Russell Pike Landscape Photography

Pemberton, Walpole, Albany and Esperance are a few places we have been and seen. Pemberton’s known for its Karri woodland and they sure do have a lot of it. The highlight would be scaling the Gloucester tree. A once an upon a time manned fire lookout. 8 hours a day workers would be scanning for smoke 60 meters up from forest floor level, perched on a swaying platform with only the birds for company. It was interesting reading the journal a lady left behind while posted there in the 50’s. She wrote “I find it very relaxing” can’t be a bad way to spend your days surely?

I emptied my pockets and started to climb. The iron pegs are slammed in every 12 inches, twisting its way around the trunk as they go to form a spiral staircase. The Karri has accepted the iron pegs as branches where the bar meets the trunk; this was defiantly making a tight pinch. The pegs are sticking out about 800mm so as it curves around the tree the outside corner has wide gaps, wide enough to fit your body through that’s for sure. On top of that it was near vertical going at some points, I started to see why know one else was giving it ago. Once at the top the view’s where epic with the native bird’s up-close, at ease and plentiful. I could relate to the lady’s quote and I had only been there up the 5 minutes.

Walpole, I mention this quite little town for a foody reason, at the time we was there it was Kara’s birthday, so we had a pricey breakfast at a café called top deck. It turned out to be one of the best full English’s we’ve ever had. To think the Holy Grail would be in Australia??? Funny one that.

 Albany and Esperance were great. The water colour at these places is so blue and a joy to surf in, well for Kara to surf in. It didn’t get over 2ft so we got the wetties on and I propelled her into the peaky waves. She’s got the trimming down on lefts and right and almost snagged a barrel. She claimed a back flip into the flats when I wasn’t watching, I’m not so sure about that one though. There’s just too much to mention really, I wouldn’t be on holiday if I was to write it all here.

But we have crossed the mighty Nullarbor now which was defiantly different. Put it this way I’ve never drove 90 miles in a straight line before. I set my big’un up bottomed out at 400mm and shoot down the straight and I can tell you that it appears all transport when faced with 90miles of flat straight road; take off into the sky. I was a little gutted when it didn’t happen to us.

A few shots of the Koalas at Blanket Bay for you. These lazy tree hugging bears are the funniest animals you could ever come across. We want one!

Who wants a cuddle?

When he lost his patience with me.

Lunch with the Welcome Swallows 

While doing the tourist thing at the Spilt lighthouse on The Great Ocean Road (Famous for its role in “Round the Twist”) we noticed three small birds sat on a post. Then every minute or two they would all chirp and make hell of a racket as other birds tried to thief a spot on their beloved stump. It was all happening amazingly fast, blink and you miss it fast. I took a shot on the compact as the three birds sat there looking around completely going for that “three birds sat on a post” nice little snap for the book kind of shot. But you know how slow compact camera are, by the time the shutter tripped I got these results back. All was clear. This was the luckiest shot ever.

The sown seed 

So out came the big camera and I sat crossed legged on the edge of the path with my 100-400mm pointed right at the post owner’s house. I just hoped that if they had come out they would give me a chance to explain. By this time they were now perched on little wooden batons. What a funny world birds live in, I sat there for an hour glued to my viewfinder totally oblivious to my surrounding photographing these three so called “young” Welcome Swallows. To say how fast it all happens is pretty easy. My camera shoots 3 frame per second, the sun was high the shutter speed was fast. It was defiantly performing at 3fps. While shooting like this I would get these results.

1st Photo: The parent’s beak in the edge of the frame.
2nd Photo: The parent feeding. (9/10 in an unpleasing fashion e.g. Wings smoothing the young so you can’t see a thing.
3rd Photo: The parent leaving the frame.

(I would have the photos hear to show you but I was shooting on a 95% full card. I was deleting the gross to make way for the winners when they came along, Lesson to be learnt here, always back up your images after the session.

The Harvest

Granted I got some shots in the end. But it’s the same with skateboarding, BMX and surf photography, your chances of nailing that crucial moment always seem to fall somewhere between you camera’s ability. Now I’m not suggesting I have Jedi reflex’s as it took me the best part of an hour to get these images but sometimes its better not to rely on your FPS and put the time in for getting lucky, after all I got the first fluky shot with a compact.

Ah, that’s the spot

Pharrrrrp!

Don’t eat me you Plonker

The other shots are in between feedings, they pulled out some funny poses. Then it all finished with a big black  crow swooping over the garden sending the seemingly “young” into the sky like veterans, “If they can fly like that, surely they don’t need help with there food” I thought.