Campbell Island Landscapes 2020

tony
March 1, 2020
landscape / New Zealand / travel

Photo showing the view toward North East Harbour, Campbell Island — Looking down from the upper Col Lyall boardwalk toward North East Harbour. Though difficult to appreciate in this small image there are 5 Southern Royal Albatross in this photo.

In my posts on Campbell Island Teal and Gamming Southern Royal Albatross I showed a couple of landscape images from the top of the Col Lyall boardwalk. The image above is a view in the opposite direction showing the typical Campbell Island palette of tussock and dracophyllum colours punctuated by white albatross beneath grey skies.

Photo showing the view from the boardwalk toward Peseverence Harbour, Campbell Island — Looking down the boardwalk toward Perseverance Harbour. Spirit of Enderby at anchor.

The above photo is from approximately the same point but looking to the right and down the boardwalk toward Perseverance Harbour and Beeman Hill, Mount Lyall rising to the left. Mount Honey under cloud across the harbour.

Photo showing a Southern Royal Albatross on the nest with Beeman hill in the background. Campbell Island — Southern Royal Albatross on the nest. Beeman Hill, Tucker Cove and Garden Cove behind.

A normal 2×3 aspect ratio frame doesn’t do justice to the sweep of the landscape so stitched panoramas are a temptation. Compact cameras and smart phones often do an amazing job of this but I prefer to stitch SLR frames for the improved resolution and thus detail available.

Photo made by stiching 6 images into a panorma of Campbell Island — 6 photo stitched panorama of Campbell Island looking toward Beeman Hill with Perseverance Harbour behind.

Ideally for this type of photo a tripod and levelling head is used. This is completely impractical in this environment unless stitched panoramas are your only goal. I find handheld images with 30-50% overlap give me enough to data to assemble a decent final image. The crucial part is to lock in manual exposure so that there is no variation between frames which can then be batch processed in Lightroom before panorama assembly.

photo showing a 12 image panorama of the same Campbell Island view. this resulted in a 108 megapixel image so has a lot of detail to explore in full resolution. — 12 image panorama of the same Campbell Island view. this resulted in a 108 megapixel image so has a lot of detail to explore in full resolution.

These high resolution panoramas are of limited use for web display but are made with a view to large wall prints. The detail available reveals numerous albatross both on nest and in flight.

This final image was taken lower down the boardwalk and shows the beautifully wind-sculpted vegetation that evokes the impression of a manicured garden. A pity that the Ross Lilies weren’t in peak condition this time.