Point Cook

Friday 16th March, 2018

This one is for a patient from ED tonight who I had a great chat with about photography. No I wasn’t neglecting my work, there weren’t that many other patients to see at that point, and it’s my hobby…always happy to chat about it!

I learnt a lot! About camera clubs at a local, state, national and international level including one that I might go along to locally, we talked about his 3 dark rooms, I heard about UV and infrared photography, and we talked camera models, good lenses for bird photography…and we could have gone on!! But eventually work has to come to the fore.

Anyway, since I shared my blog but haven’t put up a lot of my photos later, I guess I better. These are some shots that I liked from an outing with Birdlife Australia, Melbourne branch to Point Cook on Wednesday. A great walk, perfect bushwalking weather, nice company and a few stunning and semi-co-operative birds! It all makes for a great day out. The day was a bit misty/smoggy so as I cropped all the photos they became a bit murky; apologies!

Brown Falcon, better not shooting into the light! 

I got a whole series of shots of this gorgeous creature because you never know how close you’ll be able to get, but this was a youngish bird so we got very close in the end, slowly step by step. So the blurry shot isn’t really excusable, but unfortunately these days I have a degree of hand shaking that is bugging me – I really need to learn to wind up my shutter speed beyond what I’ve done in the past. I have cropped this shot.

Brown Falcon, same bird but shot into the glary sky

The conditions of the day make a huge difference as far as the photos you can achieve.

The glare of the sky adds so much light into the camera that it can be hard to make out detail of the subject when you shoot into the light and it is backlit; this is where being able to use your settings well really comes into play…or you just accept that you are operating in impossible conditions…but what fun would that be??

A Crested Tern on the wing

Love Terns, they are so acrobatic in the air and a delight to photograph!

Now THIS is a series I’m super proud of!! Just saying…a little stoush

Now THAT’S the type of shot I want to be taking!

Whistling Kite, not a great shot but the best I got

Perfect! Do you know how close I had to get to this Superb Fairywren for this shot? Actually I had to wait for it to get this close to me. Time and patience pays off! About 2 metres away

This scrappy looking guy is a male Superb Fairywren in eclipse, halfway moulting between immature and full male adult plumage in the non breeding season – this means he’s less than 5 years old

I was sitting at lunch and all the birds took off in a big Kuffluffle behind me! It’s a tell tale sign of a bird of prey flying over; there’s a consensus amongst all the birds that this is a bad thing. 4 magpies suddenly went into attack mode and I discovered exactly where the bird of prey was! Not in focus but a nice action shot, I didn’t have much time to get off a shot

Again, poor focus but I’m proud of this shot because I was the only one in a group of 20 that got a shot, and so I contributed a Brown Goshawk to the day’s count – I’m happy with that!!

Spot the Little Wattlebird!

Not perfect but a Black Kite right above my head?? Wow!

And 2 Black Kites up there?? Perfection!

This was my other moment of contribution – an immature Australasian Gannet, in the bay, out of the colony, away from Geelong, all on its own! I picked it out, someone else labelled it, lots of excitement all around! Love the spotty plumage – the adult is very monochrome

Silver gulls (usually called Seagulls), Crested Terns, Chestnut Teal ducks, Little Pied Cormorant – these are all roosting in shallow water in the bay

Little Pied Cormorants and Pied Cormorants – you can see the size difference clearly

Well, there’s some recent photos. I was overall a bit disappointed with the quality which was partly due to the weather with the glare and the smog, partly due to the settings being poorly managed and somewhat to do with this shake. Maybe I need to make a tripod part of my regular outfit for camera stability, maybe I need to go back to photography school to refresh the basics of which settings to use when, and let’s see what the doctor says about my tremor!

Enjoy!!

Goods and chattels

I’ve done this before. But since it’s a recurring theme with me, I guess it can be a recurring theme here too. It never ceases to amaze me the STUFF that goes along with medicating oneself.

The medications to start with, the prescriptions and repeats, script reminders when the repeats are running low, the safety net form to keep track off the scripts til I hopefully reach the concession limit, the receipts…well they aren’t mine but they remind me of what of mine I’ve spent…the script wallet.

And then there’s the waste. I’m a believer in recycling and the whole reduce, reuse, recycle ethos but what do you do with this?? And this is every TWO weeks!!

I bin or recycle, but there’s no way to reduce or reuse this lot!! Oh well, I guess that’s a bigger fight for another day.