Sydney is full of surprises, one of the more pleasant for me was discovering the beauty of the Hermitage Foreshore track in Vaucluse. The walk begins in Rose Bay at the bottom of the hill behind the two girls schools, the ones with good and then even better views of the city. The NSW National Parks website says that this is "One of Sydney’s great coastal walks" and I'm certainly in agreement. While familiar with Nielsen Park, I've been swimming there for decades, I'd never ventured very far into the walking tracks on the headland south of the beach. When at last I did walk the stretch from Strickland House back to Nielsen Park, I raved about it to anyone who would listen. Yet it was still another year before I finally walked the stretch from Rose Bay to Strickland House. And when I did, I came prepared. A hat, water, camera, my wide angle lens, tripod and panorama head. I would document the walk by creating key images, 360-degree panoramas to compliment the ones I had already made along the Eastern Suburbs coastline featuring Sydney's amazing harbour and ocean pools.
Click images to view LARGE - Click the X top right of the 360s to go Fullscreen.
It was a beautiful winters day in June and I made the first 360° pano(rama) not far from the Rose Bay trailhead at Erika's Crystal Baths. A harbour pool I had never heard of which I saw place-tagged on Google maps while searching for the start of the walk. I detoured along a side track, a locals shortcut perhaps down to green rocks where someone, at sometime, had cast or carved the name of the place on a boulder, the 'Baths' being a projection of old sandstone blocks out into the little bay to frame a bathing area. I set my tripod directly over the place-name (try doing that with a matterport 360-degree camera which blurs out the top and bottom of every image) so thanks to the magic of true 360° photography, by looking down you can see where we are! Click the link above to experience the location for yourself.My next tripod stop was a stand of Port Jackson Figs growing on an elevated rock shelf where the trail winds upward before dropping back down to Hermit Bay. I had seen these trees before (without proceeding any further) and been struck by their beauty. This would be my first significant effort to really get into the tree using 360° photography. To show the complexity of the canopy, the form of the boughs, the details of the trunk, the aerial roots growing down and thick roots branching out over the rocks. Please let me know if you think these are Moreton Bay fig trees, Ficus macrophylla and not Port Jackson, Ficus rubiginosa. I don't think these are buttress roots of Moreton Bay figs but I'm happy to be corrected.
.jpg "On the boardwalk under the Canopy of a Port Jackson Fig, Hermitage Foreshore Walk, Rose Bay, Sydney Australia") |
| On the boardwalk under the Canopy of a Port Jackson Fig |
What I love about 360° pictures is the image allows you to present not just what is was in front of the lens as a single point of view, but what can be seen all the way around that position. The Fig tree shots above are screenshots from the two 360° panos I made under these trees on on the boardwalk and up on the sandstone shelf. Again, click the link above to experience being in amongst the trees.
Next stop: Hermit Point and Hermit Bay. "Hermitage Foreshore Reserve
A width of Rose Bay foreshore land varying from 40 to 100 feet (12 to 30 m.) from Bayview Hill Road to Nielsen Park was resumed in May, 1912 by the Department of Lands from foreshore properties and paid for under the Foreshore Resumption Scheme. The land was declared a Reserve for Public Recreation on November 13, 1964 and added to the Sydney Harbour National Park, November 12, 1983 - placed under the control of the National Parks and Wildlife Service." From the Woollahra Council website.
By the way, all of the 360° still images illustrating this article are screenshot from the completed 360° panoramas.
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| Looking north towards Strickland House, just off to the left of the left pier. |
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| Boat storage rack under a Port Jackson fig tree |
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| View back to the city and across Hermit Bay to Strickland House Estate |
I've also been making high-resolution (much bigger digital files) still picture panoramas, of architecture and landscapes, and trees as well as the 360s. Including the trees and grounds at Strickland House Estate. If you haven't already caught on. I am taking a great interest in trees. I am thinking about portraits of trees in much the same way I might think about a portrait of a person. Good light, best angle, personality (lets ignore that person is part of that word - Treeality? It's not he same is it...) qualities like that, unfortunately trees don't actually pose and they don't come to the studio so it's up to me to do all the moving around. I think it is because trees and their environments are so huge that, some of the trees too, that the extra detail from stitched images delivers more feeling from the subject. And yes, I wouldn't mind experimenting in this way that on some people shots too. But I digress...
They look better, even when scaled down for the web. The idea is to make Treescapes (maybe that is the best word) that can be printed as large format pictures at 1 to 2 meters on the long side that look good at a distance; and like the work of an old master painter, look just as good when viewed up close. Though I am happy with some of the results, this is all still very much in the experimental stage!
Recently as I was preparing to leave the park I noticed how wonderful the figs looked backlit against the afternoon sky and the water with a soft harbour mist, the shadows and sunlight on the grass. I unpacked my camera bag (again) and made two 'normal' panoramas of the stand of Fig Trees at Strickland House Estate and another looking back up the hillside to Vaucluse.
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A stand of Fig Trees at Strickland House Estate overlooking Sydney Harbour
(20000 x 12000 pixels at full resolution) |
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| Harbour mist in the afternoon from the image above, detail at 100% |
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Bough and buttress root of a Morton bay fig from the image above, detail at 100%
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| Large boulder and stand of Fig Trees at Strickland House Estate overlooking Sydney Harbour |
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| Strickland House Estate gardens in afternoon light |
After Strickland House the boardwalk continues through coastal shrubs and and native trees including a melaleuca grove which creates a wild and twisted tree tunnel.
.jpg "A Melaleuca Tree Tunnel - Hermitage Foreshore Track, Vaucluse, Sydney") |
| A wild and twisted tree tunnel |
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| Boardwalk nearing Steele Point |
Ultimately emerging ready to head up Steele point and down to the beach at Nielsen Park. Please note, the Nielsen Park, Shark Beach 360s are from 2019 before the long and drawn out, still ongoing replacement of the seawall. Hopefully things will be as good when the work is completed in 2025?
.jpg "View of Nielsen Park & Shark Beach (2019)") |
| Nielsen Park & Shark Beach (2019) |
Heritage Walk - Sydney Harbour National Park 360° virtual tour in 11 panoramas
If you have enjoyed these images you can see many more of my moving panoramas pictures from Sydney's Eastern Suburbs and further afield by following the white arrows in the in the picture above - and if you need 360° photographs for your next project please email or call, lets talk.
Kent Johnson, Sydney, Australia.
0433 796 863
.jpg "Detail of Erikas Crystal Baths, Hermitage Foreshore Track, Rose Bay, Sydney, Australia")
.jpg "looking up, Under the Canopy of a Port Jackson Fig on a Rock shelf, Hermitage Foreshore Walk, Rose Bay, Sydney, Australia")
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.jpg "A Melaleuca Tree Tunnel - Hermitage Foreshore Track, Vaucluse, Sydney")
.jpg "A Melaleuca Tree Tunnel - Hermitage Foreshore Track, Vaucluse, Sydney")
.jpg "View of Nielsen Park & Shark Beach (2019)")
.jpg "The Whispering Wall Seat - Nielsen Park, Vaucluse, Sydney, Australia")
