A few 'Honourable Mention' photos

 Waiting for the beginning of the Awards night . . .

 This is a close-up of me - with my Honourable Mention Photo

 Another couple of my photos - thanks Mom for taking your little 'point & shoot' camera - great photos.

 The one above, shows a couple of my photos and Mom's lovely water dragon photo - D Weatherburn

 And here we are again - Mom, pointing to her photo and me to mine

 Sarah had a couple of great photos entered and these two are hers.

Honourable Mention!

Tonight was the Award's Night for our local Ipswich Enviromental Photographic competition.  I had entered a number of photos as previously posted. Sarah and Granny also entered a couple and we all intended to attend.  Sarah however, is really sick with the flu, so had to miss the evening.

Granny and her were not lucky enough to win anything - and nor was I - BUT! . . .

The above photo was given an Honourable Mention by the judges and I will receive a certificate in the mail to keep.  I am so excited. 

Thank you to Mom, for suggesting that we submit some photos - it was such a wonderful evening and has left me feeling very Honoured!  :)

I think I need a 'macro' lens

 I love doing close-up photography, especially of spider webs and insects - using the macro setting on my digital I have managed some good photos, but it would be lovely to have a lens to help me take even better photos - Hmm Santa - what do you think?

Tomorrow night (Tuesday) is the photo awards night - I  can't wait to see our pictures hanging up with all the others. 

We Are Invited!

Mum, Sarah, and I all entered photographs into the Ipswich annual photography competition - today we received our invites for Tuesday 25th - 6.30pm.

The competition has been judged and winners will be announced on the nights - all photographs submitted will be on display - so it should be a wonderful experience. 

Teenagers and 'The Look!'

I am reading a wonderful book  called Click - How to take gorgeous photos of your kids by Rachel Devine.
It has some wonderful ideas and tips and one that resonated with me, was to take your kids when they are not posed, not perfectly happy - take their mood as well as their photo.  As I was reading this Sarah stormed into the study.  I am now, not even sure what it was all about - and the best part is that I know that neither is she (now).

Well, I grabbed my camera and started clicking - here are some of the results - I am going to call them 'The Look'

It says 'Mom if you don't get that camera out of my face - I am going to  . . .

Then of course there is always the option of the total 'ignore'

 When this didn't work it was the 'cold shoulder' . . .

 And now for my favourite - the hand of frustration!

 Of course the cat scratcher might improve the look - but finally I guess . . .

 I caught that tiny little grin, that lights up the eyes - even when they are scrunched up and the mouth is hidden by the pillow.

Thank you Rachel for a great tip - I have captured not only my beautiful girl - but also some of her fiery, teenage personality.

What to say when you have nothing to say

I have logged onto Vesta a couple of times this week and wondered what I should write about - and then logged off again. Why?  Well, because I didn't know what to say.

So here I am talking about 'nothing'.

Our family is suffering from a virus - not sure what - we are all washed out, tired and feeling run down.
I have been busy taking children to appointments for doctors, dentists and other appointments.
I have been scrolling through photos for the Ipswich photo competition which closes on Friday and have finally submitted all Sarah and my entrants - here is a photo of my final entrant - and yes these colours are real.

I hope that we make the finals at least in some of our entrants - that way we will be invited to the Award night on Wed 26th October - and get to see the winners announced. It will be great, especially for Sarah, who has really taken the time to use Mom's camera and learn a little about photography.

Other than that - the days are warming up and we are enjoying the beginning of summer.
Sarah is already enjoying the pool - floating more than swimming, but has been brave enough to get wet a few times.

Don't splash me!

So that is my catch-up for today.

Here's looking at you!

Brahminy Kite (Fish Eagle)

Crested Hawk

What do these birds see when they watch us taking their photograph - do they recognise us? We see the beauty of their colours, the beauty of the eyes, wings, feathers, beaks and claws or webbed-feet; but do we even register on their radar other than a predator or prey.

I have enjoyed focusing on birds for the past couple of weeks of photography and our local Mallard Ducks are friendly enough to come up close for a photo.

Experimental photography

With the upcoming Ipswich photographic competition, I have been inspired to try my hand at various types of photography and one of the categories is Macro Flora - so here are some examples of some of the beautiful flowers in our garden - a little close up.

This is the full flower and the following two photos the Macro photographs

 This is a pink Callistemon in our garden

 and the flower of a Fire Sprite - looks like an insect

 Again this seems almost insect like, rather than part of a plant - what do you think?

Sarah's venture into the world of photography

Granny has been encouraging Sarah to do some photography with her. She has lent Sarah her Fuji Finepix and these are some of her results - well done Sarah.

Keep up the great work young lady - you have talent - like Grandmother, Mother and Daughter

I love my new Canon

I love my new camera Canon 600D - I have been using point & shoot cameras for a while since my Konica Minolta started to age and I have become a lazy photographer.  For about 12 months I have lost interest in my photography and just clicked away when the need arose.  However, I decided to 'treat' myself a couple of weeks back and I just love my new camera.

This weekend away I had another chance to play - I must admit to still using the 'auto' settings - sorry Ian :) but, am going to try and be more adventurous over the next few weeks and months and move into manual mode - but for now here are some of my favourite shots.

Spotting something in the trees

Looking directly into the sunlight made bird spotting difficult

Ivan heard the noise and kept looking up

Our first clear view of a Crested Hawk

Then of course it flew

But, finally with some editing (zooming in only) - I managed to get this great photo

and another

 of course this wasn't the only bird we spotted.  These two little ones were also taken with my zoom lens and of course some zooming in on Photoshop Lightroom - not too bad at all...

A few more Mt Glorious photos

We had three cameras working on our trip to the rainforest, so I thought I would post a couple of great photos taken by Sarah and also by Mom.

Mom took this lovely photo of the group of us, as we started on our walk.

 Sarah took this lovely photo of Mom and I.

 We decided that this tree needed to see if we could push this tree over - Grin ---- it gives some perspective as to the size of the trees.

 Another great photo of Elizabeth . . .

 a smiling one of me . . . .

 and this cheeky one of Sarah