This week’s blog post is again a walkthrough of this shots taken last Saturday in the Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan. 

This first shot is of a pair of Galahs (Eolophus roseicapilla) doing a spot of feather maintenance. These were taken fairly high up so image quality isn't the best, There are a few this week that aren’t the best for various reasons, in this case to heavily cropped in. 

I did manage to find some mushrooms for the week as usual this little group were only around 15 mm high so quite small, but made a great shot with the grouping, turns out that my batteries were a little on the flat side this week for the flashes so only had one working for these shots, so missed the usually back lighting / Rim lighting I try and get, but still happy with this one, I did use the piece of aluminium foil to act a s a fill reflector to give a bit of the two light effect.

This next two images is the same image as above but after playing a bit with it in Topaz Impressions, Some of these come out OK others less so these two are in the less so category. But each has their own flavour to them. 

This next one is another Mushroom this time around the plant bank in the grass beside the main tunnel to get to the entrance.  Again for this one only one of the Flashes had power but no excuse not that happy with this one. This one has some grass over the mushroom that I missed getting out of the way and I couldn't manage to get the bottom of the image clean, so a messy shot.

​ So this one was a good candidate for Topaz and this one turned out a little better with the colours. 

​From there I want up to the Lakes in the gardens and there was quite a few Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) were skimming across the lake, quite a few decent clear shots of these nicely frozen. These Birds are so small so all these shots are cropped quite heavily so won’t make for good blow-up prints and are starting to suffer a little form the crop. But good practice at panning birds in flight, If I can get these ones darting around it will give be a better chance at getting others latter on so always good to practice. 

A the same time this Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata) flew across the lake and I managed a couple of shots as it came across. By the time I noticed it and locked focus it had past would be better catching it coming towards me, so one to watch out for next time.

As the Afternoon got on a lot of the gardens was in shade so light was starting to go and in this one had to up the ISO these ones are also pretty timid so couldn't get to close so this ones cropped in so the Background on this ones starting to turn to mush here so not a great shot, need to be either closer of better light, this ones of an Eastern Rosella (Platycercus eximius) coming down for the final feed of the afternoon in the grass beside the lake.

Managed to find some sunlight and this one a much better quality image lower ISO and better lighting plus not so timid so I could get much closer to this Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala) Little over blown in the highlights but very harsh lighting here. Some days the light doesn’t play ball.

While the light was out there was a few insects in the daisies so had a bit of a quick go at some Macro work on the insect, again nothing to flash here not overly excited about these two, but so something else for me to practice with in the coming weeks looks like. I do like the striped eye of the first one.  

Last shot for the day was this little Rose Robin (Petroica rosea) Found this one twice in this location now so I know where to hunt this one down now just need to be there in better light, again low light so high ISO and a fair distance again, Be good to get a clean shot up closer and lower ISO, something to work on, so a bit to work on in the coming weeks looks like.

So that's it for this week’s shots from my walk in the Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan. Some OK shots some that need more work and some over the top Topaz work that needs to be toned back a bit, but still learning this new tool so in the coming weeks this should improve, I hope. Stay tuned and follow the journey on that one. 

Thanks for dropping by my blog, back next week with more.

Glenn.