Sun Halo Horizon

Here's an extra image from Thursday from late afternoon at Lake Wendouree. I was in the backyard when I noticed the sun halo so I quickly grabbed the camera and raced up to Lake Wendouree to catch this. Seems to be a week of unusual weather atmospherics around the state .......

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Blue Morning Magic

On Thursday I made a big effort to get up for the setting moon at Lake Wendouree, due around 5.30am. I wasn't sure if it would be light enough as sunrise wasn't until about 6.14. Luckily conditions were fantastic with one of the best, smoothest lake surfaces I have ever seen. I then made my way around to the west side of the lake where I found some amazing blue hour conditions....the last of these was taken around 6am, still well before sunrise and are great examples of that blue hour light you can get either before sunrise, or after sunset in the evening. Its always worth getting there early, or staying late. This set is really worth clicking on for a larger look.

10/4.22

Two Falls Trip

A visit down to the Moorabool River West on Wednesday reaped some big rewards. Still plenty of water flow is tempting back to make the most of it, and first I made the hike down to the base of Granite Falls. For the first time in a very long time I had my very wide angle lens on, and you can see from these just how much scope that allows you to capture. After spending time here I couldn't resist a quick visit to the nearby, and upstream, Moorabool Falls. I don't usually like bright sunlight on waterfalls, however on this occasion it really added something extra to the view.

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Morning Moods at Lake Wendouree

After the great sunset the night before on Monday, Tuesday presented me with something very different up at Lake Wendouree. Around 10am there were some spectacular skies brewing that put on quite a show...and from all this dark we had one very brief downpour before it all cleared into quite a warm and sunny day, before greying up for a non-eventful sunset. I thought that first one here would look good in black and white, too.

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From This....To This....To This

With lots of hazy clouds around on Monday evening, I decided to stay close to home and made a visit to Lake Wendouree. Conditions were quite nice 20 minutes or so before the sunset, though it wasn't until about 10 minutes after sunset that it really started to fire up into one of the better sunsets I have seen for quite some time. The colour was in all directions and I was lucky to be in a good position to also get the nearly full moon into the show as well. I was actually tempted to head home a couple of times before the really good colour show, so just another example of being patient.

10/4.24

Mr Birch's Legacy

On Sunday, with the sky looking like it would cloud up, I headed out to a popular spot of mine out at Smeaton. Birch's Creek is running really well after some good localised heavy falls during the week, and the surprising thing about this visit was just how much the bushes have grown up since I was last here. It makes a really nice surrounds above this small cascades. Just as I was finishing up here I could feel a lightening in the sky so I raced back to the car and hit the road just in time to catch a nice end to the weekend looking across to Birch's Hill. The smaller hill on its side down the right hand bottom is the Lord Harry mine, one of the many old gold mines in the district. I'm not 100% sure of who Birch was - he's left his name on a lot of the local landmarks in this area.
And as exciting as these images are (!) the most exciting thing from Sunday was that I booked our next USA trip...we are off to experience winter in Yellowstone National Park at the end of February before moving down to Albuquerque and spending some more time touring a number of the parks there - should be awesome. Try googling Yellowstone in winter for an idea of what we'll be experiencing!

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Windy, Of Course!

On Saturday I finally made it to a location thats been on my list for quite a while. We have another wind farm thats only been up and running for a year or so down south of Ballarat at Mt Mercer. The day was windy (appropriate!) with dark clouds and rain bands moving through all day, and with the occasional break in the clouds to let the sun through, I knew beforehand what sort of images I was looking for. And thats exactly what I got in the first one here. If you like wind farms, this is a nice one to photograph - you can get in really close to some of the towers and as you can see in the second one here, you can get some great views when you line up the towers from a distance. Its nice to add another new location to my Ballarat 42 project, and I'll be returning in the future to get some awesome sunset skies behind the towers.

10/4.27