Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 1/2/2020
This weeks blog post is a walkthrough of last weeks walk in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan. Was only a short walk last week due to the high temperature. I left the gardens at 11:30 am and it was already 37 Deg C, later in the afternoon it topped out at 48 Deg C. so a little on the warm side, the birds were all feeling the heat and certainly didn't need me there chasing them out of any cool spot they may have found that I didn't notice.
First stop was to check if the Night-jar was still in residence looks like the Red-rump Parrots (Psepotus haematonotus) have regained their home again.
On the banks of the lake in the morning before everyone arrives and the temperature gets too hot the Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra) are all clustered on the edge of the lake. In the early morning, there's usually no wind or little wind so you get a better chance of a reflection. It helps to get down low with water birds.
This pair were staying on the island but keeping a close eye on the goings-on.
Just by walking a few steps and changing my angle you get a totally different light for the shot even thou the birds haven't moved. So always pays to walk around a little and explore the light.
The morning was still early when I walked through the woodland picnic area, a small group of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) had taken over the picnic tables but soon went to the trees.
These next two shots again show the bird in the exact same spot on the branch but a matter of getting a little lower to clean up the background.
In this shot, the Bird is in a clean background, always check the background and see if you can clean it up just by moving, makes it a lot more pleasing a shot. in this case, I just had to go about 300mm lower to get the clear patch in the trees behind the bird.
Up opposite the plant bank is a small dam and it often has water birds about this time a White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae) up in the tree, again a bit of walking around to try and get a clean shot, I couldn't clean up the background in this case, but did manage to get a clean uninterrupted shot of the bird without anything in the foreground in front of the bird. Not a great shot still but at least its a clean shot in front.
Back on the lake, an Australasian Grebe (Tachybaptus novahollandiae) was slowly cruising the lake.
A pair of Chestnut Teal (anas castanea) were also on the lake today, the bright red eye against the dark green head certainly shows up brightly.
Last stop on the edge of the lake before I left was to shoot a few shots of the Black-fronted Dotterels (Elseyornis melanops) these are usually pretty skittish so take a while to be able to get close to them, it usually works better if you wait and they slowly come to you, If you start to chase a bird then it will keep moving away and eventually get too far away from you so better to stay still and wait for them to come to you.
Due to the high temperatures today there was no mushrooms out, but when I go home I did find these growing in a pot plant on the back decking so bought them inside into the cool and took a few shots of these, lit with two off-camera lights and focus stacked and post-processed in lightroom and photoshop.
So that wraps up this week's shots out of the Australian Botanic Gardens plus a bonus shot from home.
With the new year starting now the first of my workshops in the gardens is now open for books via the garden's website, link here.
There are still a few places left for this Sunday 9th Feb. 2020 even in the rain.
https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Whats-On/Learn-from-the-Experts-Beginners-Photography
This one is aimed at beginners so someone that's just got a new camera or wants to learn about the effects of aperture, and depth of field, shutter speed how to freeze or blur motion etc then this would be a good start, March there will be an intermediate workshop, this year I'll also be running a mushroom photography workshop in Autumn and of cause, the usual bird photography workshops will be running, so keep an eye out for upcoming workshops I've also added a workshop tab on this site now so you can follow along there for upcoming event as well.
Thanks for dropping by my blog hope to have it back to a regular blog post again this year.
Glenn
Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 25/01/2020
This week's blog is again a walkthrough of the shots taken last weekend in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan. Off to an early start, last weekend arrived before the gates opened, So a quick walk along the fence line from outside the gardens and I spotted an Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)
While I was waiting for the Star of the week to put in its appearance there were still a few fungi about so I managed a few setups before the star arrived. This one with the usual set up Canon 60D on the ground making use of the articulated screen, two off-camera lights.
The highlight of the week was the return of the Australian Owlet-Nightjar, (Aegotheles crisratus) These are basically little fluff balls with eyes well this one is. It's occupying a luxury hollow that has two entrances and one with a balcony. the first shot shows it enjoying the view from the balcony over the gardens in the woodland area.
