A wander through Belair National Park

This afternoon I found myself without anything to do, so with the nice weather I went for a walk into the Belair National Park, with the view to try and take some half decent wildlife shots that I could submit to a photography competition.  

The national park is only 100m from my house, and it's great to have somewhere to walk through where you can see kangaroos, cockatoos, koalas, parrots, lorikeets, ducks, water hens and emus to name a few just going about their daily business.

Here's a few of the animals and birds I found today.

1 Day Photography Workshop

I have had an interest in photography for a number of years, and whilst I've taken the odd good photo on my travels I've never really known what I was doing. Since my last holiday I've been looking at doing a photography course, and finally decided to do a 1 day workshop through +Chris Bray Photography with one of my best friends on March 23 at the Adelaide Zoo.

The day was a full on 9 hours, but a good mix of theory and practice that allowed us to test ourselves on what we had learnt.  Our first practical out in the Zoo was to capture something with a shallow depth of field and then with a deep depth of field.  Then we tested out the effects of shutter speed.   We were also shown how using a shallow depth of field and focusing on an animal in the cage, could blur out the wires, enabling the animal to appear out in the open.

Nikon D3100 62mm  f/4.2  1/640s  ISO 800 

Nikon D3100  62mm  f/22  1/25s  ISO 800

Nikon D3100  55mm  f/4  1/250s  ISO 100

Nikon D3100  55mm  f/22,  1/6s,  ISO 100   +0.7 step

After that, it was back to the classroom to learn about composition, framing and lighting before going out "on assignment" to take a portrait photo for use on the cover of the Australian Geographic.  The prize for the best photo of the group being a Lowepro Camera Bag.  There was not a bad photo in the competition, and sadly I went home without the bag.  Below are a few of the photo's I took on the day.

The first photo is the one I chose for the competition.

In hindsight, this is the photo I wish I had used.

Other photo's taken on the day:

Finally, to end the day with a bit of fun, we were shown how to paint with light.  Using a darkened room and a laserlight on the wall with the shutter speed set to 10 sec, this was the result.