Lake Burrumbeet Variety

After a grey and drizzly day, Friday finally cleared up for quite a nice sunset out at Lake Burrumbeet where I captured quite a range of different images over a short space of time. The tree was my first stop just before you get to the lake, and shooting straight into the sun always yields some very strong colours and contrasts. The constantly changing shoreline once again delivered a nice image, as did the high flying pelicans coming along right on schedule at sunset. A couple of final images of the horizon with some great bands of colour sent me home happy with the evenings work.

7/4.12

Glengower Glory

On Thursday I went out around 3.30pm, well before my usual time. I had a feeling that with all this unsettled weather around I may be able to track down some nice conditions, and ended up almost at Glengower, about 35kms north of Ballarat, I found a great spot to watch this massive storm move through. My first stop over this bedraggled field of canola gave me a view of what was up ahead and further up the same road a wide open view of the storm with a perfectly placed foreground element kept me there for quite awhile. After leaving here it was nice to get to drive through some torrential rain for a short while, my first chance to do that for a long time!

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Mountain Magic

A touch of pink in the sky early on Wednesday morning had me racing out the door and heading east over to Mt Warrenheip where I could see another fog bank moving through. I decided half way up the side of the mountain would be a good spot as, though I was in amongst the fog, I realised if I could get up above it I would get some nice aerials over the top of the mountain. This series covers around 17 minutes flight time and shows a great range of changing conditions and colours.

7/4.13

Plover Playtime

You may recall  a few weeks back I posted about a group of baby wood ducks with their mum that I helped cross Wendouree Parade here in Ballarat so that they could get over to Lake Wendouree.
On Tuesday afternoon I had another exciting baby bird encounter.....
Across the street from us there is a large grass block that has a high fence around, and we've had a new family of 4 plovers for a few days now. Yesterday they decided to make their way out under the fence to the street, most likely to get some water from the gutter that has enough small puddles to quench their thirst. Mum (or dad) was out with them, Dad (or mum) stayed back on the other side of the fence. So we spent quite some time watching them, they are amazingly tiny, though one of them was noticeably larger than the others. We were a bit concerned about them getting on to the road, so we did our best to marshall them back under the fence to the safe haven on the other side. However, the large base of the fence was just a bit too high for 3 of them (the big fella made it OK!) so we eventually constructed a few little steps for them to make the big climb back. It took quite a bit of waving of hands and arms, and at one stage Dad made a charge at me that had me fleeing with camera in hand! Happy to report they all made it back and I'm sure that the rain that is falling as I write this will keep them on the other side of the fence!
So here's a few images from a fun diversion from the normal days activities...how cute do these guys look!!

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Late Lake Colour

A great end to the day on Tuesday up at Lake Wendouree when, after finding a nice group of swans, some late colour in the sky added a really nice touch to the newly refurbished fountain in the south east corner of the lake....whilst I was set up in front of the fountain it turned off, so now I know exactly when thats going to happen in future.....8.10pm! 

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Mondays Meanderings

Following the light on Monday evening took me down to Bo Peep and the south side of Lake Burrumbeet. In the morning I'd had a tip off about a nice old ruins that might be worth a look, and without too much trouble I found it just on sunset when some nice clouds were floating by. I'll be very interested to find out the history, its quite an elaborate building with a church feel about it in quite a remote spot. Though this series looked nice in colour I felt they were all worth a black and white conversion.

6/4.17

Bale Time

I've had my eye on this paddock for a while as the recently harvested bales offered some great potential. On Sunday evening I was headed out to Lake Burrumbeet however I realised the sun was going to find a a gap in the clouds to light up the landscape just before sunset, so I waited it out and came home with a great set of images, certainly helped by the great skies. Even the fence and stump on the other side of the road offered me something to work with. There are many, many paddocks full of newly harvested bales around the district at the moment, its a great opportunity to capture some terrific images.
I've added in the last image here to show you how this paddock looked from above exactly 2 weeks ago!

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