the edge of the mangroves at one end of the bay. I shot it using the same camera and lens combination as the magpie shot. It was taken with the lens wide open at F2 to keep only the centre clump of mangroves in focus.  

 

Full moon over Adelaide

 

Full moon rising over Adelaide, South Australia, in the evening of 12th March 2025- a very hot day.

Photo taken with Leica Q3 43.

The Big Picture

 

Big sea day last week. Rough seas combined with a king tide led to coastal erosion at many points along the east coast of NSW.

 Photo taken at The Haven, Terrigal, looking south towards Avoca Beach.

Taken with the Leica SL2 and 16-35mm Lumix S Pro lens at 16mm.

Postcards from Kangaroo Island

 The final batch of photos from our recent stay on Kangaroo Island. 

Wineries, beaches, lighthouses, sea caves, remarkable rock formations-there's more to Kangaroo Island than just kangaroos and seals.

 

Photos taken with Leica Q3 43

Big sea day

 Really wild weather over the past few days has generated huge seas along the coast of NSW. Photos taken this morning at Avoca Beach on the Central Coast. Taken with the Leica SL2 using the Lumix S 70-200mm f2.8 lens fitted with a 2x converter.

There were terns flying just above the waves which dived in and caught fish as they were tossed up by the force of the breaking waves. 

A tern can be seen following the wave in the bottom photo and another tern is just visible beside the plume as the wave breaks in the top photo. 

I shot these in colour but the storm gave them a green tinge so I have resorted to converting them to black and white.