This next shot shows it at the lower hollow the two are connected, but it usually flies down to the lower hollow from the Balcony and crawls its way up tot eh top through the hollow from the bottom.
Like most hollows, they are rarely free and the Night-jar appears to have take up residence in a hollow previously occupied by a pair of Red-rumped Parrots. The Parrots want their home back. So there's a bit of a battle going on for possession of the hollow. So this next series shows just one of the mini battles, the female red-rump was above the hollow with its tail hanging over the hollow. The Night-jar latched on with its beak, much to the Red-rumps dismay. The red-rump temporarily relocated and the night-jar stood guard with its mouth ready for the next assault.
After the excitement as I left the area, I spotted another fungi to shoot, this time I used a small softbox on one of the speedlites.
Tried an extra step in the processing of this one with a bit of black and white processing to see how they look, Still think I prefer the colour. But not too unhappy with it.
This week it was the Fairy Martins (Petrochelidon ariel) young turn to be feed. So this series shows a sequence as the parent flys in feeding the young while staying airborne.
The Welcome swallows (hirundo neoxena) are always about this ones still a young un As its face is more brown than the usual orange.
Of late there's been a pair of Royal Spoonbills (Platalea regia) have been about in the gardens, this time they were in separate lakes.
The usual Australian Reed-warblers (Acrocephatalus australis) are still about in the reed beds this one found a moth to snack on.
The young Little Black Cormorants (Phalacrocorax sulcirostris) are pretty much full size now.
Up until the last few weeks, I've shot most of my birding images with the 7DmkII, but the last few weeks I've been using the 5Dmk4 for the birding shots. The main advantage to the 7dmkII was the frame rate of able to shot 10 frames per second and the crop factor makes a 600mm lens seem to be a 960mm lens, whereas the 5dmk4 has the better image quilty and higher megapixel sensor. So this week I took the next two shots with the two different bodies so see if when both are cropped to the same about which one holds up best. Both shots are taken with the same settings, Lens was mounted on the tripod. I've cropped both images in lightroom so the same image size the 5D image needed more cropping to get the same size image. The first image is from the Canon 5Dmk4.
Dusky Woodswally (Artamus cyanopterus)
Whereas this image is from the 7DmkII. There's not much between the two images
Back in the main carpark, a Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) was feasting on a flowering guntree.
The Little Eastern Yellow Robins (Eopsaltria australis)are in the gardens year-round, but always pose for a shot.
Back in the Main carpark and a Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala) was also in posing mode in amongst a Grevillea. These are native honey honeyeaters.
As I was driving out there was this small group of Wallaroos, On hot days like this one they lick they forearms where there are veins running which as the airflow hits the wet areas acts as evaporative air conditioning allowing them to cool down, ones using this technique in this shot.
Last shot of the day is of a little Black-fronted Dotterel (Elseyornis melanops) there are several pairs of these on the shores of the lakes in the gardens look for them on the mud flats they are tiny so easily missed.
So that wraps up this week's shots out of the Australian Botanic Gardens.
With the new year starting now the first of my workshops in the gardens is now open for books via the garden's website, link here.
There are still a few places left for this Sunday 9th Feb. 2020.
https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Whats-On/Learn-from-the-Experts-Beginners-Photography
This one is aimed at beginners so someone that's just got a new camera or wants to learn about the effects of aperture, and depth of field, shutter speed how to freeze or blur motion etc then this would be a good start, March there will be an intermediate workshop, this year I'll also be running a mushroom photography workshop in Autumn and of cause, the usual bird photography workshops will be running, so keep an eye out for upcoming workshops I've also added a workshop tab on this site now so you can follow along there for upcoming event as well.
Thanks for dropping by my blog hope to have it back to a regular blog post again this year.
Glenn
Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 18/01/2020
This weeks blog post will be another walkthrough of some of the shots I took last Saturday in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan, Southwest of Sydney.
This week I'm still using the 5Dmk4 with the Sigma lens for the bird shots, the fungi shots are the Canon 60D with the 100mm f2.8 L Macro.
