Sensational Summer Sunrise Show

On Tuesday morning, well before sunrise, I noticed a touch of colour in the sky through the bedroom window. I always leave the curtains open so I can keep an eye on anything of interest that might develop in the sky and this time I'm glad I did. I quickly grabbed my gear and jumped in the car as the colour started to increase, and made it around to the north western corner of Lake Wendouree, where I found a spot that offered some great foreground interest to go with the continually increasing colour show. The first image here was taken at 6.03am, the last at 6.12 am - well before the actual sunrise and when the colour was at its most intense and they show how quickly the colour can change from the deep reds and purples into the more golden yellow and oranges. And very nice of those 2 swans to come floating by just at the right time!
Undoubtedly one of the best sunrise shows I've witnessed for quite a while...this is the reason I keep heading out with the camera everyday...sometimes the rewards are spectacular!
It's well worth clicking on these for a larger look, but make sure you have your sunglasses on!

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High, Warm and Cool

A couple of very different subjects on Monday....
I was sitting outside at lunchtime and I noticed we had a very nice sun halo forming right above me, so I quickly grabbed a few images...always an impressive sight when you get the complete circle. One thing I found interesting when I looked at the images was the fact that the sun is not exactly centred in the ring...anyone now the science behind this?
And later in the day I popped out to the Bo Peep Creek near Lake Burrumbeet to see if the flow from last weeks rain was still up, and there was a nice flow that let me capture a couple of nice warm and cool images, mainly due to the difference in light as the sun was setting and the ambient glow was quickly changing.

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Sunday Sunset

When I left the house on Sunday evening I had plans to head west, however the lack of clouds in that direction swayed me to head in the opposite direction where there were some great banks of clouds waiting for the sunset. I managed to get out to around Mt Warrenheip and after carefully watching the clouds I chose a spot that I felt would make the most of the fast moving clouds. This old shed is a regular subject and you can see why...it makes a great point of interest when the clouds are building up behind it.

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Contrasts

Two very contrasting locations from Saturdays photo shoots. I was down in Melbourne and I caught this view looking up the Yarra River from the Spencer Street bridge around 5pm. I find the images of cityscapes always work well in black and white, as was the case here. Then later in the evening I popped out to Lake Burrumbeet for the sunset, most notable for this trio of spoonbills that flew past.

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Westerlies

I knew when I headed west on Friday evening that the clouds were going to kill any great sunset chances, though I still managed to capture some nice sun rays breaking through the clouds out at Windermere. And then a bit further on this tree at Bo Peep caught my eye (again!).....if you look closely you can see multitude of birds perched amongst the branches. And then I came home.........!

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Lake Learmonth Levels

After the surprise at finding such low flow at Moorabool Falls on Wednesday evening, I was further surprised to see the vast improvement to the water level at Lake Learmonth on Thursday. Last time I passed here there was hardly any water left, so it was great to see what a couple of days good rain can do so quickly. Quite a range of things to play around with here in a short space of time...."Cracked" is a follow up from one of last years favourite images taken here...it always pays to look in all directions!

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Summer Falls

After the great rain we've had this week, and the big improvement in flow at Birchs' Creek on Tuesday night, I was itching to visit Moorabool Falls to make the most of the conditions. However, it wasn't quite what I expected. In fact it was flowing better last time I was here a a few weeks ago on December 12th. From the look of things I'd say it had completely stopped flowing, and the recent rain was just enough to get things flowing again. As you can see it was still worth the visit as concentrating on the base of the falls gave me some great images to work with and the lesser flow allowed me to get in a lot closer than normal. Looks like we will be needing  a few more days of high rainfall to really get it going again.

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