Tibouchina days

All of a sudden - maybe because of all the rain - the Tibouchina has burst into flower. Most of the flowering trees and shrubs and garden plants in my garden seem to be pink but this is one tree that has broken the mould. The first shot was taken from my veranda this morning. I was enjoying a morning coffee with Colin, watching the finches as they squabbled over the seed when one little bird flew between us and I followed him with my eyes and it was only then that I realised just how spectacular the tree was! The birds were forgotten (even though one had nearly touched us with its wings) and I went inside to get the camera.

I seem to get things wrong when I first take pictures - it is so good that there is a screen for reviewing the image so that you can re-set the camera and try again and again.

As it was a bit grey first thing I hadn't realised how dark it was and with the dark colour of the leaves and flowers I really needed to "open things up" but since I did not want a shallow depth of field I needed to play with the shutter speed rather than the aperture.

ISO 100 f/8 1/80 sec Focal length 14mm (14 - 45m lens)

The second picture was taken using the same settings and was also taken from the veranda looking across at the tree

ISO 100 f/8 1/80 focal length 45mm (14 - 45mm lens)

Finally I made my way outside to get a little closer before roaming around the garden and realising that I had not done any weeding for three weeks! Oops! What a jungle!

ISO 100 f/5 1/60 focal length 18mm

The flowers are short lived and make a carpet of colour under the tree - and every time I take the car out of the garage I manage to get at least four flowers stuck on the windscreen!

I love colour in my garden.

AJ

A movie of Emerald Lakes

Just a quick update to give you a link to a little "movie" I have just made of the buildings of Emerald Lakes. For some reason the conversion of the movie has torn the timing something terrible and some shots seem to be "stuck" nothing I have tried seems to work so I apologise for a less than perfect upload.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_kySXGfvo

The images are uploaded individually to a web album and they are viewable more easily - and a bit larger!
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/joanren/EmeraldLakesResidentialEstate?feat=directlink
I hope you enjoy looking at the amazing architecture of the French Quarter and of the Italian sector. I loved being there!
AJ

A touch of the Med

ISO100 f8 1/200 40-150mm focal length 123mm

I mentioned yesterday that on Sunday Colin and I explored a new home development - I am not really sure how to describe the concept - but this is an area that has been developed to look -and feel as if one is walking through a place in France or in Italy.
To begin with we explored in the car and drove through the coloured buildings and on to an area that was called "The Islands". From one of the islands I looked across at the buildings we had just driven through and they looked so amazing that I just had to stop the car and use the camera. This was going to be one fantastic day for photography!
The dreadful weather that started the day was evaporating and the sun was forcing its way through the clouds and brightening up the gorgeous colours on these walls.
The top photo was taken from across a lake with the camera and 40-150mm lens so that I could see the mural over the archway. Once I have all my photos converted from RAW I will put them into a web album and share the link.

ISO100 f8 1/200 focal length 14mm

The statue of David is an exact copy of the statue of David by Michelangelo in Florence and stood for many years in a shopping centre called The Raptis Plaza in Surfers Paradise. When that shopping centre was purchase and gutted for a complete refurbishment, David disappeared and I often wondered where he had gone! I feel he looked better before - he stood on a much taller plinth surrounded by water gardens that made him look so much bigger and more admirable, somehow. Now he looks like a white naked man in the middle of a collection of buildings! The fence does nothing for him! Poor David!

ISO100 f8 1/100 focal length 19mm

The collection of Italian and french styled buildings continues and I loved wandering around with the camera. On foot the place is different - it feels more comfortable and I found myself really liking what I saw and even felt there was a Mediterranean atmosphere to the place. Not too many of the shops are open yet, this will be a place I will have to return to again and again to see how it grows and lives - for once there are shops the people will be there and there will be restaurants and fashion shops to draw the people onto the streets.
At the moment there are only a few businesses, the most popular seemed to be the delicatessen that was providing meals - VERY expensive so I guess that the prices will dictate the class of customers to this location.
AJ

Dragon boats

Today I dragged my darling hubby along to a place called Emerald Lakes where there was lots of colour both on the buildings and on the water. This evening I am only showing the water colour (Oops. I just read what I wrote!!!) there was an event on the normally empty lake that made the air resound with the sound of cheering voices and the placid waters ripple with the dip and splash of paddles.
My son gave me his little Sony Handycam to try out - which I did. It does not have a view finder and I found it impossible to know if I was getting anything in the screen! It was a surprise when I got home to find I had three little clips that I could run together of the dragon boat racing. A long cry from the videos I usually make but fun all the same.
The photographs I took later in the day were much better (no handycam video!) and they were of the buildings of Emerald Lakes. I will show them tomorrow.
However this picture of Michealangelo's David will give a small clue as to the style of the architecture of the buildings!

