Hail Mary

For me, this shot was an absolute Hail-Mary.

I was on the Gold Coast for a sporting event, but as always, I take my camera with me in hope of doing some photography. Opportunities were extremely limited, and I have little to no knowledge of the area. Armed with Google Maps and only a couple of hours up my sleeve, I randomly selected 2 coastal spots to take photos of the Surfers Paradise city skyline, the second of which was Currumbin Rock. I did take some telephoto shot of the city, but I thought I'd have a crack at getting a photo of the rock before I left. Despite being only an hour after sunset, it was extremely dark, the rock barely visible to the naked eye. Even worse through the camera lens. All I could see was a black screen, even at wide open aperture and ISO set to the max. I took a stab in the dark at the focal range, set the aperture really small and took 4 x 135sec exposures. The first was very nearly in focus, so I tweaked the focus manually a few times, each one better than the last. This was the final result. Not perfectly in focus, but with a plane to catch and limited visibility, the result is much better than expected.

Done