Woomera Sunsets

I have spent quite some time sorting though my photos and converting them from RAW to jpegs and adjusting the lighting on a few of them. Not one has needed any colour adjustment which is pleasing. I am still “raving” about my super Nikon D90! So far it hasn't let me down.

You may remember that I showed only one of the sunset shots that I took at Woomera. That night there were no obstructions to spoil a magnificent sky.

I actually took twelve shots and every one of those is a “keeper” but I am showing you a small selection to show how the sky changed during the 15 minutes I was taking photographs.

f/5  1/1600 ISO 500  32mm

The very first shot is from just outside the fence of the caravan park and you can see the road and the power lines that I had to walk past to get my unobstructed view of the majesty of the evening.

f/18  1/640  ISO 500  55mm

f/7.1  1/640   ISO 500   33mm 

f/5.3  1/400  ISo 500  48mm

f/5.6  1/400 ISO 500  55mm

AJ

Shapes and form

I have been spending a little time tidying up the photos that were taken on my recent trip to Coober Pedy and places in-between and today was working on some taken in and around Broken Hill. Broken Hill is in New South Wales and rushed into life when a boundary rider discovered that a broken hill was made up of the ore that contains silver. That broken hill has been mined into oblivion but it gave its name to the town that grew because of the minerals it contained.

Having seen a video made by a friend of a rather special garden that had been created in the desert that is where our travels took us. Within this "Living Desert" area is a hill on which stand some huge carved rocks. There is quite a story behind the symposium of the carvings but I was more interested in the way these rocky shapes fitted into the landscape than in why and how they came to be here!

When I take my photos I am not merely taking a record of what I see, I try to create an image that I feel is balanced and tells some sort of "story".
Composition is not always with the memory of the photographic "rules" and yet my main subject does seem to fall in that golden rule of thirds.

f/18 1/80 ISO 800   24mm

When these photos were taken it was starting to rain - in fact a few of my shot have a rain drop blurring the picture - so determined was I to get what I wanted I was prepared to defy the elements. Just as well really because the next day we could not return to the sculptures because the road was closed - the rain had made the track impassible.

f/7.1  1/125  ISO 800  35mm

This second shot is not of a sculpture but of some of the rocks that had been delivered when the symposium was taking place. They may have been arranged or they may have been dropped from a tip truck and landed in the fashion - but I found the stones very ornamental and the light and shadow (even though there was no sun and therefore no shadows) very artistic. I loved the colour of the rocks and the way they contrasted so acutely with the landscape beyond.
My next sculpture also fits into the golden rule. The shot of the random rocks were more centred but still make a balance picture - maybe it is the leaning rock on the left side that has an anchoring effect.

f/10  1/125  ISO 800  26mm

This photo has the weight on the right side. I tend to use the "lean" of the main subject to direct me where to position it in the picture. If I had this sculpture positioned on the left of the picture it would look as if it was trying to get out of the frame.
Wanting to experiment a little I crouched down for the next shot.

f/10   1/125   ISO 800  48mm

The desert does not look like a desert at all and I wanted to use some of this unusual growth and colour and throw the shapes into the background without removing them. The plants that are around the sculptures are natives of this area but they have been deliberately planted here to showcase the native plants of the Broken Hill area. You will notice with the above picture that although the focus is on the plants that thought has been given to the placement of the sculptures behind. The shot would look rather bland if those stone pillars were centred.
Another thing you will notice is that the ISO is very high for these photographs. It is only with Photoshop tweaking that they are as bright as they are! It was really dark when we were up on this hill and I needed to compensate for that dullness so that I was able to get a wide depth of field for some of my shots. Without the high ISO none of that desert in the background would have been visible in the first three shots because with a low ISO my aperture would have been so open that only part of the sculpture would have been in focus.
I hope you find my ramblings of interest.
AJ



Hallow'een flyers

I thought it was rather apt on this day that in the UK we used to imagine witches flying through the night sky to some magical place where they would make spells (I am not sure if this is typical of people in the UK but in our household it was!) that I would show you a little video of some very spooky individuals.
These are not blood suckers and they are not magical in any way. These are the fruit bats of the Gold Coast. Often known as Flying Foxes these fruit eating flying mammals can strip a mango tree of ripe fruit in one night and make a mess of most of the almost ripe fruit so they are not exactly welcomed in the home garden nor in the orchards.
Unfortunately for the commercial fruit growers the flying foxes are protected and cannot be shot or trapped or hurt in any way. It is as if the Government values the existance of this pest over the existance of the people who rely on the farmer's produce! One inventive person found that the fruit bats hate the sound of bagpipes and played recorded pipe music through the night - much to the delight of his in-earshot neighbours!
Since returning home from our trip I have noticed that the fruit bats have taken to flying over our home on their way to their feeding grounds. I set the camera up on the back veranda and watched them as long as there was light to see. I took 15 minutes of non stop fly-past and the camera stopped long before the bats stopped flying over.
Here is a little of what I saw.

