Ironbark Forests

An easy bark to recognise in the bush in Victoria is the ironbarks, they have rough bark that becomes hard, compacted and furrowed with age, however, the bark is actually soft and flaky so the iron characteristic may refer more to appearance and expectation rather than to fact. The indigenous people of the Djada Wurrung (Jaara Jaara people) have lived in the grey box and red ironbark forests of the area for thousands of years but the the gold diggers of the 1850s turned the country upside down in search of gold. You can find many traces of their activities around Bendigo in the form of mine shafts, mullock heaps, dams and water races. This human activity, together with timber cutting and clearing for agriculture, has resulted in only 17% of northern Victoria’s original box / ironbark forests remain today.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 50mm f1.4D @ ISO 400, 50mm f1.4, 1/60 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 400, 11mm f5.6, 1/25 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 50mm f1.4D @ ISO 400, 50mm f1.4, 1/400 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 400, 11mm f5.6, 1/30 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 400, 11mm f5.6, 1/15 sec

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Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ ISO 400, 11mm f5.6, 1/8 sec

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Fairies and a final Buddha

Well I did find quite a number of Fairies around the house.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f8.0, 1/6sec

Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm f2.8 @ ISO 200, f8, 1/160 sec

Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm f2.8 @ ISO 200, f3.0, 1/6 sec

And a dragon

Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm f2.8 @ ISO 200, f3.0, 1/25 sec

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f8.0, 1/250sec
Finally a Buddha I missed yesterday . . .

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, f8.0, 1/40sec

Fathers Day

Father's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September so the date of Father's Day is never fixed. It complements Mother's Day, the celebration honouring mothers.

People express gratitude for fathers and thank them for all their care and support, most often children gift ties, chocolates or other gifts.Father's Day is a celebration inaugurated in the early twentieth century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting, and to honor and commemorate fathers and forefathers. Father's Day is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide and typically involves gift-giving, special dinners to fathers, and family-oriented activities. The first observance of Father's Day is believed to have been held on June 19, 1910 in the U.S.

I got this beautiful card and yummy gift in the post Friday, what a great surprise :-) Thanks Jacqui

Light II

Some more lighting situations . . .

High contrast sun and shadow.

Diffused light through a screen door. This is a merged image made from two shots, one focused on the door, and the second focused on the people outside then manipulated in Photoshop CS4.

This image is high contrast but boosted front light with a SB-900 flash.

Depth of Field

The Nikon 105mm lens, creates a narrow depth of field, generally depth of field is inversely proportional to focal length of a lens. For any given focal length, the depth of field varies directly with the aperture selected. That is, the wider the aperture (e.g. f2.8) the shallower the depth of field. If you use f22 you can maximize depth of field (the width of the focus area in sharp focus). Most lenses are considered to be at its sharpest at about 2 or 3 stops down from widest aperture, that is at f5.6 or f8, so you sacrifice sharpness if you maximize depth of field. Also pleasing bokeh (blurring of the background) is also effected as you widen aperture say to f-stop number f2.8 in a fast lens.

In this image of Hermione's eye you can see the band of sharp focus, the depth of Field (DOF)

D300, ISO 200, f 3.3 1/500 sec.

I have darkened the image so you can see this more pronounced. Interesting heh?

Light

We see things using light, light is all our eyes can really see. Visible light appears to be colourless or white and although we can see this light, white is not considered to be part of the visible spectrum because white light is not the light of a single color, or frequency. It is made up of many color frequencies which is why when sunlight passes through a glass of water and lands on a wall you see a rainbow. If you shine the colours red, green and blue in a light and them overlap, you will see magenta. Mixing light where red and green light overlap, you will see yellow. Where green and blue light overlap, you will see cyan. You will notice that white light can be made by various combinations, such as yellow with blue, magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the colors together.

Most colour we see is reflected light, like paint or dye molecules that absorb specific frequencies of light and bounce back, or reflect, other frequencies to your eye. The reflected frequency is the color of the object. There are some rules for light, for instance light travels in a straight line, the farther you are from a light source, the dimmer the light and the angle that a light hits a surface (the angle of incidence) is the same as the angle the light bounces off the surface (the angle of refraction).

The larger and closer the light source the softer the light and the further away the light the harder the light, it will have stark shadows. The character and quality of a photograph can be altered by the character and quality of light, so you need to think about how a scene should be lit, what lighting angles get good results, and what exposure settings will bring out the best detail and shading. A hard light (the light source is further away) will generate dark shadows and the direction of the light can place shadows in unattractive positions of a subject. One solution is to diffuse the light. Diffused light is softer and does not cast strong shadows. An overcast day is perfect for a lot of photography for this reason, the sunlight is diffused by clouds. the down side being that a white sky makes a very ordinary photographic backdrop.

Cape Daisy

Cape Daisy - Osteospermum ecklonis (Asteroideae)

From the sunflower family (Asteraceae).

It has been given several common names: African Daisy, South African Daisy, Cape Daisy and Blue-eyed Daisy and the plants prefer a warm and sunny position and rich soil and does not tolerate winter conditions. Perfect for higher altitude Queensland where I found this one.

Nikon D300, 105mm Macro lens ISO 200, f3.0 1/2500 sec

Macro Photography

Today while enjoying one of the beautiful sunny days that Sydney has to offer at present I noticed bee's around some flowers in the front yard. So using a Tupperware container I trapped one of the little buggers and put it in the freezer. Why? Well this is a little trick used by Macro photographers to slow the subject down, a few minutes in there and they slow right down. Don't leave them too long or they will die. I got quite a few shots off before the bee started to crawl around and eventually flying off. This one Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G , D300 on a tripod at f16, ISO 200, 2 seconds. I did this once before with a small skink, and lizards being cold blooded made this a very effective method of getting some close up photographs.