I have tried to upload a copy of the video I made with no success, I shall have one more try and if it is in this post ... Well I will have succeeded!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyba7cln_Vo
I need encouragement!!
AJ

A feathered visitor

I was in the middle of writing an email when a raucous noise caught my attention. It was a white cockatoo that had flown down the bird feeder dish and was screaming his dissatisfaction about the cage that was preventing him from getting at the seeds.

Before I go too much further I must apologise for the state of the photos - I have recently purchased a tiny notebook for travelling and I am trying to use it to both write this little story and upload photos for use in the story on this 10 inch device. The only software I have installed is Picasa which is what I use for uploading pictures to a web album (from where I can access them to put on the blog.) So these pictures have not had any processing done to them (normally I adjust the pictures - sharpness and brightness - in Photoshop. Photoshop is rather too large a program to put on a little machine like I am using at the moment.

To continue!

I raced outside with my camera and shot two bursts on Auto setting since I thought the cockatoo would fly off as soon as I opened the door. He stayed and watched me so I switched to Manual and dialed the aperture and shutter speed and took several more shots.

I crept closer and closer and my final shot was fired just as he was taking off. With a shutter speed of only 1/60 second he is showing motion blurr! But the shot shows off the drama of the moment and the colour that is under the wings as well as on the crest.

The cockatoos are really quite large and if you have seen my previous pictures of the lorikeets on that same feeder you will appreciate the difference in size of the two birds. The cage is over the seed dish to prevent the cockatoos from flinging the pottery dish off the stand - they used to do that before we came up with the cage idea! They can still get their heads through the wire and get at the seed but they cannot stand in the dish as they want to.
Now I am going to try something I have not done before - add a little video that was taken with the Samsung point and shoot camera in movie mode.

This, if it works, will show you just a few of the birds that visit every morning and the incredible noise they make.
AJ

Preparing to run away from home

While Colin and I were exploring some of the delights of Springbrook we chanced to see a "For Sale" sign propped up outside one of the homes, it was for a camper trailer. Now we have been spending too much money lately on magazines on camper trailers and becoming more and more disheartened at the huge price that was asked for new ones - so Colin went door knocking. The folks were not at home so we wrote down the phone number and rang the following day.

To cut a long story short - we drove back to Springbrook on the Sunday and talked "turkey" and ended up buying the thing! It was about three thousand dollars cheaper than the ones that we had been thinking we might be able to afford and it had not even been used! The poor fellow that had it for sale had purchased it and shortly after been diagnosed with cancer so has spend his holidays visiting doctors instead.

We had to leave without it because the plug for the trailer was different to the plug on Steve's four wheel drive so I happily let him and Colin drive up a third time with a new plug to bring the trailer back down to home.

Of course the tent had to be put up to see if it was big enough. No worries, mate! It's HUGE! There is a king sized bed that is in a compartment that is on the trailer itself and the rest of the tent is big enough for a family, there are two parts on the ground - one could be used as the kitchen/dining area or as another sleeping area.

So now it looks as if we are ready for the road! But .... I have a hubby who just has to "fix things" and he has all these ideas about how he will modify the way the post go through the canvas and how the kitchen should be constructed and ..... hmmm! I think I will stay out of this!

AJ

Birds at breakfast time

Some wild birds seem to forget that they are supposed to be afraid of people. Rainbow lorikeets are birds that easily adapt to being companions to people and make a habit of visiting the place where they know there is a "hand-out". Every bird (to me) is identical and the only way I know that these birds have been visiting us for years and years is because of the occasional bird with some sort of deformity.
The bird closest to the camera has a double lower bill. The large bit at the bottom is not controllable by the bird at all, inside this flapping beak is a smaller but usable bill. When this bird first came to our feeder she was quite young - in a young lorikeet the bill is quite dark - and the other birds would crowd her out from the feeder. We took to putting a special small dish on the table and would wave a hand to keep the other birds from muscling in on her as she took some of the sugar treat. (Raw sugar diluted in water). She came in for a few months and disappeared and we feared the worst but one day she was back - and with her was a juvenile lorikeet. "Twisty Beak" had become a parent! Every year this same pattern occurred and she (or he!) has been returning to visit us for at least five years - we haven't kept count but feel sure that we are right about the longitude of her visiting!
Twisty Beak is still bullied by the majority of the other visiting lorikeets and we still have to chase them back while she gets some of what they know to be delicious! They devour their own large dish of sugary water and white bread in under two minutes! Mind you, fifty birds licking and sucking up only one litre of liquid and soggy bread means that none of them get very much! It is because of the many times we have seen Twisty Beak that we know that the other birds have also been coming to our bird feeder for years too.
There are other birds with toes that are curled up permanently - caused by them being brought up in a hollow tree that has had mud in the bottom when they were first out of the egg and the mud has dried on their feet causing a problem as they grew. In spite of their deformity the birds all seem to manage to survive and thrive.
AJ