Theme 4: Portraits - by Meagan (MnDM)

Well!! What a crazy two weeks it has been! Scorching hot, fires within 500m of our front door, and now pouring rain and cold! :(

I was really hoping I'd be able to get some human portraits, but with only living with one person, and not really wanting to do any selfies.... I've had to seek out other options! With 4 dogs and 4 cats in the house... it meant I had MANY a willing participant... with the help of treaties!

First cab off the rank is my beautiful Birman Boy - Czar... he is a blue-tabby point and is such a camera hog!

Second is my lovely old girl - a whippet imported from Sweden - 'Monet'.

Third - rather than fill this with another dog or cat or exotic animal photo... I stumbled across this lil fella in the back yard... he's Mr. Racoon, and is one of the dogs favourite toys!!


CHEEEEEEEESE!

I can't wait to see everyone's photos!  I'm really enjoying these challenges and find that I'm so eager to do them, and striving to do them justice.

MnDM

Feathered ~ by Taylah

With very little time on my hands, zero motivation and a real lack of birds I did struggle with this theme a little. Not to mention I was fighting with my dodgy kit lens and my lightroom trial also ran out. But I'm not too disappointed with these images...

 

Feathered

I have to say that I realise how important lens selection is when taking photos, I didn't think I needed my big zoomie lens... I was wrong. I'm disappointed with this submission but at least its something considering work and floods got in the way last fortnight.

Wild Feathered

Another trickier theme than at first glance!

My primary thoughts were that I'd satisfactorily accomplished the Rainbow Lorikeet in flight for the last theme and that I wasn't really wanting another similar shot so soon. 

 In Australia we really are very lucky to have such pretty parrots flying wild, and although I'm not a huge fan of birds in general, I can appreciate their rare beauty in the wild :-)

For this theme all three images come from a dedicated hunting style of shoot. A trip to my local off lead dog park (which I gotta say is not the most lovely of environments) a place I'd spied the Red-Rumped Parrots on previous walks with the dogs.
They are apparently known for their ground feeding, but also for their flightiness! On this shoot I literally watched them when they landed for a feed, crouched and crept, clicked off a few frames and off they flew landing a little further away, rinse (or chimp) and repeat. I pushed it a little closer and a little less patiently, and I managed to capture a few taking off and flirting and landing shots, this first one being maybe of only 2 that were in frame and focus ;-)

this 2nd image shows how close I managed to get to the length of the 200mm, with about a quarter crop, a male Red Rumped Parrot

 then up into the trees for safety. I included this last image as of a more documentary style, they travel in pairs, the male has the brighter coloured plumage than the female with the distinctive red spot just before their tail feathers begin, though generally they are very camouflaged both on the ground and in the native trees. While attempting these tree shots I noticed immediately that my lens was struggling to find the focus, so even this seemingly easy shot was tricky and I didn't get the focus exactly where I was hoping.

cheers, hope you enjoy :-)

Announcing Theme Four: Portraits

Theme three was another success with a great range of images!  Roll on the next challenge!

Lorella has chosen Portraits
Shooting runs from 15 Feb - 28 Feb inclusive
Images post on 01 March

See you all in two weeks :)

Feathered – Tanya

I went on a trip to Penguin Island (part of the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park) with Hannah for a day full of birds and photography – it was a great trip! It was my third visit to the little island, but I just love going there – it’s always teeming with birdlife, from tiny Welcome Swallows to those jumbos of the skies – Pelicans. We also saw Australian Sea Lions and some King Skinks.


My first shot is of a Bridled Tern coming in to land – I was focused on the rope trying to catch the swallows landing, when the tern barged in instead. Terns are also known as Sea Swallows, so close to my original idea :-)






My second photo is again Bridled Terns, but this time capturing a courtship display. Terns generally pair for life and can live in excess of 20yrs.






My final image is taken not long after Hannah’s shot on the pier, and one of the juvenile Crested Terns in the shot (yellow bill) is probably her ‘odd one out’ :-)

Kristen's feathered

What a challenge this was. I knew it would not be easy but I have a dramatically increased appreciation of wildlife photographers now!

