Surprise guests

I've been hearing some birds bicker outside the balcony for a few weeks but never bothered to check as I didn't really want to encourage the curiosity of the cats...

On Saturday I was out watering the cat grass when I spotted Shadow crouched really low and looking intensely at something...I glance across and there they were, a pair of beautiful rainbow lorikeets feasting on the nameless fruiting plant right outside my balcony! They were vibrantly coloured and the fruits they were feasting on were bright red which complemented their blue/green feathers beautifully.

I rushed inside to get my camera and moved quietly to the edge of the balcony trying not to scare the birds while I took the photos (although they looked very comfortable even in the presence of 2 cats staring at them). Below are some of the shots I took while there were still enough light.

These creatures sure know how to pose~ Although I hope they wipe their beaks after eating a bit more often :D

Hopefully I'll get to see them again this weekend ^_^

Daliah Centre Crop

Out of all my photos I've taken during this month, the one I'm most pleased with is the daliah...

It is extremely difficult to keep the photos focused while using a macro lens without tripod...no matter how still you think you are, you will still see blurring in parts of the photo when you view it at 100% size on a big monitor.

The reason I love this photo is that it was really quite sharp even at 100% which is rare (most probably due to sheer luck)

Below is a centre crop of the same photo at 100%

Photos again

Although I've been inactive on the blog, I was still shooting photos as much as I could. We've had a few rainy and windy days in Sydney right after Easter holiday and photo shooting was made quite difficult.

Even though I had a few lucky days where I managed to capture a small dragonfly and a few nice shots of the daliahs, most of the photos from my visits didn't turn out too great to make the blog cut...

I finally managed to pull out 5 photos that I'm reasonably happy with for a few reasons and here they are ^_^

Sniff sniff, it's Echo!

I tried to take some cat photos last week. All of Shadow's were ruined as he couldn't keep still...I think he doesn't like being photographed much so it's his way of avoiding it...

Echo on the other hand was such a charm to photograph, she usually stays put in a posture for a few minutes allowing me to adjust settings etc.

I'm happy I was able to get a clear shot of her nose~ =^.^=

After a long pause

I've been ooa from the blog for a few weeks now. I haven't been able to take great photos the last few sessions, the photos ended up either too dark or too grainy. One thing I blame on was the weather, we had a few cloudy days here which didn't help with nature photos. It also took me some time getting use to the new 60mm lens which I'm still really glad that I got.

The session we did last week was quite good, I ended up with some shots that I'm happy about so I'm finally back again blogging ^_^

Hopefully the weather will hold this week at least during my photo sessions so I can continue to update the blog on a weekly basis...

Back to our usual route

Back to lotus, waterlilies and a crysanthemum ^_^

The weather has been really unpredictable lately, I kept needing to change the settings on my camera as I walk around the garden. I guess it is all part of practice though

We found a blooming lotus in the waterlily pond. It's great that for the first time ever we were able to get up close to the lotus and capture the texture of its petals...the only imperfection is that it's in such a small pond, it is impossible to blur out the background (a building wall) during composition...

Hope to capture something exotic next week~

New flowers for the new year

We had a rainy Monday last week and as a result we were able to capture waterlilies and lotus leaves covered by raindrops, I am always amazed at the perfection of these sparkling creations.

Thanks to the extremely hot weather on Friday, we persuaded ourselves to visit the Tropical Gardens within the Royal Botanic Garden. There is a $5.50 pp fee but by the time we walked out, we both felt the gardens were definitely worth the cost.

The abundance of flora within the tropical gardens took us by surprise. We both agreed we should go there again to do a proper session...