Description

Patonga Calm, Patonga, Central Coast NSW

The Patonga Jetty glows in the late afternoon sun.

I was fortunate enough to spend a few days at Patonga recently. A place that I always enjoyed going to had but never actually stayed at. The advantage of staying at somewhere, is that you can slow down, and take in the real heartbeat of where you staying. It struck me that the one thing that everybody who visits Patonga would recognise would be the jetty. The Boathouse Hotel is obviously significant but not from a landscape perspective. Just ask the hundreds of people enjoying their weekend lunches there!

Before I left I did a little bit of thinking, and worked out that I needed to get down to the water a little bit before the actual ‘golden hour’. To capture the Patonga jetty, in sunlight, had to be done earlier because the sun sets behind quite a high escarpment on the other side of Little Wobby. And it worked out well, a full hour and a half before sunset, the light was still shining full on the Patonga Jetty, and in addition to that, there was a late evening glow on the escarpment behind.

For this image I used a neutral density filter to give a long exposure to smooth out the water. As such, it conveys the calm feeling of a weekend of Patonga very nicely to me.