Sunrise at Lake Burley Griffin

 Today I got up early to photography the balloon festival at Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra.  Unfortunately the launch got cancelled, but as I was already dressed and ready to go I decided to head down there anyway.

There weren't any balloons, so I had to be content with some pictures of the sunrise.  The big decision was whether I should show the slight wave action or blur it with a long exposure.   I think the long exposure ones looked a bit better.

It was interesting to see how the colours changed as the sun peeked over the horizon.

 

 I took both my OM Systems OM-5 and my Canon 70D thinking that I would use both and compare the results.  However, after using the OM-5 for the past year, the Canon felt so large and bulky I found I wasn't enjoying using it.  I've also got used to composing the image using the rear screen on the OM-5 whereas with the Canon I almost always used the eyepiece, so this felt rather strange.

 

 

 

 

Climbing Mt Majura

 This is a small mountain in Canberra - the equivalent of a 44 story building from the carpark to the summit.  On the top is the major approach radar for the Canberra region.

It takes about an hour to climb to the top and it's a pleasant and not dangerous climb.  There are no cliffs to fall off.  You'll need water and good shoes as the trail can be quite steep in parts.

Today I took my OM-5 with a 40-150mm telephoto lens as its one of my lighter lenses.  The downside was that I often had to move back quite a lot to get the image I wanted into the frame.

At the bottom

View half way up

The gradient you are climbing

View from the top

Trig station at the very top

Heading back down

Spring Blossom

 I went for a walk yesterday to capture some Spring blossom.   I only took my OM05 with a18mm f1.8 lens as I wanted the challenge of not using a zoom.  

There's a lot of blossom around at the moment, but it seems to not last very long - the flowers in the full sun are already starting to dry out and wither and this is only the first day of Spring.

I wanted to include the sun that was backlighting the flower.

This one I wanted to contrast against the blue sky

You can't forget the wattle as well

Trees on the golf course in blossom

Little Mullligans

 This is a nature reserve close to the Mulligans Flat nature reserve. While not as large as Mulligans Flat, it seems to offer a wider variety of scenery to photograph.

I particularly like the fact that there aren't any prepared trails through the reserve, so you have to find your own path through the reserve.  This means that when climbing the ridge, you have to plan your path to avoid the more dangerous ground.  According to my smartwatch the climb to the top of the ridge is the equivalent of about 20 stories.

We hadn't had any rain for a while

There isn't a lot of scrub to fight through

Some of the dams still held water for the wildlife

Tree sap illuminated by the sun

The view from the ridge line

The border with NSW - the state to our north.

Heading down from the ridgeline

Molonglo River Park

 Time to restart this blog!  It's only been 10 years since I last posted.

Today I went for a walk in the Molonglo River Park.   I wanted to see it in Autumn on a nice cloudy day because it's hard to capture a nice forest when there's bright dappled sunlight around.   For the first half of the walk, it was nicely overcast but then the sun came out and made it more difficult to take photos.

Photos were taken using an OM System OM-5 with a 12-100 f4 pro zoom.

Next time I'll explore the riverbank rather than the forest.

Night photography

Last night I decided to see if could get some different night shots.

I went down to the Lake, and there was a fog starting over the water.  This explains the white misting beyond the pier.  Unfortunately some folks turned on some flood lights which ruined any further photos from this location.

But just as the fog was getting heavier I took a photo upwards.   You can see how the floodlighting illuminated the growing fog.

I moved to a nearby dam which, to my surprise, had lights illuminating the dam walls.  This had an interesting effect on the fog.  I wanted to try and get a picture of car rear lights disappearing into the fog, and this was the best of the bunch because most of the time there was a car approaching which ruined the effect.

A zoomed-out view of the road over the dam.

From the same place I could see the Black Mountain communication tower, with the car traffic nearby illuminating the fog.

It was well below zero, so I decided to cut the evening short, but as I got to my car I caught this view looking over the zoo that seems to have been well lit.