Tiny Frogs Return
Such a long time since I posted anything, but a good way to begin again is with a favourite subject – some images of Litoria ewingii, Southern Brown Tree Frogs, sitting on Hydrangea leaves just outside my back door in the rain.
These are tiny creatures, less than 2 cms in length, and young ones hatched this season. The fly just happened to be sitting there………
Aquilegia
Aquilegia, Granny’s Bonnet, or Columbine – makes no difference to me, they remain one of my favourite plants and this garden is full of them. I love their elegant shapes and gorgeous colours.
These were all taken with the 5D and a 100mm macro lens. Click on any image to make a slideshow.
Spider Trails and Raindrops
There has been a lot of rain here, everything saturated this morning, but lots of spider trails lit with tiny water drops, like fairy lights!
Little Blue Man
I have the most marvellous app on my phone and iPad – Michael Morecombe and David Stewart Guide to Australian Birds – it is not free, but is a great source of information, plus each entry includes recordings of the bird songs for each species. It is a very useful tool to use when photographing birds – see the bird, play their song, and the bird in question comes in close to investigate who is in their territory. Obviously one takes care how one uses it, so as not to cause any distress, but I have used it a couple of times recently. There is a pair of Superb Fairy Wrens that visit my back garden daily, the male is only just beginning to get his grown up plumage, so his feathers look a little like a tatty patchwork of colour, while his missus is just a pale brownish colour. These are shots taken over the last few days using a 70-200mm lens.
WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Focus
This week’s challenge was to take photos to demonstrate the different depths of field one obtains using different apertures – ie shallow depth of field with a wide aperture or the reverse, greater depth of field with a smaller aperture. I actually showed this a few posts back – here – as it had been something covered at our local photo club. None the less, today I spent some time using my macro lens to shoot the same subject ( the fruiting bodies on a pot of moss ) with a range of apertures from f/32 to f/2.8, giving very different results in terms of background sharpness and detail. Personally for this type of photo I prefer a soft blurred background – the very sharp one has too much confusing detail!
f/2.8
f/3.5
f/13
f/32
Raven or Crow?
Most folk refer to these big birds as crows, but it is in fact a Raven – Corvus coronoides. It is a passerine member of the Crow family – large, impressive and vicious looking with it’s bright eye and gleaming plumage. This one has begun to appear when I feed the smaller native birds, and bullies them out of the way. Ravens eat anything from plants and seed to other animals or carrion and it looks like this one has been doing just that from the dried blood around it’s beak. Much more cautious than the other garden birds who are used to me being around, I happened to be photographing my friendly Currawong when this one landed in the tree nearby to steal what it could.
