The big itch

The morning was a little downcast - grey skies and misty rain coming and going, so the light was excellent for taking shots of the lorikeets - this time after they had been gorging themselves on my feeder! Of course I had to avoid getting the sky in any of my shots because it was so white that I would have ended up with silhouettes but this was a good opportunity to set up the tripod and use the 70-300mm lens again.
I had been admiring the bird shots that had been sent to me by a friend and taking note of how he achieved deeper depth of field by increasing his ISO I gave it a go too. The birds were all in the dark side of a creeper covered tree stump so it was fairly dark. The ISO I used was 800 - frowned on by "the experts" because high ISO puts grain into a photo.
Here are a few of my shots of the lorikeets. What you will notice is that they are busy trying to get rid of an itch!

 F/5.6 1/500 ISO800 232mm

 f/6.3  1/320  ISO800 300mm

f/4.2  1/250  ISO800 130mm

F/9  1/400 ISO800  210mm 

I should attach a recording of the sound of the birds to play while this page is being viewed!
AJ

Yet another bird

I was feeling rather sorry for myself after a visit to the dentist when a large bird flew into my front garden and successfully took my mind of my soreness. I straight away ran to get my camera and change the lens to the 70-300mm one and patiently waited inside the house for my visitor to come closer. Unfortunately the Blue Crane is rather timid and would take flight if I were to step outside. The noise created by the sliding door would be enough to make him startle so I remained indoors and took my pictures from behind glass.

f/5.6  1/320  300mm  800 ISO

This bird stands about knee height and eats insects and small fish and frogs - it paddles on the edge of ponds. It looks absolutely magnificent in flight and one day I will succeed in capturing a photo of one with wings outstretched! One day!

f/6.3  1/640 200mm  800 ISO

The Blue Crane is also called the White Faced Heron. a very similar bird can be found in South Africa too. I saw one when on holiday there a few years ago but the South African blue crane/heron looked to be slightly larger.

F/6.3  1/640  255mm  800 ISO

Here the bird is peering into a small pond that we have in our garden. Perhaps he was hoping to find a small frog or lizard. The lizard you may be able to see near the top of this photo is a pottery sculpture! Not edible!
Do click on the photos to see them a bit larger then click on the "back" button to return to the blog.
A shower of rain this evening will freshen things up in my garden. I will take my camera out again tomorrow.
AJ

More birds come visiting

I have often shown our lorikeet breakfast companions. When we eat out on our veranda it is like we are in among the branches of the trees, we are at the same level. So the birds have all become used to us being out among them and while they are timid of coming too close I have a 200mm lens which allows me to get close to them!
This morning it was a bit cloudy for a while and for some unexplainable reason the birds were out in force - and they were in full voice too! The honey eaters, Indian miners (they are an introduced bird and a pest) and the currawongs were all singing out and trying to be heard over the racket that the lorikeets always make when they come in for their breakfast. The Sulphur Crested Cockatoos were screeching loudly and there might have been up to a dozen of them - they have discovered our lemon tree and although the lemons are still green, they are biting into them and eating the seeds. No lemons for us this year! Even the little finches were chirruping at the tops of their voices too! I did get my video camera out to record some of the sound - but it will be all mixed with the sound of vehicles on their way to work on the nearby road, unfortunately.
We do not get to see Rosellas very often so when they come I always make a grab for the camera.
(Click on these pictures to see them more clearly.)

I managed to get both Rosellas in the one shot - they are two different species, the red headed bird is an Eastern Rosella and the other is a Pale Headed Rosella.

It was difficult to stop taking photos once I had started! Here is the Eastern Rosella out in the open.

And the beautiful Pale Headed Rosella.
These two birds must have formed a bond because they occasionally call in and always the two of them are together. Many times we hear the distinctive call of Rosellas but we don't always get to see them.
Further up the mountain (we are on the lowest slope of Mount Springbrook) there is an even brighter Rosella which is mainly red and rich deep blue but I have never seen it down here. (Less than 30 Km away but it is a bit more humid down here to on the higher slopes.)
AJ

New lens from Ebay seller

I have just received what I consider to be a "gift". I am an Ebay addict! I have to make an effort to stay away from Ebay because I find it so much fun bidding and winning or purchasing something I feel I cannot do without. I have bought all sorts of things, a hose for the swimming pool cleaner unit, bags for the vacuum cleaner, food saver storage bags - and all sorts of electronic and photographic gadgets!
My latest purchase was a last minute decision to bid on a wide angle lens that had only 13 minutes to go before the bidding was closed. I can't remember what limit I set for my bid but I know I was surprised that it was accepted and that I was the "winning bidder" For the princely sum of $27.50 (Aust) I actually became the proud owner of this.

