Almost Alien

Insects are cool. Flying insects are even cooler. So, up close and personal with a cicada should be a cool photo, right? They look almost like a creature from another world in detail, but kind of beautiful at the same time. I haven't posted anything to this blog in ages because I haven't really had the time to spend on photography lately to produce anything I'm happy with, but 10 minutes of free time and a rouge cicada in my house finally gave me something I was a little happy with.

For these I used my little old Canon 1000D with the 18-55mm kit lens, though I would have liked to have used a CPL filter to take out the bright reflections from the flash and bring out some richer colours in the cicada. I might invest in a black backdrop soon so I can use a more powerful flash without having to balance having a dark room and bright subject. After this, I let the little fella go on his way. Probably got eaten by a bat, but whatever.

Face to face

Bearded Dragons are cool. I know they're pretty common, but they make such great subjects because they sit still and look right at the camera lens no matter where you move, unless you preoccupy them with food. I spotted this on on  walk this morning when I went to collect some fresh plants and tadpole snails for my fish tank.

Both pictures were taken with my 18-55mm lens @55mm focal length, f5.6 and ISO 100. I wanted to use my 17-40mm but there was no way I'd be able to get close enough to the tree in the first place. Still, I'm pretty happy with these 2 photos since my 18-55 is just a kit lens.

Enjoy!

Gecko!

Caught this sneaky ninja hunting down a moth just now. While geckos are great at keeping bugs at bay, they tend to fall off of whatever they're climbing and scare the hell out of you. They're totally harmless of course, but I scooped up this little fella and took him outside to go hunting elsewhere so I could work in peace.

They do also make this really loud chirping noise to communicate with each other at night. It's pretty common to see 5 or 10 ganging up on one massive moth. poor bugs don't stand a chance around here...

Anyway, nothing too exciting. Just a gecko. I like geckos though, just not convenient when I'm trying to get some stuff done.

More random wildlife

Another day on Coochie-Mudlo island, a few more photos with words to go with them. What should I find first? The same pair of curlews as last time I went over, but with a new baby. The parents were nesting in some scrub, and they aren't worried by people much anymore (probably because Dad always leaves out food for them in the afternoon...) so I managed to get this close to them, but the younger baby Curlew was too frightened to let me get close enough so I left it alone.

Magpies are fun to watch. In suburbia, they screw around by swing off your clothes on the clothes line or teasing cats behind windows. Pretty smart birds really. They're extremely common, but I thought this would make a decent photo. When I first got my camera, I learned to use it by using old lenses adapted to my camera body and taking photos of magpies in a field that was near me.

This Bearded Dragon also lives in the same area as the Curlew family, and spends most of it's time hanging off this tree. It's a bit bigger than the last random reptile I took a photo of, but definitely not very aggressive.

Australia is awesome.

Exploring: Eprapah Creek

I moved house last week to an estate that backs on to Eprapah Creek, and over the last few days I have been doing a bit of exploring for a couple of reasons, one is to collect some food for my fish and some native water plants for the tank, and the other is because I just plain love exploring random bushland. You can find all sorts of random things pretty easily, especially if you know what wallaby trails look like. They tend to cut through the bush finding places to get water and also to rest, so it makes sense to just follow where they go and eventually you'll end up at a nice spot to rest. But it's not all easy going, sometimes you have to do a bit of this:

After a few more dodgy log walks across much larger spans of water, and a bit of being a ninja across some rocks I found this little fella:

And then I followed another wallaby track to my final spot, a section of faster moving water in Eprapah Creek. I did set out with the intention of finding a spot like this, since I'd never tried long exposure photos of moving water before.

Both photos I had settings of f22, ISO 100 and a 5 second shutter speed. I also set a timer of 2 seconds, because the tripod had a little shake in it when I pressed the shutter button.

This spot was actually a thriving little ecosystem, I picked up a couple of plants for my aquarium and some native snails too. There were quite a few native rainbow fish feeding on mosquito larvae and tons of fry feeding on algae. It is actually legal to take rainbow fish from the wild to keep, but I decided to wait until the fry are a bit older so that I don't impact the breeding cycle.

Last one, is a HDR. I'm really shocking at doing these since I hardly ever do them, but I thought I might include this one since it turned out alright:

I swear my house is a wildlife santuary...

So yet again I've come home from work, to find a young Blue-Tongue Lizard just chilling near my kitchen table. I have no idea how the hell it got there, nor why it's out at night. Though, they are probably the most hopeless of all lizards when it comes to effective path finding, because they're always the kind you find stuck in your garage. And I guess, my house must clearly be the greatest hang out ever for native animals, seeing as every afternoon there's a bunch of Rainbow Lorikeets in the tree, and the past couple of nights I've found a bunch of frogs that aren't so common, and now a lizard in my kitchen.

I'm not complaining though. I like lizards. Blue-Tongue Lizards aren't all that common either, but most smaller ones are quite tame and happy to sit on your hand for a while, Bigger ones don't appreciate being picked up but they aren't too bothered by the presence of people. I picked him up and took a quick snap before sending it on it's way, though now I'm wondering what else I'm going to come home to... Gotta love living in Australia, where if an animal doesn't kill you, it'll move in with you...

Little Green Friend

 This one was taken about 5 minutes ago, outside my back door. It's just stopped raining, and I spotted this little green tree frog on my window so I went outside to take a photo (I take photos of tons of random things). When I tried to focus on him though, it got a bit startled and decided that my chest was a good place to just sit for a while. So I handed the camera to my girlfriend to take the shot. I hadn't changed the settings, so the photo is a little grainy due to the higher ISO setting.

Unfortunately, these little frogs are becoming pretty rare. Cane Toads are a pest here and have had a massive impact on their numbers. Though, on hot, humid and wet nights, you might see one hanging around your house. Sorry about the lower quality cropped photo below, but it too awesome to not post that chilled out pose. I hope you like it anyway!

Mild tempered wildlife

Sometimes you get the opportunity to go somewhere that has wildlife that isn't too worried about people. Luckily for me, there's plenty of places like this in Australia. These couple of photos are of a Curlew which was part of family I found. I was able to get within inches of this one, It just laid still as if it were wary of me but unlike Curlews normally do, it didn't worry about me enough to run off.

I had no idea how brightly coloured their eyes were until now, and although they aren't the most colourful or active birds, they still have a pretty interesting personality. the reason why I couldn't get a photo of the other parent or the young Curlew was because they were way too intrigued by what on earth my camera was and why it kept making noises, and they wouldn't stay still (apparently, camera lenses look edible to a Curlew).
Next time I'm out that way though I will try to take a few of the younger one anyway, but I don't like my chances of it not running around like a maniac...