Faded beauty

I was tidying up in the garden today when I realised that some of the plants, although past their prime, were still very eye catching. Since most people do not bother to admire a flower except when it is perfect I decided to share the things that caught my attention this afternoon.

First the red Eucalyptus tree that I am hoping will grow to be a massive and brilliant specimen tree - but at present is only a couple of pretty branches that reach up about two metres. The fluffy flowers have about finished and the cups that hold the growing seed are left. They create a different sort of display which is attractive.

The stunning heads of blue from the many Agapanthus that were clumped together in the front garden have lost their petals and now are green bunches of seed pods. Most of these I have already cut off and put on the compost heap but a few have been left to provide a sculptural interest in the garden.

Replacing the Agapanthus and Eucalyptus blue and red are many heads of a very tall and severely dangerous (lots of hooked spikes along the sides of the long leaves) Bromiliad. The flowers that come from each of those bulbous tips are quite uninspiring but the huge heads that you see here stay looking like this for weeks and most people who come to visit stop and admire them. So even though the plant is past its prime it is still very attractive.

The pollen producing body of the male cycad has dried out and the seeds have been dispersed but this pendulous shape will stay like this for several weeks before breaking up and needs to be cut away. Again this is the end of the plant's usefulness and yet I will keep it where it is because I like it!

Finally the seed pods that hang from one of the Cassia trees. Actually the Cassia are a real pest - they pop up in the lawns everywhere and have to be mown down or pulled out or we would soon have a forest of them. But the seed pods have their own beauty - the flowers are pretty - like lots of yellow buttercups - but the seed pods with their fluffy soft seed coverings now adorn the trees and while they look attractive I can visualise all those seeds floating in the wind and landing all over the back and front gardens!

For those of you who are interested to know how I took these pictures and managed to get such a soft background, I used the 55-300mm lens at full zoom. I also set the Aperture to a small "F" stop to ensure a narrow depth of field. Since many of you prefer to use a compact camera - just use the zoom to get close and throw the background out of focus.
Notice how I managed to get something dark behind the subject? This helps to push the subject to the foreground and grab the viewers attention. A bright sky background or a house or fence even, would take that attention to the background. It takes a bit of practice but if you can see what is behind the subject before you take your shot you will get a much better photograph - sometimes moving a few inches to one side improves the way your shot will look.
AJ

Night flowering tree

After spending the entire day working in the kitchen, by evening I was feeling pretty warm so I took my cup of tea outside onto the veranda and sat down in the cool to enjoy it. The light was about gone from the sky but it wasn't completely dark and I was able to see that the tree the lorikeets fly into during the day was covered with white flowers. I was aware that the flowers only came out in the evening but I had not been outside to see it happening.

2 seconds      F/8     ISO 800

The tree was decorated with white flowers  from top to toe. There must be very little nectar in the flowers because they do not attract the fruit bats - fruit bats are night nectar and fruit eaters. And the honey eaters and lorikeets are not interested in flying around in the dark, so birds do not pollinate these flowers. So there must be insects that do that work.
It seems a shame that such attractive flowers should bloom only at night and fall to the ground before daylight.

                                                              3 seconds       F/8     ISO 800
I am surprised that these pictures came out as well as they did because it was too dark to focus - so focus was pure guesswork! AND there was a slight breeze blowing so the two and three seconds I took to take each photograph meant that the tree and flowers had to be completely still - or completely blurred!
My last image shows that some of the flowers have fallen off already - they really are short lived.

                                                                   3 seconds       F/8     ISO 800
I should look up and find out what this tree is. The birds brought it into my garden and I transplanted it in the grove of trees just across from the veranda. Until now I had no need to know its name!
Now that I have had my little break I had better get myself back into the kitchen and tidy up!
AJ

Tying the knot

Today I used the camera even though I was a guest. A young friend had invited me to her wedding ceremony and I did warn her that I was so attached to my camera that it went everywhere with me! The shots I managed to take haven't turned out too badly - the sky was rather white and ultra difficult because of its glaryness  (is there such a word?) but since I take all my photos in RAW I am able to rescue over bright bits (sometimes not so well if there is too much over exposure). I have not had to throw any of my shots away so I guess you can say I managed!
The young bride and groom had a photographer for the day - a stony faced young woman who never smiled once all afternoon. She also did not take one shot from any other height than eye level. That surprised me. It is so easy to vary shots by holding the camera high or low or even by standing on a small platform to look down. She was less than half my age and I never saw her bend down once.
I was not in competition with the photographer. I kept well out of the way and just had fun with the camera - zipping in to sit on one of the front seats to get a prime position! The ducking back out to the side to get the guests watching.
This is one of the shots from the day.

I will put all the pictures into an album so they can be shared by the newly weds with their guests - and I can share them with you! I do not sell my pictures, I just take them because I enjoy taking them.
AJ

Gifts from the clouds

After a few really hot days "something" had to give - and it was both the temperature and the dry that "gave". For absolutely months now my patient husband has been watering my garden morning and night. We have had precious little rainfall since June - just a couple of days when we had showers. That changed this morning. I had just cleared up the driveway after covering it with a thick layer of grass and weeds, pulled out of my gardens when I chanced to look up and noticed the black sky creeping up. Cleaning up was put into high gear and the garden tools stored back in the garage by the time the first rumble of thunder happened. By the time I had showered and changed the rain was pelting down.

1/160sec   F/4.2    ISO 200

I suddenly remembered my son's washing on the line and raced out to rescue it and put it in the clothes dryer - the fine spray from the impact of the rain on the ground had saturated everything! I came upstairs and spotted our friendly lorikeet looking very bedraggled on the cage over the food dished - the dishes were all filled with rainwater so held nothing of interest for her.

