Dan's Photo Blog

Wild Sydney Weather

Yesterday the weather turned quite nasty here in Sydney and I noticed the swell was pretty big and that dangerous surf warnings had been issued.
I grabbed my cameras and headed down to my two local beaches, Coogee and Bronte. Coogee is usually a pretty mellow beach and doesn't often get big waves but it was like a giant washing machine, windy and super messy. Bronte was much the same except that there was a bunch of young groms hanging on to the rope on the edge of the ocean pool and getting themselves smashed by the double and sometimes triple overhead sets that were coming through.
All in all, great entertainment for a Sunday arvo!
Click below for more shots.

Labels: Australia, Beaches, Photography, Surf, Sydney, Wild Weather

Nikon D3 and 200-400mm f4 VR for a weekend

A couple of weekends ago Nikon Professional Services were kind enough to lend me a Nikon D3 and the 200-400mm f4 VR zoom lens to play around with.
It was a last minute thing and so I quickly tried to arrange to shoot as much as possible in the two days I had this amazing set up.
In the one weekend I shot a game of Rugby league, Tony Hawk demoing at Monster skatepark, a NSW Premier League Soccer match that evening and the following day I shot a handfull of overs in the final match of the Women's World Cup Cricket, and then another Soccer game that night. I definitely put the camera to the test, especially the high ISO capabilities. Most small club fields in Sydney have terrible lighting and I was shooting at ISO 6400 at f4, and shocked at how well the camera not only handled the noise at that ISO but also how well the camera was able to focus the long lens in such crappy light and keep up. On my D2x when shooting sports like soccer, the keeper rate is probably about 2-3 sharp shots in a burst of 10. The D3 was 9-10 tack sharp in a burst of 10! Seriously worth every cent.The other thing worth noting is how sharp this lens is for a zoom! You would think the images came from a prime 2.8.
It has been pretty hard to go back to the old cameras after using the D3.
Time to sell everything I own!!
lot's more shots after the cut.
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Labels: Australia, Cricket, England, ICC Women's World Cup Cricket, New Zealand, Nikkor 200-400 f4 VR AF-S, Nikon D3, NSW Premier League Soccer, Rugby League, Soccer, sport, Sydney

Tony Hawk at Monster Park

This past Saturday I was fortunate enough to be shooting the legendary Tony Hawk in Sydney. The birdman was out here as part of a Birdhouse skateboards tour, and it was the first time Hawk has been in Australia for nearly ten years.
I remember sometime in the early nineties when Hawk, Frankie Hill and a very young, virtually unknown kid named Bucky Lasek came out here on tour, and came to the town I grew up in! It was pretty amazing as these guys were the skateboarders we had been looking up to for years and they visited our shitty little suburb. They didn't skate, but they did come to the local skate shop and hang out and do the usual signings.
So Tony's a little older these days and Bucky is a skate legend in his own right but one thing is for sure, Hawk is still the man when it comes to skating vert!
The guy came straight from the tour van, sat in a small stinking hot room for over an hour and patiently signed autographs for the throng of fans, some so young they wouldn't have even been born when Tony still rode for Powell, then he walks up to a vert ramp he has never skated before and did so many rad tricks on his warm up run that most skateboarders would only ever be able to dream of! Seriously impressive!

Below are some photos.
Enjoy!