One of the joys of photography is watching the landscape as it transforms through the hour before and after sunset or sunrise. The sequence of photographs here were taken either side of the sun setting at Cape Woolamai in Victoria’s southern coast. The first image has a soft golden light consistent with the “golden hour”. When the sun reaches the horizon, the light is intense and the shadows cooler. Right at sunset, the light’s temperature has warmed further, bathing the landscape in orange and red hues. And once down, all that is left is the deepening blue of the twilight sky reflected in the ocean and the darkening rocks, with only the faintest hint of the sun (now below the horizon) remaining.

All these images were taken using a neutral density and a polarising filter, with exposure times close to or at 30 seconds. The use of long exposure is a technique I enjoy, because it simplifies the scene and creates a sense of tranquility that matches how I feel, even when I’m watching a surging ocean. In this case, the waves were three or more meters high - enough to shatter over the tops of the rock formations you can see here, which reach two or three stories above the ground.