This first shot is of a Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla) sitting in a tree high up beside where I stopped the car. The shots fully zoomed-in then heavily cropped, to heave as the image has started to break down, Just shows you can never have a long enough lens. This coming weekend I want to try the same setup and swape over the 5dmk4 and the 7dMkII on a couple of shots and compare the difference to see the high megapixels Vs the perceived extra reach and see which one give the better quality image for the same setup.
Next up I came across the Red-capped Robin (Petroica goodenovii) in the usual location near the bird hide its halfway through its moult to get its colour. This shot was also heavily cropped the image is just about to start to break down this is about as far as I can go with the cropping. I'll see how he's colour is this weekend, each week he's getting more so won't be long now before he's fully coloured up.
While shooting the Robin I noticed some Fungi growing after the rain so headed back tot he car to get my mushroom kit. (Camera backpack with the 60D and speedlites) Right beside the car, I found these all growing. My first Fungi shot for a while now so a little rusty for this shot there was a bit of wind as well and these are little delicate ones so they were moving about so not the ideal subject for focus stacking. Not really happy with this shot. So need to get back into practice with these looks like.
Ok this ones a little better, Still not quite there in this one. A brown gel used on the right side then white balanced back to give the blue light on the left, no blue lighting used for this effect.
This is the actual set up for the above shot. Also gives a sense of scale to the shot.
This one's a bit better, lightings much better focus is good, composition needs a little more work, but getting there.
Was a good day for Mushroom shots with the rain we got through the week This one's more like it. Happy with this one and the one above, just took a little bit to get back into it. Lighting on this one suits the shot just soft enough and not overdoing the back ground lighting.
Plus the setup shot for this one showing the actual lighting conditions for this shot.
There was some bird life about as usual, I spent a fair amount of the day shooting the mushrooms but did manage a few bird shots. This next series is of the Royal Spoonbills (Platalea regia)
This shot was again to heavily cropped so is breaking down, so something to be careful of the bird a Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis) was high up in the tree and flew off after about half an hour without coming any closer.
A few of the other birds about a Superb Fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus).
Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis)
The Cutie of the day a very young Dusky Moorhen (Gallinula tenebrosa)
Two Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) these almost look like they were painted, but no processing like that on this shot.
The last few mushroom shots for the day and their set up shots.
The Setup shots here really shot the scale of this tiny one.
This last shot is quite sad. After all the rain we had 47mm on Thursday 9mm Friday and 4mm while I was out Saturday this was the net effect, on of the dams in the gardens, not even a puddle at the bottom of the dam, just dry cracked mud. So as nice as the rain was, and the Mushrooms certain liked it we need a lot more.
So that wraps up this week's shots out of the Australian Botanic Gardens.
With the new year starting now the first of my workshops in the gardens is now open for books via the garden's website, link here
https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Whats-On/Learn-from-the-Experts-Beginners-Photography
This one is aimed at beginners so someone that's just got a new camera or wants to learn about the effects of aperture, and depth of field, shutter speed how to freeze or blur motion etc then this would be a good start, March there will be an intermediate workshop, this year I'll also be running a mushroom photography workshop in Autumn and of cause, the usual bird photography workshops will be running, so keep an eye out for upcoming workshops I've also added a workshop tab on this site now so you can follow along there for upcoming event as well.
Thanks for dropping by my blog hope to have it back to a regular blog post again this year.
Glenn
Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan 11/01/2020
Hopefully back to my normal blog posts again this year, starting off with a walk thought of some of the shots from last Saturday in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan, Southwest of Sydney.
The day wasn’t as smoky as it has been the last few days, the temperature was also cooler than the high thirties it’s been the few days before. So I thought I’d head out and see what I could see. With Canon Getting ready to announce their new flagship Camera body the Canon 1Dx MK III (since announced) I thought I’d swap camera bodies to see how I go with a full-frame body of the Canon 5dmk4 and the Sigma 150-600mm Sports lens, compared to what I normally shot for birding shots. The Canon 7dmkII. The frame rate is a lot slower so that meant I had to get the timing better than I’d normally have to do with the 7dmkII and its 10 frames a second burst rate. I was in the gardens from 8:20 am till just after 5:30 pm so a full day of shooting. All good fun.
On with some of the shots from the day.