There is a manmade wetland near me, I always see ducks and various water birds there as I drive past so on a sunny Sunday I decided to head down there. I thought I would get some nice easy photos of ducks - 1 swimming, 1 of a family feeding them at the adjoining park, 1 in flight. Easy.

I arrive and start walking - nothing. Not a duck, not a magpie, not even a seagull. And no families enjoying the Sunday afternoon and feeding the birds. All I could see was Willie Wagtails. I love these little birds but they were proving too tricky for me.

And then I walked around the corner to a most unexpected sight...

I didn't expect a Pelican in the middle of a suburban wetland. So I spent sometime taking photos of Mr Pelican. He wasn't very interesting though and mostly stayed in the 1 spot watching me with some degree of suspicion.

With no ducks or anything else in sight, I gave in and decided to try for a Willie Wagtail photo. Most definitely not in flight though - they are so fast and erratic! This is the best I could get, I wouldn't say I am happy with it but will settle for it. It is very heavily cropped and the focus is not spot on, but it will just have to do.

After many failures I decided to give in and walk back to the car and hope that I could find 3 usable pictures or maybe encounter something in our backyard at home (highly unlikely with 3 border collies on bird patrol). Not far from the car I saw something white and managed to catch this...

Thankfully big birds fly much slower and straighter than small birds. I have no idea what it is but am pleased to have got something with some motion.

Feathered - Wild or Domestic

When I read the theme for this fortnight I thought oh no, birds. Then I thought perhaps I could do my favourite bird, Jonathon Livingston Seagull. Then I thought perhaps I won't do birds at all.

Theme 3: Feathered by Kristin

Isn't it always the way?  I had a great idea for this theme concentrating on a few of my usual backyard visitors but my backyard has been virtually bird-free for weeks now!  Normally there are birds everywhere.  So, back to the drawing board for idea #2.

It finally came together two days before the deadline, which was lucky because I left for Lembeh the day before the deadline and really needed to get my images done!

#1 - bird on frond
#2 - in flight
#3 - I love you, Flower

Feathered

  Oh goodness - birds and no zoo allowed! I'm not really a 'bird' person so this was always going to be a tricky one. Fortunately we spent a weekend camping during this theme period, so there were quite a lot of birds hanging around . The trick is to actually catch them - difficult! I'm reasonably pleased with these shots though  :)

Same breed of bird again. These guys are so fast! Crazy, crazy fast and kinda twitchy. (Well that and the added difficulty of my dane shadowing me while I was shooting, that probably didn't help!). I am really happy with this second shot, the light is nice and I've only tweaked it slightly in LR.

There were so many cockies around - I really wanted an 'in flight' shot but easier said than done. I wanted something a bit sharper than this, but its not bad for my not hugely awesome kit lens!. I like the angle he's on and the bush background, made it feel a little more atmospheric.

Theme 3: Feathered

To get some feathered shots Tanya and I went to Penguin Island, a national marine park. We made a great day out of it and had some laughs.  I definitely learned some things about bird photography and got to see a great part of WA I have never seen before.

This was the boat pier, there was probably 150+ birds sitting there. I noticed this bird was the odd one out and it gave me an idea how to shoot the crowd :).

I got so many Pelican shots I like I could have easily had all three Pelicans. This was my equal favourite shot of a Pelican, I love the way the two birds are showing different stages of flight and they are positioned in relation to each other.  

These little birds were so cute!! There was two of them and they would perch for maybe 10 seconds, flit off again, perch again etc. I had the ocean as a backdrop here and kept the post in the crop to show just how tiny this bird was.

