Again this is another landscape shot taken from the Bicton foreshore just before Cyclone Bianca crossed over Perth, Western Australia.  The Bicton foreshore is so peaceful in the evening, a lot quieter than other sections of the Swan River and is one of my favorite spots for landscape photography in Perth.

The threatening clouds ended up delivering nothing more than a few mm of rain and certainly not the powerful storm that i was hoping for.  Strangely on this night the Sunset turned out to be very disappointing  with no colour in the sky but half an hour before sunset when this photo was taken the river had this soft warm glow which was kind of errie.

Again like the blog post preceding this, this shot was taken using my ND graduated filter on my Canon DSLR.  Though this was only a single frame captured at 28mm on my Sigma F2.8 pro-series lens.

While not a true HDR photograph i have merged two RAW files each exposed for differing parts of the photo's composition to give a great depth of colour throughout the image. 

On another note i read in the local newspaper the other day that the Melville city council was considering banning people storing their boats along the foreshore.  Has the world gone mad?

In a world where we're we should be encouraging future generations to spend more time outdoors, a petty Melville council wants to effectively prohibit people from using small recreational vessels by banning the storage of these along the river.  Aside from being creating interesting foregrounds to photographs its a way of life for many people and we should no become such a nanny-state.

With news of the impending cyclone Bianca coming to wreak havoc on the city of Perth, Western Australia i was salivating at the thought of the capturing Perth's best storm photography since the storm that tore through Perth's Western Suburbs in March 2010.

Fortunately for Perth and unfortunately for storm photographers cyclone Bianca had faded dramatically by the time it hit Perth and we received little more than a good soaking for our lawns.

What cyclone Bianca did provide was some dramatic cloud formations that i knew would create powerful landscape images.  Heading out on Saturday i was looking for a good vantage point to capture the sky's looking into the sunset.

My first stopping point was Point Walter, though with the focal point being either the Sandbar facing North or the Jetty facing East, it wasn't right.  Moving on i started heading to either Leighton Beach / North Fremantle or Cottesloe where i knew i could look straight over the Indian Ocean as the sun set.

On the way, I stopped in-between Blackwall Reach in Bicton and the Bicton Baths.  This beautiful stretch of river is so scenic and the wind had died down making for ideal conditions for landscape photography.

The image above is at a little beach landing where people store their boats.  This shot is a 9 image stitch created in Photoshop CS5.  I also used a neutral graduated filter to help emphasise the power that mother nature can create when angry.

As with all my photographic expeditions lately, whenever i seem to get a landscape that I'm really happy with i manage to break something in my rush to get the photo.

This time shortly after this set of photos was taken the leg of my tripod wasn't secure and it my canon DSLR smashed onto one of the boats smashing the graduated filter.  Little damage for a great shot unfortunately but i must remember to not rush so much and enjoy the landscape photography experience a little more.