The first shot here one of the Flowering Gum trees in the gardens I was only carrying my birding set up at this time so taken with a 150-600mm lens, I'd normally shoot a shot like this with my 100mm Macro or the 24-105mm, the 600mm certainly gives the creamy background to this shot due to the ratio of subject to camera and background to subject.
At the same place, I was shooting the flower above I notices this old stump, this was all shot with natural light, but I can see the potential for this with lighting so I'll revisit this one in the future with lights and maybe the odd gel, and see what I can do with this one. The texture in this little one with a bit of side lighting should come out interesting, Stay tunes in the coming weeks and we'll see if it works or not.
This ones a Rufous Whistler (Pachycephala rufiventris) I couldn't get in front of it and it didn't want to turn around so not a great shot on this one, the background is way to busy and not a clean shot of the front. I'll often take a few steps one way or another to try and clean up the background, but this one didn't stay long enough.
The next two shots are of a pair of Red-rumped Parrots as they came down to drink at the lake. The first shot I caught the water still running out of the beak, the second the male on the log was coming down to drink and was making an interesting reflection, could have been better if the water was smoother.
The last few weeks a pair of Black swans (Cygnus atratus) have made there home in the lake so I've a few shots of these over the last few weeks, still trying to get a better reflection shot of these. So I'll have to keep trying for this shot.
Next up still at the lake a small family of Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) are always around the lake this was a portrait of one of them that was happy to pose for me, again no the best of backgrounds so need to keep trying for this shot as well.
While I was shooting the swallows, a Wallaroo and Joey came along around the edge of the lake so I had a few shots of these, the Joey then decided it had had enough and to my surprise jumped into the pouch, it looked way too big to fit in there. This shot was taken as it had just jumped in and stuck its head out so one ear was caught on the pouch. After about three minutes of staring at me and not enough time for me to get the camera on the tripod they jumped off, so this was a handheld shot. The next shot shows they didn't go far.
Next up one of the more common birds in the Area a Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala) these are not afraid of people so you can get quite close to these, or they close to you. So plenty of detail in this shot.
While walking along the woodland walk in the gardens, one of the areas of natural bushland there are plenty of examples of Hollows in older trees being put to good use. These two shots show a pair of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita). The first one in the hollow the second on standing guard in a nearby tree watching over. The second shot has a decent clean background, though a few patches that are too bright. so almost there.
A shot of one the current flower beds, not overly happy with this shot, the ideas OK but not well pulled off in this shot so one to revisit and try again. MAy need a bit of focus stacking to get a decent depth of field on this shot maybe a bit lower as well to try and get some texture into the shot showing the undulations of the flower heads. So another shot that I need to work on.
A walk around the connections gardens soon had me with this little Eastern Yellow Robin (Eopsaltria australis) These are always great posers, and sit in trees or the sides of trees studying the ground before diving down for a quick meal. So these you can pretty much pick your spot with good backgrounds then wait (And wait) for the bird to land on the right balance. But the results are like this so worth the weight, I waited for about 3/4 of an hour just to get this shot.
A little Pied Cormorant (Microcarbo melanoleuos) in low flight over the lake, these usually do a few laps getting higher or lower depending on taking off or landing.
Next up and another hour spent sitting on the mudflats to get these shots of the Straw-necked Ibus (Threskiornis spinicollis) A family was taking up residence in the lake and its surrounds.
A pair of Black-winged Stilts (Himantopus himantopus) have made their home in the small dam up against Narellan rd and Saturday, with little wind about in that corner of the gardens on Saturday started to get some reflections happening there. Thou not still enough for mirror reflections.
I did manage to catch this one in flight as they changed sides of the lake.
So that wraps up this week's shots out of the Australian Botanic Gardens. I was happy with the results of the day so all good, happy with the image quality of the 5Dmk4 with the sigma 150-600, caught a few birds in flight so the focusing and frame rate wasn't too much of an issue compared with the 7D. The close-ups were certainly better quality with the higher megapixel count on the 5d.
