While you're set up...

After taking pictures of the blood moon, I thought, hey, what the heck, I'm already set up in the front driveway, why not give stars a whirl?

Heaps of light around, and not a great lens, so you are never going to get a brilliant shot, however I was happily surprised by the results - I got many more stars than I was anticipating! And yes, the fancy angle was on purpose.

When there's blood on the moon...

Now that's a bit of an ominous title!

We have had a couple of blood moons recently. The first, I didn't even attempt to photograph, the second, I took my gear up the hill but it was murkey and hazy, and I was feeling lazy.

So when this one came around, I wasn't even going to bother, but I was in the kitchen and my husband came in the front door, all 'quickly have a look at the moon!' so I went out, and realised, you know what? I could shoot that from my driveway - no climbing, no shoes, not much hassle, just tripod up, camera on, point, shoot, bang you're done.

So that's what I did.

Admittedly, it's not a great blood moon shot. Heck, it's not even a good one! But it's a good first attempt, and much better than I was expecting, given the light all around. And not having the correct lens. I believe I shot this with my 18-200mm in the end (set at 200mm) which doesn't give the greatest focus but at least its zoomed as close as I possibly could.

That's right...another dragonfly

But I love them. You want to know why? Because they always fly back to the same spot! Butterflies - you can't tell where those devils are going to next, but dragonflies...they come back to the same spot. So do you know what that means? You can focus your macro on that leaf, or straw or piece of whatever, and your selected dragonfly, if that's where you found him, there is approximately an 80% chance of him coming back. Roughly. It doesn't always work, but it's a lot easier to predict than other insects.

Now, if only I had the presence of mind to get the composition right, we would be set! I hate getting home and realising I've cut wings off....

Classic Pilbara Rocks

Part of my inspiration for chasing the sunset lately is to snap an awesome photo to enter into a Pilbara landscape photography competition.

I don't have the photo yet, but while attempting to capture the right shot, I did capture what I call, classic Pilbara. Which for me is rocks, spinafex, sky and colours.

This is the Pilbara. This is our home right now. Who knows where we will be tomorrow? Let's enjoy today, let's enjoy where we are, make the most of it. That means getting out and taking photos  TODAY.

Sparkles

Where did the concept of sparkles come from?

This is something I have often wondered. Was it the reflection of the waves as the sun rises and sets? Was it small pieces of metalic rocks and gems that shone in the light that caught our eye?

Or perhaps, it was a more common occurrence across all lands, oceans and nations. How water droplets catch the sunlight after rain. Much akin to the rainbow.

When packing up to go on a camping trip after a night of rain, I decided to take the macro out and take some photos of water droplets on the  magnolia out the front of our house.

I tried two things - first, I tried to take a photo of a leaf through a water droplet. This didn't appear to be working at all, when I noticed the early morning sunlight catching on the side of the droplet. I wonder if I can flare that, I thought?

I made the aperture small and the shutter as slow as I could - in this case only 100mm as I was hand holding my camera. The small opening allows less light through, while the slow shutter captures the movement of the light.

It took a lot of experimenting but I finally caught. And caught it in focus none-the-less! What was really cool however, was that while viewing on my laptop, I noticed a leaf was visible in the droplet! Love it when that happens!

Finally, what I love about these photos is that they are unedited. These are as taken. The lesson? I should make the most of early morning light more often!

What was cooler again about this, was that I was able to capture the sparkle in not one but three different colours! How amazing is light? While looking through the camera, the light bouncing into my lens was whole and therefore, white as above. But at other times it was broken, so that it became blue, green, orange and red.

Again, none of these are post-edited.

I would just like to once again marvel at how light works, how it has been created to create all colours imaginable. You cannot imagine a new colour, it's all there in the light, waiting to be reflected, refracted and absorbed to bounce back to provide a huge gamut of colour that is amazing. No camera could capture that.

Once the sunset...

So finally the sunset over the gas plant and I could take some pictures!

I spent a good half hour, trying to get the lights to starburst and twinkle, capture the foreground and the colours of the remaining light in the back.

It was a great challenge, and I felt it worked ok. I would have stayed longer, only the wind decided to pick up and started blowing my tripod over. With the shutter open for 30 seconds or so, it pretty much rendered my picture taking exploits useless!

The other challenge was that one of the gas valves (I think they are valves) decided to flare, so I have a couple of pictures of an overexposed twinkle! I didn't put them up here, because at the end of the day, the composition is pretty boring, but I do like how you can see Withnell Bay in the background, and you have so many colours!

I would just like to point out that impatient me waited patiently for an hour for this photo! And my very kind husband waited patiently at home for me to come home before we had dinner. I am blessed indeed to have the freedom to take these photos after work!

The Sun Still Hasn't Set...

So even after finding a skippy and some awesome little flowers, the sun still hadn't gone down for me to take photos of the gas plant.

So I took photos of the sun. Take that, sun!

There were powerlines in the way though - that's the problem with living in an industrial area. If you want to take photos of industrial stuff, well, you kind of have to, you don't have much choice.

It was a pretty spectacular sunset though, I love it when there is a slight green tinge, and the colours bring out clouds you may not necessarily notice. And the powerlines? Well, they are a nice silhouette. At least that's what I'm telling people.

Now, it would be un-Australian for me not to say this.

But may this photo serve as a reminder of man's ability to generate electricity! (And then inspire you to go and watch The Castle :) )