1/60sec      F 4.2   ISO 200

I took pity and put a small dish of raw sugar on the table - about half a teaspoon full - and looked out later to see the bird and her mate, tucking in with ecstasy written all over them!
A look out the back door and I had to grab the camera again, our rainwater tank was full and running over.

1/20 sec   F 5.6   ISO 200

Not only was the rainwater tank running over but the roof guttering was running over too.

1/20 sec   F 5.6   ISO 200

One thing I have forbidden my nearly 72 year old husband to do is to get up on the roof to clear the gutters! We have a two storey house and that is a long way to fall.
So we have had enough rain in one hour to fill our water tank, top up the swimming pool and wash the dirt and remaining weeds off the drive. We have also had enough rain (33mm in one hour) to ensure that we shall have green grass for Christmas - and lots of noise from mowers on Boxing Day! Its "all good" as my son is want to say!
AJ

White on the top

The past few days have been "stinking hot" with very high humidity so when I came across the pictures from my holiday in New Zealand I felt so much cooler! My visit was in Autumn and the cold had not yet descended to road level - a perfect time for travel in that country. The trees are in their colourful glory and you can explore without having to be weighted down by heavy clothing.
It was the following two photographs that brought my temperature down.

As we drove along we could see that the snow was just starting to settle on the top of the alps. This is in the Mount Cook range of mountain tops but I am afraid that I have no idea of the names of the peaks

I have a feeling that the peak shown in this second picture is that of Mount Cook. To see the pictures more clearly click on one and it will open in a new page.
The South Island of New Zealand is a photographer's paradise, it is filled with lakes, rives, mountains and glorious scenery, the coastline is stunning and there is so much variety in landscape in such a small (half of a) country.
I definitely feel a lot cooler!
AJ

Lighting the tree

Yesterday I was given a rather unusual present - well it wasn't really for me, it was for the Christmas tree.
Chinese technology is so much fun and so inexpensive! This gadget that is giving me so much pleasure is a little electronic box that directs a laser light show on to hard surfaces. The colours thrown are the colours of Christmas - red, green and yellow so we set it up to hit the Christmas tree. This is how it looks

camera details       3sec        f/7.1      ISO 200       26mm

Once I had started to use the camera I wanted more pictures so I moved in a little closer. With a slow shutter speed I expected to get a lot of blur from the moving lights so I was a little surprised at how sharp they turned out.

camera details       1.6 sec       f/7.1      ISO 200       55mm

A big fad at the moment is to capture "bokeh". Bokeh is the name given to the radically out of focus effect on lights. This effect is best when there is something in the foreground that is in focus and the pattern of lights are behind.

camera details       2 sec       f/7.1      ISO 200       50mm

And one more bokeh shot of the lights

camera details       2 sec       f/7.1      ISO 200       55mm

The laser light cannot be left on all day, the recommendation is to turn the thing off after a couple of hours to allow it to cool down. So most of the time we shall be illuminating the tree with the regular tree lights and when we have visitors we shall turn on the special effects!
AJ

Back to sharing and teaching

At long last I have returned to my blogspot to write and share some of my pictures and experiences with anyone who cares to take a look. For the past month I have been posting pictures on a daily basis to Google+ which is an open networking/social media site. Although I take photographs of many different things I chose to share birds and landscapes. All well and good - the Google+ interface allowed the photographs to be viewed in good quality and I was uploading mine at 2000 pixels on the largest side so they did look good in spite of the 72 dpi resolution! However I have chosen to stop this daily dabble and return to my blog page - because I like to write. Reactions in Google+ are two words long, usually and there are no questions or reactions to anything that is written so VERY frustrating.
I know, there are no questions or reactions to anything written in these pages either - but at least I can enjoy the presentation myself - and look back on earlier postings and share the stories with my email friends. I do hear about my postings via email and that way I can interact about the topic that was covered or give additional information to anyone who has not quite understood a tutorial.
I will now try and add something to these pages each day. It may be long it could be very short, it may be about something done ages ago or it may be a travel diary as I explore the world. This is my page and I will be as inconsistent as I am in real life!

Barking owl - Ninox connivens

One thing I will attempt to avoid is personal stuff! Breathe easy! You will not see much of the family here - but you may glimpse my husband occasionally since he always accompanies me on my trips. He sometimes gets in the way of the camera!!!
On a recent visit to Currumbin Sanctuary on the Gold Coast of Australia, I took along my Nikon D90 and had the sense to take the 55-300mm lens along as well as the standard 18-50mm, so I was able to use the full zoom (300mm) to isolate the birds from their backgrounds. You can tell from the patterning in the background to the Barking Owl that this is a captive bird - what you cannot tell is that heavy mesh was between the camera lens and the bird. The spaces between the wires was about 3cms so it was not possible to thread the lens through the gaps - also there was a no-go space between the cage and the footpath. That is why manual focus had to be used, if I had used automatic focus this would be a photograph of the wire with a dark shape behind it. Deliberately focusing on the birds made the near wires evaporate and the narrow depth of field I had chosen made sure that the wires in the background were not so visible either.
If you are using a compact camera that has a good zoom on it, you too would be able to do this - but you will need to check in your camera manual on how to manipulate the focus. If you are using a tripod (highly recommended for this sort of shot) you will have time to tweak the focus. A bird, such as an owl, keeps quite still for a long period of time. You just have to wait for the eyes to open!
AJ