With the new year starting now the first of my workshops in the gardens is now open for books via the garden's website, link here
https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Whats-On/Learn-from-the-Experts-Beginners-Photography
This one is aimed at beginners so someone that's just got a new camera or wants to learn about the effects of aperture, and depth of field, shutter speed how to freeze or blur motion etc then this would be a good start, March there will be an intermediate workshop, this year I'll also be running a mushroom photography workshop in Autumn and of cause, the usual bird photography workshops will be running, so keep an eye out for upcoming workshops I've also added a workshop tab on this site now so you can follow along there for upcoming event as well.
Thanks for dropping by my blog hope to have it back to a regular blog post again this year.
Glenn
My Top ten images of 2018
The start of the new year is time to review my images again from last year and again select my top ten images of the year. Seems simple enough until you try and narrow down your images to only ten. I've now done this for a few years now and each year I can see how my Photography has progressed and see the way my style varies each year taking me on a direction I have no idea where will end. The Idea for this came from listening to Martin Bailey's photography podcast and each year Martin running through how he obtains his top ten and the difficulty it is in getting down to the final ten. https://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/2019/01/06/yearly-top-ten-selection-process-2018-podcast-645/
I can fully agree with that the final 20 images is really hard to get down to a final ten, but certainly well worth will, I've done this now for several years and each year I learn from this exercise as it shows you how to critic your own images. When someone else critics your images at times you don't always agree with them but when you critic your images to this level you certainly see your own faults.
So looking at the year I actually took fewer images this year than last, and didn't do much travel this year so most of the shots were close to home, in fact, two are in my home this year. This year also saw me participate in Canons Light Awards live photography events more on that later.
So let's get on with the review of the review.
First up is an image very early in the year, and the first of two mushroom shots in the top ten. These like most of my mushroom shots were taken in normal daylight, underexposed and lite with two off camera speedlites. Really happy with how this one turned out and taken early in the year set a high benchmark for the rest of the year. Most people are surprised when they see these especially when they see me taking a shot, and they realise that these are not taken at night.
Next shot the second Mushroom shot in my top ten was taken down in the Robertson rainforest. a small nature reserve just off the main road of Robertson, this one was shot during an outing of the local Bird facebook group Macarthur birds https://www.facebook.com/groups/1581964245377794/
an active and very friendly group of Bird enthusiasts with quite a few interested in photography. This was an example as described above where a few of the group actually saw me take the shot and were amazed at the final image. I've even got a few shots taken of me taking this image by the group. This image became my favorite Mushroom image of the year.
Throughout the year I found myself at a few Canon events. Canon released the M50 Mirrorless camera earlier in the year, and the local Camera shop Macarthur Camera house. https://www.facebook.com/macarthurcamerahouse/
invited me and a few other local Photographers to the release of the camera with Canon, So I got to shot the camera for a few hours at an Island in Sydney Harbour, before the camera was officially released. The event was held on Cockatoo Island an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour which happened to be where I had my first job as an apprentice in the 1980's when it was a working dockyard. The Dockyard was closed down not long afterwards, but open long enough for me to complete my Apprenticeship. We got to play with the Canon M50 for a few hours then hand them back, I had also bought my own cameras along so this shot was taken with my 5dMk4 taken of one of the tunnels that cut thought the island. The Island was a Naval dockyard for many years and also has some of the early convict structures of Sydney’s early settlement. This is one of my few shots I’ve played with Black and white, I tent to use colour more times than not but seem to be drawn to black and white when shooting older buildings. Happy with how this one processed.
This next shot was taken again close to home in the local Botanical Gardens, The Australian Botanical Gardens at Mount Annan, https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au about ten minute’s drive from my home. The last few years I’ve been trying to capture an image of every known bird in the gardens, the gardens have a bird list of 185 known birds to visit the gardens so far I’m up to 144, so still, a few to capture yet. The gardens also approached me a couple of years ago asking if I was willing to run some photography workshops for them, not having every ran a photography workshop before at the time I thought about it but a few months prior I actually attended a workshop by one of Australia’s living icons of Photography Steve Parish, https://www.steveparish-natureconnect.com.au during the workshop at the end he told me my next step in my photography journey was to run a workshop or two rather than attend them, so taking his advice I agreed to the gardens offer, since then I’ve run workshops for the last few years for them now, covering from Beginners workshops to Bird photography workshops and even some Children workshops when I encourage children to be into photography, they usually don’t need too much encouragement. The gardens are a great place for photography. This shot is of a White-necked Heron in one of the many lakes within the gardens.
