Familiarity

Back to something a bit more familiar on Thursday - Winter sunrise at Lake Wendouree. A chilly start brought some nice colours on the western side of the lake, always a nice way to start the day.

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Turpins Falls

My first falls to visit on the way home from Shepparton was Turpins Falls, Langley, about 13kms from Kyneton. I had some really nice conditions here...plenty of water, everything was nicely saturated and the low lying mist really helped add to the atmosphere. A very pretty double falls (I've seen images of it as one huge, roaring falls that must be an awesome sight), and access is really good. Great views on the way down and then from the bottom equally impressive...I thought the panorama was a bit different from most views I've seen. I had a cuppa tea in the car park afterwards with an oat bar....very content with the days first stop.

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The Pick of the Trip?

I haven't had chance yet to even look properly at my images from yesterdays return trip from Shepparton. However this one really caught my eye, and it could well turn out to be the best from the entire trip (in my opinion, of course!!). 
My last stop on the way home was to Dyers Falls, just outside of Glenlyon. I have made a few visits in the past to Loddon Falls without realising that if you keep going out further north from there, there is another falls on Dyers Creek. It was quite easy to find, in fact easier than getting down to Loddon Falls. I scrambled around quite a bit here and it was this image upstream of the falls that really caught my eye. Conditions were ideal for this sort of photography and I knew as I was framing this up that it had a lot of potential. I've seen similar images from the Scottish Highlands, nice to find this so close to home.
Don't worry...I'll get to all the new waterfall images soon!

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Waterfalling Road Trip Day 1 part 2

On Tuesdays trip up to Sheapparton I made 3 more stops after the previous 2 at Sailors Falls and Trentham Falls. Next on the list was Turitable Falls in Stanley Park in Macedon. Quite a decent height, I'd say around 20-25 feet with some good flow. However it wa quite messy with broken branches, tree trunks everywhere so this image is more of a close-up of the lower section. 
After this it was on to Strath Creek Falls in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Some fantastic scenery around this part of Victoria that I was totally unaware of. This waterfall is well known as being a subject for well known colonial painter Eugene Von Guerard back in the 1860's so I was keen to see it in person. The view you get from the standard spot is a lot higher up than Von G's - I did clamber over the fence and move a bit further down and to the left for this view of the falls which must be a least 150-200 feet (can't seem to find a height anywhere on the internet). I'd love to go back and hike down to the base, hard to imagine how Von G did it so long ago. 
Last stop was the Traawool Falls just south of Seymour. Unfortunately the directions in my waterfall book were a bit vague and I couldn't find this one, though I found some nice cascades - in this one if you notice that brightly coloured tree branch on the left side that looks a bit roughed up....thats where I slipped and the left foot went under...totally drenched but none the worse for wear. 
So all up a great day with more to come the next day.

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Road Trip Water

I'm sitting in the motel in Shepparton writing this after driving up here from Ballarat yesterday. Though it rained all day, I still managed to visit the waterfalls I had planned on seeing....here's just a couple that I visited early on in the day. First up is Sailors Falls just south of Daylesford ..... some really nice flow on both sides enabled me to catch a view I haven't been able to get before, and some nice low lying mist really helped with the mood. Then it was on to Trentham Falls, one of Victoria's most well known falls. Usually the views you see from here are looking directly at the falls so I was looking for something a little bit different and found this nice view looking down into the gorge over the edge of the falls. I did visit 2 more falls, and a nice river cascade at Traawool (I couldn't find the falls there that as the directions in my waterfall book weren't too clear) - I'll get to them next and add on some more from todays trip back to Ballarat.

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An Epic Morning on Mt Warrenheip

As I predicted in yesterdays post, the conditions on Monday morning were spectacular. Knowing there was a big fog on the way I decided to head out to Mt Warrenheip for the sunrise so that I could get up high and have an overall vista of all that unfolded. This series starts at 7.22am with the pre-dawn and follows through til 8.04am. Once the sun crested the horizon the colours across the fields were incredibly intense, and even as the sun rose higher and the intensity started to wane, the conditions with the lingering fog were still quite magical. I usually try and keep my posts down to about 4 images, but this was something special that deserves to be shared. And this lot were all taken with the Canon 6D and 100-400mm lens....I'm still to work my way through the images I took with my new Sony A7R - and then there were a couple of stops on the way home that I'll try to get to soon as they were pretty special as well!
I'm off to Shepparton on Tuesday morning for a camera club judging and presentation, and I've worked out a bit of a waterfall tour on the way up and back the next day, so I'll have some nice images to share from that in the next few days.
PS.....really worth clicking not his set for a bigger look!

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22 Minutes of Magic

I knew the Supermoon would be setting just around sunrise on Sunday morning and fortunately the weather came to the party and really helped out. I made it just in time to grab the first image here, and 22 minutes later the sun finally rose above the trees to light the sheds. It was about  minus 2 degrees, no wind and a great morning to be out early, as I'm sure Jeannie will agree!
Forecast is for another foggy start to Monday morning.....I've got a very strong feeling its going to be spectacular!

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