pete walsh, photographer / images of victoria, australia / coast gallery / middle island, stingray bay

middle island, stingray bay
Middle Island is located just off the southern coast at Warrnambool. It's a beautiful small island, surrounded by rock platforms formed by the relentless power of the southern ocean. It's also home to a small colony of fairy penguins.
Access to Middle Island is via a deceptively short and sometimes treacherous walk across the waters of Stringray Bay, better done when the tide isn't high and the ocean isn't rough.
When conditions are favorable, the southern ocean crashes over the rock platforms - not enough to wash you away (which has almost happened to me!) but enough to create small 'waterfalls' as the ocean level suddenly ebbs and the water drains off the rock platforms.
Towards the end of the day small windows formed in the overcast sky and I sat and waited - luckily the sun shone through long enough to coincide with a 'waterfall'. 
No filter was used to create the sunstar - the effect can easily be created in-camera by stopping down the aperture, and shooting when the light source isn't fully visible. 
If I was shooting film I would have used a graduated neutral density filter to hold back the sky, but since I now shoot digital I took two shots in rapid sucession - one exposed for the foreground, one for the sky - and sandwiched them together afterwards.
Within weeks of taking this shot, four members of a family were washed out to sea and drowned while attempting to cross over to Middle Island.
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Taken: December, 2004
Camera: Canon EOS 1DMKII
Lens: 17-40/4.0L
Settings: ISO 100 | 1/8sec | f16
Film: RAW / Capture One
Notes: Tripod