During the year Sydney has a festival of lights each year called Vivid where a lot of Sydney’s famous landmarks are light up with various lights and light painting along with no shortage of sculptures. and art installations, A great opportunity for photography however also very popular so its Sydney at it’s busiest, so if you don’t like crowd and I really mean high-density crowds it’s not the place for you, but certainly worth a visit if you have never been before. https://www.vividsydney.com. The local Camera shop again the Macarthur Camera house in conjunction with Canon Australia ran a photo walk during vivid with everyone on the walk encouraged to submit their best image with the winner winning a ticket the NSW Canon light awards event. I submitted an image which didn’t make the top ten cut this year, but was in the top 20, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjj8jXjHyhP/The camera shop judged this the winning shot for the night so I got the ticket to the light awards, which I probably wouldn’t have gone to otherwise. The light awards are a Canon even over two days the first half of the first day is a master class where you select a particular field of photography and are given a master class along with about 100 other photographers, in this case, I could have picked Landscape, Lighting Travel photography or Portraiture, I decided since I was pretty much self-taught in lighting, other than podcasts, to give that a go. We were then given a brief to shot an image using conditional lighting of an everyday object where each light source had to have a reason to be there as part of the storytelling. We had 24 hours to get the shot process it and get back to the venue for the judging. There were about 400 photographers at the Sydney even. When we returned we were again split up into our separate groups and the images were all displayed on a full-size cinema screen (The event was held in a cinema complex) and critiqued once by one, it was worth it for that process alone, seeing how the Canon Master analysed each image its strengths and weaknesses. It turned out my image was selected the best in the lighting category, the other three groups were then bought into our Cinema and again all the images were shown this time all the images form all the groups The four Canon masters then had to argue in front of us why their image from their group was the best image of the four groups images. Nerve racking time. They quickly narrowed it down to two images and slowly went towards the landscape image, fortunately for my the Master of the lighting class was of strong mind and argued a final argument for my image and the other judges came back to my image. Which meant I won the NSW Canon light awards, a Big Wow moment for me. For that, I got $1000 voucher for the local Camera shop which went towards inks for my Pro1000 printer. I also won a trip to a mystery location yet to be announced for the years Grand final light awards with three other photography’s from three other states. The image below was the final image I submitted for the NSW entry, Nine sperate lights were used in this shot one a Speedlite the rest torches, Two iPhones, pretty much every light source I could find in the house. Big thanks to https://linnetfoto.com/ for the Masterclass and pressing for my image.
This next shot was taken in the gardens and is a Restless Flycatcher, this one was just hovering on the lookout for insects, I had a series of these but this one he just looked back at me making the image. He wasn't at all afraid and I managed to get within a few meters of him. Using a 600mm lens at that range certainly helps to blow out the background. Looking at the leading edge of the near wing this image to me almost appears 3D at times. A few of this year's images seem to have a 3D feel to them including some that didn't make the cut. Shot in the Australian Botanic Gardens, These are in the outer southwest of Sydney and there are many people who don't know of these yet they are the largest Botanic Gardens in the southern hemisphere.
Next up and possibly my favorite from the year, though really hard to call that, Is this set of Waratahs. The Waratah is the State Floral emblem of the State of New South Wales. These were again taken in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan, Taken in normal daylight but again using an off-camera speed lite, this time only one, but enough light to give shape and depth to the image, really happy with how this one turned out. Again I've done some additional processing on the leaves in this image which I feel really made the image, compared to the original unedited image. The trick is to not overdo it.
Only three more images left and next up is a Nankeen Kestrel, again shot in the Australian Botanic Gardens. The gardens have an amazing collection of bird life as mentioned above and there's always something to see and capture. the Kestrels hunt on the grasslands in the gardens in a couple of areas and in this case the wind was blowing a bit so this one was just sort of in stationary glide mode. I was able to predict where it was going to be and walked up the hill, Careful of my footing to avoid any Brown snakes, not something you want to be standing on, and just waited for the right moment again the 7d MkII and the Sigma 150 to 600mm Lens, did a great job of this shot, with the bird being correctly exposed the sky blew out but for images like this it doesn't worry me that the sky has blown out, the details the feathers.
