The Tour continues its way down through Wyoming to the famous Yellowstone Park. This national wonder will need some days to fully do it justice photographically….and all the images here on this entry are from within the park. Prior arrangements have been made to stay at the Northern end for a few days and then move on to the Western side so the group can see most of the natural wonders on offer, and have time to photograph them. By day seven, although its all so spectacular, many in the group say they are almost geysered out! Some highlights include, the Mammoth springs area, Biscuit Basin, Old faithful, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Upper and lower Falls, Tower Roosevelt, Midway Basin, Artists paint pots and Norris Geyser Basin. We also encountered a variety of animals and will be featured in the next entry of this blog.

Glacier National Park sits high up in Montana next to the Canadian Border.  The Photographic Group spent a few days here exploring both sides of the park.  Of particular interest is the wonderful reflections on Lake McDonald, and were lucky enough with the weather in the afternoon. The Cedar Rainforest and Many Glacier sections were wonderful too. Whitefish River and the Whitefish Lake were of interest as well.  We tried to catch the Sunset over the lake but it fizzled out, so instead many in the group tried their hand at slow exposures with some interesting results.

Canyons and Falls was the theme right from the start on this wonderful Photographic Tour of the American Rockies. We started out from Salt Lake City and headed up into Idaho and stayed at Twin Falls. Here the Snake River drops over the Shoshone Falls in quite a spectacular fashion (when its really running) We then headed up through the lovely and scenic Idaho mountains into Washington State. The Palouse region was impressive with old Barns, new cropped farmland and intriguing contours. The amazing Palouse Falls was impressive too and we spent a few hours here working the light.

A lovely colourful dawn greeted us as we walked down the steps of the coastal pathway. This dawn shoot was to complete the 2013 Creative course, so all participants were invited to attend at Cape Schanck for a practical lesson. Valuable instruction on using Grad filters, Depth-of-field, the use of ND filter techniques and working the “dream Sequence” were all demonstrated and put into practise by all those who came. 

Galleries and Green space is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of our nation’s capital. Spent a couple of days in and around Canberra last week. Sunny days and great weather. Not much for Landscape photography, but there is always something to shoot. I had wanted to see the Turner exhibition out from the Tate Gallery in London, and was the main reason for the trip here. In a word…Superb. Did the rounds of some other galleries including our National library. Rallied myself one morning for a climb up to Mount Ainslie on the track behind the National War memorial. Great views and shot a couple of Panorama’s. Practised Sunstars and midday photography, and enjoyed the few days of relative recreation. Managed to see one morning of mist and came across a lovely old derelict building standing all forlorn near the Yass River.

Just back from another very successful workshop on the magnificent Norfolk Island. 10 Participants spent the week photographing magical light from the break of dawn and sometimes into the night as a few hardy folk accompanied me down to Kingston for some star-trails on two occasions. Valuable instruction was given to all on the use of hypo-focal distance, depth of field and the creation of some wonderful panoramic images. The weather was wonderful and we had almost the whole week basking in glorious sunshine with some fluffy clouds and sweet winter light throughout the day. No doubt all who came this year will spend many many hours sorting through their photographs and working on them in photoshop. My thanks to all the group, who were a lovely bunch and special thanks  to Roger Vass who managed to catch me on the coastline doing my usual stunts to get that image!  I will be running another workshop to Norfolk Island in early August 2014 and hope to have the dates on the blog (under the drop-down menu “workshops”) very soon…If you are interested please email me for further information.

Portraits with a difference… Just before leaving the UK my daughter found out about a place that looks after abandoned and injured birds of prey and so welcomed the opportunity to spend some time there. The amount of people who think they can keep animals like this in their homes and look after them properly astounds me. The UK animal laws are ridiculous and basically you can almost keep anything as a pet. Thank goodness Australia have sensible laws about this at least. It was wonderful to see the birds in recovery mode with many of them happy to fly around and perform aerobatics in the process of being fed. It was the birds faces in close-up I was interested in as you don’t get many chances to see them up fairly close with no wires or mesh. Used the Olympus OMD-5 and the 75-300mm lens for all these images.

A Summer Dawn... It appears England is overdue for a decent summer, and it’s arrived, in full swing. At least 14 days of high twenties and clear blue skies and scattered clouds are forecast and we are into day five with the forecast on track and accurate. The nights get very cool when the sun at last disappears over the horizon, and I anticipated a fine morning with quite a bit of mist around. I had pre-selected some locations I wanted to photograph at first light and so was at the first area tripod at the ready about 5am. The following images are just a small selection of a set I took in five different locations over a period of 90 minutes…to say I worked fast and hard is an under-statement! The light was magic and I was in my element. England never seems to disappoint the landscape photographer.