NZPhotographer Issue 53, March 2022

PUTTING THE GEAR INTO PRACTICE - ON
LOCATION AT TUNNEL POINT, DUNEDIN,
OTAGO.
Richard Young and I spent a great afternoon at
Tunnel Point before one of our wildlife workshops.
I’d seen pictures of Tunnel Beach before but had
never been there myself, so it was a real treat
to have a few hours with the place mostly to
ourselves. Access is down a steepish track to a
spectacular headland that juts into the sea. From
here, a series of steps leads into a tunnel, and
down to the beach below – however, this is only
accessible at low tide and can be very dangerous
when the tide is high or incoming.
With waves crashing over offshore rock stacks and
lapping around boulders at the base of the cliffs,
there is huge scope for doing all sorts of different
landscape photography: either details, a stitchtogether
panorama, or telephoto shots of crashing
waves.
There are some exquisite colours on the cliffs, with
the orange-yellow rocks combined with water
streaks and green algae. Combined with the everchanging
tide, this offers great possibilities for the
landscape photographer. Just watch those surging
waves, and don’t leave your bag on the sand!
The three images here show the range of
photography possible at Tunnel Beach: a detail of
rocks and the incoming tide, a telephoto of waves,
and a panorama stitched together from five
vertical shots.
The photo below was taken at the base of the
Tunnel Beach cliffs using my 18-35mm Nikkor lens.
Obviously I used a slowish shutter speed to get
the movement of the sea washing in around the
boulders.
This next shot (top right) was taken using my 70-
300mm Nikkor lens. The telephoto allowed me to
zoom in on the rock stack, and I used a cable to
release the shutter just as the wave crashed in. This
time, I wanted to freeze the wave action, so used a
fast shutter speed.
In the last shot (bottom right), I switched back to
my 18-35mm lens, taking four vertical shots and
later stitching them together in-post. This method
allowed me to capture the wide seascape. On the
left is the same sea stack in the previous image.
The wet sand provided some reflection of the cliffs
above.
16 March 2022 NZPhotographer