Sunset at the Pinnacles, Phillip Island

Yesterday afternoon I found myself with a few hours free, having spent the day in client meetings and familiarization at a couple of huge industrial sites in Melbourne for an upcoming job that I have been commissioned to photograph.

While I was doing some research for our weekend away at Wilson’s promontory, I came across some images of the Pinnacles rock formation on Phillip Island. Located about 2 hours drive from Melbourne, I realised that while I had been to Phillip Island before, I had never visited or indeed photographed these impressive rock formations and so I made a mental note that I must visit camera in hand one day…and then of course the next thought was ‘well, why not now…?’

Grabbing a small backpack and my tripod I first headed down to the far side of the island to the visit the Nobbies, which is a very popular spot offering stunning boardwalk views of Seal rock and across the Bass straight. Unfortunately as it was late afternoon the sun was directly pointing into the camera lens, but I still set about capturing some of the stunning coastline as well as the grey geese and purple spring flowers that can be seen all around the visitors centre. I made a mental note to head back here early in the morning for some different shots…

Leaving the visitors centre and selfie stick toting crowds behind, I stopped very briefly at Cowrie beach to shoot a panoramic view of this lovely view…

Getting  to the Pinnacles from Cape Woolamai Beach car park

It is worth bearing in mind that the Pinnacles can only be reached by an easy 30 minute walk from the car park at the Cape Woolamai surf life savers hut. Once on the beach, head left until you reach some stairs up to the cliff top walk and follow the path until you reach a seat area directly above the stunning rock formation. It is possible to get down onto the rocky beach via a scrambling pathway, but unfortunately I left it too late to do so as I was racing against the sunset…next time.

A make a new friend on the walk from the Cape Woolmai beach car park to the Pinnacles…. These lovely Swamp wallaby’s are native to the island, and not found elsewhere on the mainland.

A distinguishing feature of the swamp wallaby is the white dot on the end of it’s tail, although of course in all my shots it simply looks like sunlight…

I have definitely over processed these images by comparison to my usual style, however I personally quite like the slight increase in saturation in this instance…

A wider view with the 11-24mm f4 L…

And a final long exposure after the sun had set…

A word on camera equipment

As usual all images were captured in the RAW file format on the Canon 5DSR, using the 17mm TSE f4 L, 11-24 f4 L, 24-70 f2.8 L, 16-35 f4 L, and 70-200 f2.8L II. Tripod used is the excellent Really Right Stuff 34 L tripod and ballhead.