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.