Bokeh play: Wild Flowers

Bokeh: Wild Flowers
f/8, 1/320s, Tamron 1:1 90mm macro lens, Nikon D80

This must have been one of the longest hiatus I've taken. Not that I've been keeping away from taking photographs, but I'm just been not having time to update this photo blog. It's important to me, but it's not on the top of my list of a gazillion of things to do.

This photo is taken from a large collection of photos from the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens. I'll try and put some of the nicer photos from that collection on this blog soon :)

This is currently my desktop background - I love the bokeh on this photo - the blurred flowers in the background. The colors were deliberately vivid - I wanted some bright spots of colors to contrast the usually drabby skies this time of the year.

You get best bokeh when you use a wider aperture - basically, you get very shallow Depth of Field. I used f/8, hardly the smallest aperture (this lens is capable of f/2.8), but that's because I wanted to get a balance of vivid colors and bokeh. The shallower your DOF, the less vivid your colors usually turn out to be.

Hope you all enjoy it ! Happy New Year !! Here's to a year of good photography !

Wallaby, baby !

Look at me, I'm a Wallaby !
f/5.6, 1/30s, Nikon D80

I visited the Ku-rin-gai Chase National Park in North Sydney, soaking up the sights of the beautiful West Head lookout, and enjoying some very nice bush walking. One thing about bush walking or hiking that I learnt a long time ago is to never keep your camera away, because just about anything can happen, or appear !

In this case, while looking out towards the Pacific ocean from the West Head lookout, I suddenly spotted movement under me (the lookout was perched on a very steep cliff). Turned out there was a wild wallaby roaming around, and it wasn't camera shy at all !!

However, like all wild animals, they are usually wary of humans, and you do need to keep distance from them. I used my maximum zoom, and tried to move very slowly, minimizing my movements, but keeping myself in his plain view at all time.

You do need to know how to approach wild animals in different parts of the world. In Australia, wild kangaroos and wallabies actually hop off when you approach quietly and try to hide - this is because that's how hunters would approach them - quietly, and hopefully for the hunters, in stealth. You may have better success when you move slowly, talk a little and not try to hide yourself. Of course, this won't be how you'll approach some other animals.

And like all wild animal shots, it's really a case of taking as many photos as you can so that you maximize your chance of getting the money shot. I didn't get the money shot this time around, but I think this is still a pretty decent picture !