There is also quite a lot of sound in the early evening as the corella's make a fuss about where to go for the night. The bats are silent as they fly over, they make their noises once they are in the fruit trees. Cicada beetle are the noise of summer - which is fast approaching and the sound of the cars as people hurry home from work.
There is another sound that can be heard. I am not sure if it is someone with a "bird gun" that fires at regular intervals in an attempt to keep the flying foxes away or if it is someone actually taking pot shots.
Enjoy the flying foxes and the evening sounds!
AJ

Birdsound

I was wondering how to share the sound of the bellbirds when I hit on the idea of combining the recording with the video I took of the bower birds. I have replaced our comments about the bird's behaviour with the recording I made of the bellbirds.

The camera I used is a mini DV (tape) camera that shoots in 4:3 and originally in PAL format. Quality is lost when converting to flash video NTSC but the sound is there!
AJ

Closer to home

Our final day of driving in our son's four wheel drive (which we had never needed to put into four wheel drive) was through lush countryside that made me reach for the camera at every twist in the road. Every turn seemed to reveal yet another beautiful landscape. Of course the shots that I tried to take out of the car window ended up being thrown away – the vegetation close to the road was moving at such a speed that it spoiled the rest of the picture. When you look out of a car window your eyes eliminate this blur – but the camera is not so selective.

Fortunately my pleas to stop fell on receptive ears and I have a few “goodies”, but only where there was a gravel shoulder to pull over onto! This shot over the bales of hay was only because there was such a patch of gravel!

Our route took us over what is known as “the Range” and almost at the apex is a picnic spot that is down a narrow track into the dense bush. The wonderful chime that is the sound of the Bellbird could be heard through the closed windows as we drove down to a clearing in which there were picnic tables.

For the first time on this trip I dragged out the video camera – not to take video but to record the sound. Its a pity I don't know how to give you a sample in this blog. Maybe one day I will find out how to do it!

We were joined at our picnic table by some free-loaders. First a female then another and finally a male bird. They are Satin Bower Birds. The male and the female are very different to each other in appearance.

The male is black and his satin black feathers are almost iridescent blue when the light catches them. The eyes are blue but we noticed that both male and female's eyes could look mauve when the sun shone on them.

The female could hardly be called drab with her highly patterned coat of feathers and her blue eyes, but she is quite a contrast to the single colour of her male partner.

In breeding time the male woos his bride-to-be with a bower of twigs (like an archway of twigs) with the ground under the bower and the opening to it decorated with all things blue – blue berries, blue bottle tops, blue caps from ball point pens, etc., and if the female is impressed she will enter the bower.

Back in the car we continued up and over the Range and eased over to let impatient drivers race past us – even though the speed limit was 70kph.

This shot was taken through the windscreen since there was no way we could stop on this steep road. The trees and the cliff are so dramatically different to the emerald green of the farming area we had just left.

Over the top and down the other side it is even steeper and heavy vehicle have to take great care. We caught up with the impatient drivers who had overtaken us, they had become trapped behind laden trucks negotiating the decline at about 40kph.

My shot is to show two things – the traffic on this steep road and the emergency ramp that runs off to the side should brakes fail. The speedy drivers are in this shot too!

There are many things that I could show you from this trip but I will only include one picture that I took in a small town called Kalbar.

We called in to visit friends today who moved from Kalbar ten years ago. It was partly nostalgia that took us off the main road into the little town but there are some restored homes and businesses that saw their birth well over a hundred years ago – and I love taking photographs of attractive buildings!

I hope that you have enjoyed reading about our travels and seeing a few of my photographs.

AJ

Last leg of our outback trip

Our journey is almost over and once more we are into the wetter fringe of this huge continent. Well, not quite. We are in Warwick which is normally much drier than we are seeing it at the moment but is does have a higher rainfall than Bourke and beyond. As we drove closer to Warwick the wheat crops were thicker and more even and the cattle were fat and healthy and far more numerous to the acre. Inland the measurements are acres to beast and it could be several acres to one cow so any kangaroos, emus, goats or camels are competing for what feed there is out there. Things are very different this year. It is so good to have seen it so productive. Back to here.

I had to stop driving to hop out and take a shot of the magenta that painted many of the paddocks. This is not Paterson's curse, the taller blue flowers we had seen further inland, but a lower and daintier plant altogether.

I will have to look up the name but it resembles a linaria except for the leaves.

