A Walk in the Creek

On Sunday afternoon I took a couple of fellow photographers out to Birch's Creek at Smeaton. I'm a regular visitor here and I thought it was a great place to share so they could have a play around with some running water images before they head off on a trip to the outback in a week or so. Whilst I've been here many times, I thought I'd take the opportunity to look for interesting reflections as the light was great. So this is my selection from a walk, literally, in the creek!

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Moon, Sun, Moon

After 4 days of grey skies and rain, some great autumn weather returned on Saturday. I spent most of the day in Melbourne, but still had time to slip out to Lake Burrumbeet's south shore for a fantastic end to the day. The moon is looking great as we head into a total eclipse of the full moon on Tuesday evening, and that sunset was a killer! The sand bars at the Lake are really giving me fantastic opportunities lately…I'll almost be sorry to see the lake fill up again!

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Bullarook or Birch's?

Though the official name of this creek location is the Bullarook Creek Streamside Reserve, out past Kingston, if you follow the creek downstream into Smeaton it changes name to Birch's Creek. On Friday afternoon it seemed like a good choice for a visit as the good rain we've had in the last few days has certainly helped the flow…and it was a good chance to try out my new gumboots (the left foot on my previous pair had sprung a leak!).

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Filling the Lake

On Thursday the grey wet conditions continued….at least its not too cold, in fact its been very humid, perfect conditions for running around Lake Wendouree. With some major rowing regattas coming to Ballarat this year, including the World Masters later in the year, there is a determined effort to ensure the level of the lake doesn't fall, so they have a program to bring in water from outlying wetlands areas. On the south east shore of the lake is one of the inlet pipes that I pass on my runs, and the volume of water that comes is quite powerful….and makes for a nice watery abstract.

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A Couple of Cascades at the MB3

The rain really set in late in the day on Wednesday as I made my way out to the Madame Berry No. 3 old gold mine site north of Creswick. I knew the steady rainfall would have saturated the site, really adding to the depth of colours in the many varied textures on this amazing site. I found a couple of nice little cascades to play around with - the colour of the water quite intense from all the run-off. Not an easy place to walk around in due to the heavy mudpack everywhere, but well worth the effort.

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Making Something Out of Nothing

On Tuesday we had some welcome rain - all day! Generally not the sort of conditions that tempts photographers outside, but little reason to stop me heading off to see what I could find. I really like going out in challenging conditions as it improves my skills in finding images so that when I'm away from home I can still come home with something worthwhile. And this image today from Birch's Creek out near Smeaton is a great example of working with the conditions. Some nice autumn colours all around, and the lower flow in the creek enabled me to don the gumboots and get right into the creek.
Plenty more rain forecast this week……hopefully soon the waterfalls may get going again!

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A Great Start to the Week

I'm glad I made the effort on Monday morning to get up for the sunrise. Out the window at home I spotted a touch of colour appearing in the sky, so I jumped out of bed and made my way up to St Patrick's Point at Lake Wendouree. With limited compositional opportunities fro this spot (I didn't go around to my usual location as the light was changing so quickly) I think I came home with a nice selection ….. and as you can see, the colour was awesome! There's 5 minutes between the 3 shots. By late afternoon the weather greyed up into a dull, dreary end to the day, so that early rise (even earlier now that we are back to normal time) really paid off.

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