Deceptive Woods

Why deceptive? This image excludes anything man-made: one would be forgiven for thinking I was in the depths of a forest when I took this frame, and that’s somewhat true, as the whole region is heavily forested. But there was a town’s main street just behind me. These trees are above the carpark at Aldgate, in the Adelaide Hills, where a walking trail begins, leading a few kilometres to Mylor. The main road, carrying the weight of through-traffic, is below and behind my POV; sun through trees is a favourite theme and composition of mine. This frame was captured on the 15^th of April, 2017. Some minor adjustments were made: colour was increased a little, and gamma correction was used to pull out mid-tone detail from the otherwise harsh contrast. Image by Mike.

 

Sun in the Green Wood

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There is something very old-world about this image, as if Robin Hood and his band might appear at any moment, or a couple of Hobbits and a walking tree... The light and composition just begged to be recorded, the way the foreground tree is in silhouette against the direct sun beyond. It has the feel of Larinaga's production drawings for King Kong, in 1931, as he designed a primeval jungle in layers of contrast to register clearly on black and white film. This was taken at Loftier Gardens, the beautiful park just over the summit of the hills east of Adelaide, in late April 2009, an afternoon of contrasts as the exotics made patches of vibrant colour all over the park. The exposure latitiude of the chip is excellent, capturing foreground detail while only fractionally burning out the background. Colour saturation and sharpness were slightly enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Noisy Miner

This bloke is called a Noisy Miner. It's a type of honey-eater. They normally don't let you get too close, but I was able to get about 5 feet away from him/her. I was concerned that the miner would fly away so I just left the Fuji 6500 on auto. Took about 20 quick shots before s/he flew away, and this one turned out the best of all. Gotta love filmless photography! photo by dave

MY branch!

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I do like to take parrot pictures. Maybe because there are so many wild ones around here and I never saw them back in Alaska. This was taken early in the morning and the sun was just up. The sun was shining directly at the landing cockatoo. I was actually taking pictures of the little rainbow lorikeet that's flying away and tripped the shutter right after this big bloke jumped from a branch about 3 feet behind this one. Guess he just really wanted his picture taken. the Fuji S6500fd does quite good work in these conditions, and I didn't even have the shutter set for high speed pictures. It was manual focus, but everything else was on automatics, and no colour fixing was down in the computer. Very handy camera. Photo by dave.

Twilight in the Wild Wood

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What feelings this image engenders! The gathering night, the frozen, organic gestures of the trees, the subtle play of colours as the light fades... This very atmospheric moment was intensified by being taken on Halloween. Yes, it's the graveyard in Leicester, not the depths of some primal forest. I tracked up to exclude most headstones (there are two at lower right, and two others masked by the cloaks of ivy that have grown over them) and framed a spectacular sky amongst the ancient trees in this early winter scene. The sun is in the picture but there's no strength to its light at this latitude, and the time is around 4pm. The cemetery stands in the midst of a busy city but here the camera has captured what could be native woodland far from any human habitation. The image was mildly enhanced, a little gamma-correction to bring up medium tonal values, rebalanced with contrast, plus tweaks to colour saturation and sharpness, these functions performed in Irfanview software. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. November, 2007. Image by Mike.