Warwick dates back to the early nineteenth century so has a few beautiful old buildings. Many of the shops use the original facade above their street level shop fronts. The buildings behind the facades were usually very ordinary, corrugated iron was used a lot, so the actual shop will be completely new even though the facade is original and not moved from its first position.

I am sharing something a little different from old buildings. Yes, you can see the old buildings (I have a fascination for the gorgeous hotels that can be found in every town) but take a look at the way the streets are decorated! In front of the Criterion and running the full length of the main shopping street is the most perfect display of roses and not one showing any sign of vandalism. I think that someone must tend the roses often, dead-heading and mulching them. They are a pleasure to behold. When Colin and I first arrived in Warwick I set the GPS (in “places of interest”) to lead us to a rose garden, well it did and the roses there were in a very sorry state and badly neglected, they were a small section of a bigger park and since there was no name plaque and a local we spoke to later knew nothing of a rose garden, this reference in the GPS must be out of date! The roses we saw in the main street made up for our disappointment!

Spotting a shop that specialised in coffee I persuaded my tight-fisted hubby (“You make good coffee”) to treat me to a coffee! But before I could even enter the premises I was brought to a stop and the camera switched on again. Once again the street plantings were eye catching.

The roundabout in the middle of the intersection was all planted with annuals and around the corner of the pavement that adjoined the coffee shop was planted lavender and roses and a blossoming tree.

We did enjoy our coffee and I purchased 200g of French roasted coffee beans to take home with us – so I can make Colin a good coffee!

Before I end our travel stories here is an outback picture to set you guessing.

There are two Australian creatures shown here in foot-prints. Can you see them both? Unfortunately the wheels of our Nissan and the trailer ran over some of the prints. It looks as if both creatures were travelling at speed – maybe a vehicle was coming up behind them and they moved along the road before veering off into the bush.

AJ

Back o Bourke

When someone wants to express that they have travelled deep into the outback of Australia they say they have been “back o Bourke”. Bourke is quite a long way west – so I think we have been quite a bit back o Bourke in the past two weeks!
Today we visited Bourke – which has a most striking mural to welcome drivers entering the town.

Two “swaggies” (the name given to Depression days wandering tramps who would do odd jobs in exchange for food) with their packs (matilda's) on their shoulders striding off into the great desert away from civilization (through the farm gate).

Last year a special exhibition display was opened called “Back o Bourke”

We parked the car and paid our dues to wander through the three buildings housing the displays. In the first was an audio visual display which was very well done, then through an interesting dryland garden into the next building in which there were more audio visuals but no audio! We had been told there were headphones but we couldn't find any! So that part of the display fell a bit flat – instead I read out the bush poetry that was all around the walls and entertained Colin with my own audio! (He couldn't be bothered reading the poems for himself).

Outside again and into another building. This had all sorts of things to read up on the walls. We watched a rather clever presentation of a paddle-steamer making its way up the Darling River and listened to the commentary that informed the listeners of how goods were loaded and many other things too. Finally we followed the path that lead to the exit and found ourselves in the cafe! We nearly bought an ice-cream but realised in time that it would be melted into liquid the moment we stepped outside. When we did get out we found we had half a kilometer to walk to get to where the car was parked! Fancy the tour ending up so far away from where you start! We told ourselves that the walk would “do us good”!

Unfortunately we were unable to partake in a riverboat ride – there is a paddle-steamer that runs every afternoon. The river is so high that the paddle-steamer cannot fit under the cables and power lines that criss-cross the river! They do not think the paddle-steamer will be able to negotiate the river until well into November. We seem to be encountering many things on this trip that we cannot do!

To make up for that disappointment we took a short detour off the road and followed a sign to see some “carved trees”. We had no idea what these would be and curiosity drew us on. When we came up to a sign saying “road closed” our hearts dropped but we turned down a track and found that we had come the right way after all.

I did not know about the aborigines carving trees for their ceremonies so to read the boards describing where they were found and what they had been used for was a delight. These relics of a lost civilization are here in the middle of no-where and we were fortunate enough to be able to see them.

The carvings are quite masterful and nothing like the primitive art we have seen on the walls of cliffs and overhangs, nor like the painting that the aborigines are creating these days.

For me this was a real highlight of today.

Finally a photograph to show you the reason I wanted to head "out west".

The wildflowers after the rains - and the bush and the greenery are something like we may not see for many years to come. Australia is a land of extremes and most of the time the interior of this country is barren of plants except for the hardiest of trees and salt bush plants. This year the country looks amazing. The yellow in this picture is from millions of wild mustard flowers. They are very common but at the moment look stunning - back in our farming days our house cow once had a wonderful feed of mustard flowers and we were unable to drink her milk for quite a while!

AJ