I'm not sure if it's allowed but here is a link to my Penguin Island set on Flickr, for the shots I couldn't put here but still want to share: Penguin Island Set

Feathered; wild or domestic - Kerri

I got a bit ahead of myself when this theme was announced and came up with this crazy idea for a series of shots and, after I'd organised props, models and locations, realised I'd totally overlooked the 'wild or domestic' component and there was no conceivable way to adapt my idea to fit that part of the theme. I had to change my plans significantly and ended up deciding to default to the most obvious subject matter for 'feathered' which is, of course, birds. I contacted an amazing local bird photographer I know to ask for advice on where to go to shoot birds in the wild and was directed to the Laratinga Wetlands in Mount Barker, in the Adelaide Hills. Having seen how many amazing images she has produced from this location and the variety of birds available I thought this was a great idea and was envisaging beautiful photos taken in the golden light of a lovely sunrise and ending up with so many photos that it would be hard to choose just three for the project.

I got up at 4:30am on a Sunday morning (or stupid o'clock as I like to call it.. lol) and at 5:30am headed off for the hour's drive to the wetlands. At about 6am it started raining. By the time I got to the location it was completely overcast and drizzling non-stop. I spent about half a second contemplating what to do before deciding to brave the weather anyway given what time I'd gotten up and how far I'd driven. There was very little bird life out and about and the sun was completely hidden by dark, stormy clouds and everything was just.. well.. grey. As I got in to the heart of the wetlands it started raining much more heavily and there was no shelter without heading back near the car park so, knowing my camera gear is weather sealed, I trudged on. Unfortunately I, in just a t-shirt and track pants, wasn't quite so weather sealed and got rather wet. At least from this point on it just drizzled on and off and some of the birds started coming out to play. It was still very grey and so dark I had to shoot at ISO 3200 as I stalked swore ripped my hair out attempted to photograph birds for the next two hours. During this time I learnt several things: (1) I do not have any where near the level of patience required for bird photography. (2) I am not willing to crawl on wet ground under trees and shrubs or climb through mud, reeds or manky water to try and photograph birds. (3) Fairy wrens are tiny, freakishly fast and good at hiding. (4) Even with a 1.7x teleconverter a 70-200mm lens is not long enough for bird photography. (5) Proper bird photographers are absolutely amazing and my level of admiration for them has reached a whole new level.

Despite my efforts on Sunday morning (I like to pretend it was a herculean effort because I got up insanely early and got rained on) I only managed to come home with exactly three photos that were salvageable which, on the plus side, at least meant I had just enough to work with that I didn't have to go out and face another round of bird photography in order to meet this fortnight's brief... lol. The first picture is a pretty good depiction of what the wetlands looked like that morning (drab and grey) and I have the wonders of Photoshop to thank for being able to bring out the colours in the second two images, that were also looking very grey and drab straight out of the camera.

Theme 3 - Feathered.... by Meagan

Wow... what a challenge... AGAIN!

I'm not a huge bird fan... and not being able to do zoo shots really poo pooed my chances of getting nice shots... or so I thought!

Armed with the camera, we got up at 'crack of stupid' and took the dogs up to their offleash park for a run, there are always flocks of birds near the lake.... and there were, but they were terrified of the dogs! *sigh*

Flocks of Galahs, red rumped parrots, cockatoos, the odd crow, magpie and mud lark....

I had my OH take the dogs away, and I sat at the lake and I watched, and I waited....

I took the customary 'duck' shot....

MIRRORED DUCK - the water was so still and the ducks so serene!

I watched a pair of Red-rumped parrots bathing in amongst the ducks... they were joined by a group of males, and it was spectacular to watch them all doing their dances...

I managed to capture these two as they flew away...

After taking a zillion photos of all sorts of birds and being miffed that my lens (70-20mm) wasn't going to get me close enough.... I heard squawking... I looked up and a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo was flying towards me... I of course, had packed my camera away and was heading home! I quickly fumbled, got the camera out, switched it on.... focused.... and click...

I hope you enjoy these shots.... I actually garnered a new and total appreciation for bird photographers and bird watchers.... they are so fascinating... just a shame they are scared of doggies.

Looking forward to seeing everyone's photos!

Meagan (MnDM)