As mentioned earlier By winning the State Canon Light awards I won a mystery trip with Canon for the grand final. A date was confirmed and I was told to be at Sydney domestic Airport early in the morning, which meant an early start for the day as an hour train ride to the station, where I was meet by Canon Ambassador Jenn Copper who gave me an envelope which revealed the location of the 24 hour challenge. So began a full on exciting weekend of photography starting with a few hour plane flight to tropical Cairns, one of the few parts of Australia I hadn’t been to. We arrived and picked up a hire car and drove to the local Hotel which was to be the base for the event we were given our brief and then 24 hours to have four shots taken, processed, printed and mounted. No pressure of cause, oh the final catch, we weren’t to take our own toys but everything was to be provided, We were given the new Canon EOS R with three lenses for the 24 hours so a new camera to get use to as well, everyone was on the same level there no one had used one so something to add to the mix. We were buddied up with a Canon Ambassador for the 24 hours to make sure we didn’t do anything dangerous i.e. get too close to a cliff etc to get a shot. Make sure we didn’t get fatigued driving to far etc. It was a great weekend here’s a short Video Canon prepared afterwards showing what the event was like with four of use out and about.
What the video didn’t show was the temperate of 41 deg. Centigrade and humidity of 70% Great weather to be out rushing about. None of us were use to those temperatures and humidity combined. The 41 Deg wasn’t a problem coming from Sydney we’ve just had several days of 44 Deg here. But the 70% humidity was something else, something I hadn’t experiences since I was last at Darwin 30 years ago. The event was fantastic, I didn’t win this time but received great feedback from my images, I had four very strong images I thought but they were a bit weak on meeting the brief, but I was happy with what I had and within the 24 hours was the best I could come up with so I was happy with what I submitted. The image below was my best from the 24 hours. One of the things that was missing from the supplied toys was a speedlite, but I made use of a headlamp to light this shot, I lit three of my four shots and all up I was happy with what I submitted.
The final image is a simple image and maybe because its still so fresh in my mind I may have snuck in to the top ten, may have been the emotional attachmentthe image as well, as I was created Just in time for Christmas and became a framed print for my Nice who has received word that she has a full time teaching position for this year her first full year with her own class. So what better than an apple for the teacher. For this shot I set the apple on an ipad, which has a dark reflective surface, gave the apple a quick spray or water first then set up a pair of speedlites and took a series of shots and focus stacked the image, same as I would a mushroom shot. Surprising how many apples I had to go through to get one free of dents and blemishes, I’m sure the people in the fruit shop were thinking I was being overly fussy selecting an apple just to eat, as I rejected quite a few before I selected this one, I actually picked a few just in case but each was carefully selected examining to make sure there was no dents or distortions on the surfaces, scratches or other marks.
So thats the end of my top ten images for 2018, Still think I'm heading in the right direction with improvements over the previous years.
https://glennsmithphotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2018/1/my-top-ten-shots-of-2017
https://glennsmithphotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2017/1/my-top-ten-shots-of-2016
https://glennsmithphotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2016/1/2015-top-ten-shots---year-in-review
https://glennsmithphotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2015/1/2014-top-ten-shots---year-in-review
Another year where I can see improvement and proves you don't always hve to travel far from home for your shots, hopefully this year I'll find a landscape or two shot in the mix, this year was definately short of landscapes there were a could in the top 50 images but were cut out as the list got narrowed down.
Each year as I do this exercise I certainly find value in it and can see how it adds in my self improvement as when I take shots I think back to the reviews adn what images were rejected and why, and hopefully I self correct more often before hitting that shutter button.
We'll see what this year brings, I've already got a few images for the year so far so who knows where this year will take me. Always fun to see.
Thanks for dropping by my blog, hopefully this year it will be a bit more regular again.
Glenn.