Christopher Meder - Photography, Blog and All Things Good and Pure

A collection of my images for sale at 123RF

April 2008 School Holidays

The April 2008 school holidays as opposed to the usual time away at a single destination comprised of number of shorter jaunts that included camping by the seaside, some challenging bike rides, bushwalking in the rainforest and exploring the local national parks, Namadgi and Tidbinbilla. The boys had a blast but did end up feeling a bit worn out by the myriad of activities thus this was balanced by a few in between days of computer games time.

While the bike riding was enjoyable and allowed me to continue building my fitness for the upcoming cycling trip in June/July this year, the camping and bushwalking allowed me for some great photo opportunities in my favourite times of dusk and dawn.

The following are several selected images from last months activities:

Batemans Bay - ( see more )

Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve & Namadgi National Park - ( see more )

Budawang National Park - ( see more )

Snowy Mountains 2008 and Cochran Horse Treks

For my Xmas 2007 holiday I went camping for a week into the Australian Snowy Mountains with my adventurous mum. During this trip, which took us all around the snowies, in addition to providing many great photo opportunities I ran into Peter Cochran who runs horse treks in Kosciuszko National Park with the permission of National Parks and Wildlife.

Peter's family settled the area in the early 1800's and they have a long and interesting history, embodying the spirit of the man from Snowy River. While this meeting was incidental (he spotted me taking photographs of his beloved horses while in the paddock), we got on quite well and one thing led to another and before I knew it we agreed for me to come along to his next horse trek (all costs inclusive) in order for me to take some pro photographs which could then be used on his revamped website, also to be arranged by myself. Not being one to knock back an opportunity to spend some time with a great man like Peter, in the outback and on horseback, I was back in the Snowy Mountains after only one night Canberra with my cameras lock and loaded.

As easily foreseen, I ended up having a great time that amounted to being easily my best horse riding experience. Five days in the saddle all in all, eight to nine hours per day horse rides, cameras in hand in the fabulous high country of the Kosciuszko National Park, I could not ask for more. Peter's personal company added a lot to this, both during the rides and at the campfires where I really enjoyed his poetry with his Brumbies poem being my favourite. I was also fortuitous to be in great company with the other riders, Kate and Steve, Ian and Heather, Lesley and Jenny the cook making it extra special.

Not having visited the area for a while, I instantly feel in love with this country, a passion which hopefully some of my photography has managed to transpire. Peter's now completed and new website is at http://www.cochranhorsetreks.com.au/. Also several of my images have already been used in German magazines and newspapers re. the brumbie situation down under.

The following represents a fraction of what I ended up photo wise after this awesome horse riding and camping adventure:

More here

Ten day camping trip to Forster NSW

My latest October 2007 adventure took me to the shores of twin towns Forster and Tuncurry, located 312 km north of Sydney. These are two coastal towns which are now essentially one conglomerate urban mass separated by a very large concrete bridge. They sit on opposite sides of the entrance to Wallis Lake which is 26 km long. Thus the two towns are fronted by the ocean to the east and the lake to the west. The combined population is currently 24 000. The endangered bird species, the little tern, breeds on two of the lake's many islets. Forster-Tuncurry is a very typical holiday resort with all the strengths (lots of accommodation, plenty of places to eat takeaway food and local seafood, good fishing, surfing and swimming areas, a casual atmosphere) and weaknesses (it looks as though it was built three weeks ago, there are plenty of three-storey apartment blocks and little intimacy) that such resorts have.

As usual I pitched up my tent, finding a nice spot by the lake in a tourist park (although next time I think I'm going to a national park camping ground) and the activities commenced. My time spent there was taken up scuba diving, fishing, bushwalking, canoing, some spectacular whale watching and of course photography. Initially it was just myself and the boys with Jacob from Sydney joining me with Oli mid week. I found this area to be very beautiful in the early mornings, which is always my favourite time to take photos. However being school holidays it was a tad to busy for my liking, ie to many cars around the place once the days got going etc.

Nevertheless we've had a great time with spectacular displays from humpback whales on their annual southward migration journey. It was the first time that I was privileged to witness those gentle giants of the sea, breach, sometimes fully jumping out of the water, no mean feat considering fully grown adults can get up to 16 meters in length and 40 ton in weight. I was also lucky enough to be on a boat that drifted within twenty meters of a group of whales where a mother was expressing milk to a youngster via her mouth. The proximity and closeness of this encounter was very special. Then to make things even better when scuba diving I could hear a myriad of underwater whale chatter all around me, adding to the already great experience of seeing some of the best underwater corals and ocean life on the NSW coast line, equal to Great Barrier Reef in my opinion.

To sum up these ten days of camping, the weather was great, the mosquitoes vicious, the wild life superb, the camping ground fun, the scenery wonderful as long as it was early morning, a few to many cars but the boys had a great time and I also did enjoy myself.

The following is what I ended up photo wise after this ten day camping trip:

More here

Great Ocean Road - car trip

Seeing as I had some tickets for a football match between the Socceroos and Argentina in Melbourne at the MCG and the game was midweek as opposed the the usual weekend, I decided to make it into a bit of a road trip getting there. Canberra to Melbourne in a straight line is a pretty boring and tiresome trip, however going via the Pacific Road, along NSW and coastal Victoria, while adding extra time, does provide for a lot nicer scenery. Also since I was already driving along a coast road and with a few days to spare before the match I figured I might as well venture further west and take my two boys along the famous Great Ocean Road.

Last time I drove along this strip of road was almost twenty years ago so it was nice to see this part of Australia again, only this time with the boys. The Great Ocean Road (known as the Surfcoast Highway between Torquay and Apollo Bay) which stretches along the South Eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool is one of Australia's great scenic coastline drives.

Also being one of the most photographed Australian coastlines, I figured it would be a good opportunity for some shutter action and yes you guessed it, my favourite type of images, seascapes :)

The following is what I ended up with after a five day road trip:

More here

Whitsundays Holiday

The Whitsunday Islands are a collective of continental islands of various sizes off the coast of Queensland, Australia, situated between Townsville and Mackay and some 900km north of Brisbane.

I took both my boys there in mid July 07, during their winter school holidays and between all the activities managed to grab a few photos. The weather was beautiful (compared to Canberra's 0 degree temperatures at the time), the water was turquoise crystal clear and we had an extremely full schedule which we all enjoyed. The following are some of my images from this trip with the rest to be found here

Bluescape images technique revealed

I've had several people ask me , how I achieved a particular effect in my Ulladulla Lighthouse image (see the original here) and despite a few guesses nobody has as yet got it right :)

It's not a complex technique and I got this result through a process of experimentation and trail and error and have since made a series of images using this, titled Bluescape.

Firstly I must dispel any notion that this particular image is a HDR as despite the fact that I am quite fond of using HDR for landscapes, I don't always depend on it for an effect and neither use it in this particular technique.

The effect I employed here isn't in itself that complicated while I do find the results quite pleasing.

Sometimes you can spend hours trying different combinations to achieve the desired result. Also for it to work you should have - a well exposed image with small dynamic range ie low contrast levels to begin with.

If you wish to try this yourself, more or less follow these steps:

2 - Run it through the Solarize filter

3 - Remove all the colors, turning into B&W. (Sometimes I use desaturated here but other times as in this case it was a straight turn to B&W filter)

4 - Lighten the image by a factor of 20-40 (this depends on the initial exposure, density and dynamic range of the shot)

5 - Add Cyan and Blue

6 - Adjust as appropriate with desaturate, brightness and contrast controls.

7 - Check for noise and if needed run through a noise filter.

Have fun and be sure to show me the end results:)