Been a few warm days out this way high 30s to 40 Deg C. So a little on the warm side so this weekend I headed out early to the gardens, got there about 2 minutes before the gates opened so had to wait a short while. then drove in and stopped at the first lake, where this small Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyria) was walking around the grassed bank with its parent. The feet on these little birds is way to of proportion till they grow up. 

On the other side of the road is a large grass area with tall grass, that has a fair population of Australian reed-Warblers (Acocephalus australis) you can hear these well be fore you see them and this shot was the best tI managed and shot through the grass so not a clean shot, shall have to try again for these next time. 

Walking towards the stolen generation memorial within the woodland area of the gardens there are numous rabbits about being a bit earlier than usual I caught this one on the main path. Not good for the gardens these. 

The warmer weather has bought all the reptile out of hiding as well this smallish skink was on one of the small boardwalk areas along the path. 

The Superb Fairy-wrens are always hopping about in the woodland area, so you can usually manage a shot or two of these most days though they don't like you getting to close so most are like this one a little to far away for a really nice shot. 

Like wise the Eastern Yellow Robins (Eopsaltria australis) are also always scouting around for a feed on the forest floor. 

By now the temperate was starting to warm up a bit so I headed off to the Wollemi pine walk of discovery area of the gardens where its well sheltered and usually well watered so cooler also a good place to find mushrooms and even with the higher temperates this week I managed to find these two. I set up to take a few shots only to find one of the speedlites had flat batteries, I changed them out with a spare set but again they were on on the flat side so had to make do with one light and the piece of foil I care as a small reflector. Still happy wiht both these shots. Some behind the scenes shots follow these two in anyone is interested in how I go about the set up for these. From these shots you get a good idea of the actual lighting conditions the shots are taken in. Most of these I under expose the shot and then use the flash to add in the light where I want it and at the power I want, either by adjusting the flash power up or down or by moving the flash closer or further back from the little mushrooms.  

The last shot here shows the flash setting sI used for this shot as you can see the flash power is dialled right down to a little over 1/16th power. The soft box also cuts down some of the power as well so not that much flash is required to light these up. I suavely have a shutter speed of around 1/200 of a second and then adjust the aperture to get the required exposure, I'll then take multiple shots with slight change in focus each time to get a series of shots to enable focus stacking of the shots in photoshop when I get back home. This is the case with the two shots about both were photo stacked in photoshop. 

Well thats it for this weeks shots hope its helpful going behind the scenes of some of these shots. lots of rain here this week now so hopefully there little mushrooms will be popping up all over the gardens over the christmas break here so hopefully plenty to practice with here. 

Till next week, thanks for dropping by. 

Glenn.