Woooweeee! Had an absolutely epic shoot over the last weekend. It may have been short, but it sure as hell was sweet!
Unlike most mornings before a shoot, I woke up and contemplated the decision as to whether I wanted to get out of my warm, cosy bed. I was pretty tired after a busy few days and some late nights, so my body was telling me to rest. But did I listen to it? Nah not at all, not when there are photos to be made!
So after arguing with myself in my head, I hopped out of bed and got dressed. After preparing my gear for the day, I picked up my heavy bag with my right hand. As I did this, I accidentally opened up a pretty gnarly cut that I sliced into my hand the day before - blood started pouring all down my arm. After spending a few minutes trying to patch myself up with my left hand, I conceded defeat and had to wake up the wife to help me out!
After all the unnecessary drama, I finally left the house and started to drive down to Island Point Reserve. I was running late now to catch the sunrise, so I didn't have time to stop for my drive through coffee - bugger. As I drove further along the freeway, the road began to be enveloped in thick layers of fog. This got me pretty excited, as if the fog stuck around, it would hopefully add some incredible drama to any images I may take.
As I arrived at the Island Point car park, it appeared that the fog had dissipated - which was a bit of a shame - the misty images would have to wait for another day.
As I unpacked my camera from the car, I looked around to notice that conditions were PERFECT! Barely a breath of wind, clear skies and crisp, cool air - I had a feeling this was going to be a good morning.
Similar to last week, I wanted to lay down as low as possible on the water's edge. To do so I needed my secret weapon - my technologically advanced, Christmas themed table cloth (patent pending). I walked over to the small patch of beach opposite the small island, set my mat down in the mud and waited for the sun to rise.
I scoped out the area to see what species were around: Pelicans, Pied Stilts, Fairy Terns, Oystercatchers and a Little Egret were all resting within the safety of the island.
Suddenly, I heard a screeching whistle in the sky above me - a Whistling Kite was patrolling the sky. This sent the smaller birds such as the Pied Stilts and the Terns into a bit of a frenzy. But this actually worked out pretty well for me, as a couple of the Stilts and the Egret flew over to me and landed along the shoreline where I was laying.
The timing could not have been better, the soft, golden hues of light were starting to fill the sky and reflect onto the still waters - thanks Mr. Whistling Kite!
One of the Pied Stilts started to get pretty busy and started fishing in the shallows. Every now and then, it would pluck a small Goby or some other small morsel from the water - and as it did so, I was having a blast shooting it!
After taking a few nice images of the Stilt, I noticed that the Little Egret started to search around for it's breakkie! Similar to last week, the Egret began to prance around in the shallows as it would chase after small schools of fish. They do this neat little trick where they extend their wings out in order to create shade in the water, making it easier to spot prey items - which makes for some awesome photos!
By the now, the light was absolutely AMAZING! The sun had just risen over the horizon, and gorgeous, golden light began to the flood the area. As I was shooting the Egret, the light would catch it's bright, white feathers which looked absolutely stunning!
It was quite tricky to shoot in these conditions actually. Since it was still relatively dark, I had to use a slower shutter speed in order to lower image noise as much as possible. Normally when shooting action shots like this, I like to shoot at least 1/1000sec to freeze the action. However, in this instance I was shooting much lower at 1/250sec. This meant that I did get a lot of motion blur in some of the shots where the Egret was flapping it's wings or bobbing it's head - but I still managed to grab myself a couple of bangers!
Eventually, the Egret flew off back to safety of the island. As I was looking around for my next subject, I could see a large figure flying towards me - a Pelican. With the golden sunrise light still lingering in the cool air, I knew that if the Pelican would land along the water in front of me, that I could take some wicked shots.
Sure enough, the Pelican started to descend and I could see that it would land along water right in front of me - perfect! It approached lower to the water, stuck out its large webbed feet as landing gear and skidded along the water. As it did so, the water was spraying behind it, which was catching the sunrise light perfectly - just as I envisioned!
After the Pelican landed and caught up with his mates on the island, the sun had now well and truly risen and the golden light had now dissipated. I stuck around for a bit longer to see what else may happen, but there wasn't a huge amount of activity. So I decided to get up, have a stretch and chuck my gear back into the car.
As usual, I drove my normal route back home. Stopped over at Warrangup Springs to check it out. I did spot a couple of Sacred Kingfishers that were fishing along the shores. However as soon as I started to get closer, they spotted me from a mile away and flew off - skittish little buggers!
After heading off from the Springs, I stopped over at the Osprey perch to see if anyone is home. Sure enough, a pair was perched on the old, dead tree. I set up my camera and tripod to see if they would have a go at hunting. After about 15mins or so - a flock of Galahs flew into the scene, creating one hell of a racket! Clearly unamused with all the commotion, both Ospreys flew off in search of peace and quiet - I don't blame them!
Since everyone flew off, I took this as my cue to head home - plus I was longing for my morning coffee!
Thanks again if you have read up this point! I hope you enjoyed tagging along with me this week and I hope you also enjoyed the images I made - I reckon they were pretty wicked this week! I might try out a new location next week to jazz things up - so stick around and you can read all about in my next post!
Catch ya later!
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