My new lens is .45mm macro/wide angle that screws onto my 18-55mm Nikon lens.
I haven't really tried any close up photography other than play with the wrapping that was around the parcel so I will show what it is capable of another day. But I did try a couple of wide angle shots - the reason I wanted this was so that I could get more people in a shot or take more of a room when the camera was used indoors.
This was my first attempt at indoor wide with this lens. You will see some huge barrel distortion but I will then show you how that can be corrected.

To be honest I was blown away with just how much I was able to get in my shot. There is a black vignette which means that the lens behind (the 18-55mm) is seeing the outer rim of the lens. I shall have to be aware of that and not push the lens that wide.
In Photoshop this barrel distortion is corrected in Filter>Distort>Lens Correction and this is how much I corrected the barrelling.

The filter allows the image to be re-scaled to remove the distorted edges - but that is stretching the picture. I prefer to accept the correction and then crop the image. To be left with this . . .

 If I had taken this same angle of my home with the 18-55mm lens I would only have got half the bookshelf - to this side of the two white backed Encyclopedia in the middle shelf - and all the opening through to the dining room.
So I am going to have some fun with this extension!
AJ

Photo layering

I have been playing yet again! I was busy recording tutorials for a workshop to be held on Wednesday when I managed to get distracted! Every day I enjoy reading the posts from DPS and sometimes becoming "inspired" to try one of the suggestions. The simple tutorials I had been recording led me from one topic to another and thanks to that Photography site, I started to think of textures and layering.
I am not sure if my "pupils" would appreciate this sort of manipulation so I am sharing it with anyone who visits my blog instead!
I started out with a blank canvas and using one of the bog-standard weird Photoshop brushes that I had never used before - it looks a bit like a dirty smudge - I made the brush huge and with two dabs created an interesting "background". Then I "colorised" it in Hue and Saturation and then textured it with a very large and deep canvas texture from filters. I created a soft vignette using the Lens Correction filter and came up with this.

Having a texture meant I needed a photo! I dug one out of my collection, it was a rather pleasant, quiet photo of an Australian pelican on the edge of the water. The texture was overlayed and all sorts of blending modes and opacities were tried. When I settled on one combination I liked I then used a mask to clean the texture from the bird.
So far so good - but not really as inspiring as I thought it could have been. What about some text?
Googled "Australian Pelican" and on a scrap of paper wrote down what was written on the site I opened.

I played around with the colour of the text and placed it over the image making it cover the entire picture. This time I used the Multiply opacity.
 Once again I erased the layer from the bird and this is what I ended up with.

I quite enjoyed experimenting but I am not sure if this example is dramatic enough. I shall have another go with a different texture and photo and see what I can come up with!
AJ

A dangerous hobby

While enjoying wandering around the Australia Day festivities with my Nikon D90 with the 50mm lens attached I also managed to grab a couple of little videos with my next favourite toy - the JVC blog camera. This camera is so small and light that it lives quite happily in my shoulder bag which means that it is always available to be used when something interesting happens.
The formation riding by the flag waving team on their identical brown horses was one of the topics and a few minutes of the bull riding were the other. The audience numbers were good so to be able to see anything at all I was forced to be behind people. Even if I was closer the double fences would have been a problem. After seeing the size of the bulls and the way they pranced and bucked when that rope was around their mid-riff I was quite happy that there was a solid fence between them and me!
I only stood and watched four different rides and two of the tossed riders required medical attention - a third one was unlucky to be underneath when his bull fell over but lucky in that he was not hurt. It landed on his legs. The announcer happily told the audience that it was a miss-ride and the boy would be given a different bull later!
Of the two that were hurt, one was kicked and the other (the last one shown), the bull stomped on his chest. The announcer reported that he was "just winded" so I hope so!
I have learned not to use the zoom on the JVC blogger - it is only a digital zoom so the picture becomes quite degraded.

After watching another of my shaky videos I bet you will vow never to become a bull rider!
To see this video in Youtube without the sides cut off, click on the title at the top of the video.
AJ

More from Australia Day

With my little blog camera I took a few seconds of a horse display and recorded the singing by one of the performers. I combined the two in Adobe Premiere Elements, converted to Flash Video and uploaded to Youtube. A slightly larger version can be watched in Youtube by clicking on the video image in this blog.

While not an outstanding video, this snippet does go to show one of the many free events that were put on for the public.
AJ