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My first chance to get out with camera in the new year was the 12th of January. I took the opportunity to photograph a sunrise (my favourite thing) in my favourite style. These photos were both taken at Berrys Beach which is the non-official local name for mid-Seven Mile Beach. I visited this location more often than I normally would during 2020 because it was within my 5km radius and I would walk here with Catherine for exercise.
Looking through my archive of images, March and April were pretty quiet for me. The furthest I travelled in those two months was Kiama, which is a just 19km away. This was prior to a ban on travel outside your local council area of course.
Here in the Shoalhaven LGA we had it pretty good because our council region covers over 4700Km². It handily includes everywhere from Berry to North Durras taking in all of Jervis Bay, Kangaroo Valley, much of the massive Morton National Park, Sussex Inlet, Conjola, Mollymook, Murramurang National Park and Ulladulla. Compare that with Kiama LGA which is basically Kiama, Gerroa and Gerringong and covers just 250Km². And of course the Sydney LGAs are all tiny in comparison. So even with the council's locked down I could have travelled if I'd wanted to, but I didn't.
Late summer sunsets in Gerroa are often horizon-to-horizon golden light and that was certainly the case this year. I like shooting directly towards the direction of the sun because it throws everything else into silhouette.
During the autumn months I did actually travel slightly further afield. Catherine had to go into Sydney to finalise her citizenship and, with the appointment being early in the day, we decided to book into a hotel in the city. In the evening I explored the city from our hotel room with my long lens and then styled the images with a Cyberpunk look that I really liked.
About a week after the Sydney trip a massive east coast low developed in the Tasman Sea and spun up a massive swell which impacted the east coast. I went to Bombo to photograph the scene and got some amazing photographs and a cool video that I shot in 240fps slow motion.
There were also some lovely sunrise and sunsets in between which I was able to photograph at the nearby beaches.
In the winter I scored some of my favourite sunrise/sunset shots. Movement was still heavily restricted at that time of the year, so the shots are all very local. I often find myself choosing the easy option when it comes to landscape shots and drive to my nearest beach to take the images and lockdown and my own anxiety contributed to that. But when I did go a little bit further I always enjoyed it and, if 2022 brings become some normality hopefully I'll start travelling properly again.
As autumn arrived it became apparent that the pandemic was a long way from being over, but our freedom of movement was improved slightly here when the state government ended the ban on moving between council regions.
As the end of the year rolled around we all thought we were done with pandemic related restrictions and started to celebrate and then Omicron arrived and took a huge great dump on the cake. Hey-ho. We're all getting quite used to this now though, aren't we.
The summer looked like being a wash-out thanks to a La Nina forecast promising a cooler and wetter end to the year and that's how it turned out. It started raining in October and it hasn't really stopped since. At least the dams are full again!
And that's a wrap. 2021 is now just another folder list in my Adobe Lightroom catalog and I am choosing to look forward with optimism to whatever 2022 holds. Watch this space ...
