The tropics come to Gwondanaland

  

Melbourne is famous for having 4 seasons in a day. However we seldom actually see a tropical style downpour. My Cretaceous garden has been suffer through some summer heat (and no rain) but today the rains came (about 26mm in a little over half an hour. Other parts of Melbourne had more.

Anyway my little garden, for a few moments took on the mantle of a true rainforest.

Spring ?

 

PhotoProject :: Capturing Rain

I have tried many times to find a nice ay to capture rain. Basically it falls to fast to nicely capture drops in detail and its usually dark anyway.

It was raining heavily yesterday and I saw an opportunity to photographs the drops backlit against dark foliage. Then I took photos at three different shutter speeds

• 1/500th. second (ie fast enough to freeze a bird in flight)
• 1/50th. second (a comfortable hand-held speed that should avoid blurring my shaky hands)
• 1/15th. second (very slow, I have to rely on the in body stabilisation (IBS) of the  camera)

The result is obvious the best photo telling the story of raining is the slow exposure because it has elongated blurs hat captured the motion of the water droplets. Sound obvious in retrospect. Slow shutter speed to blur the motion and hold the camera steady (and/or IBS)

Pink Rain

Shared this photo from the Flickr app on my phone! Take a look: https://flic.kr/p/FQchZc

PhotoFriday :: Wet

Cyclamens left in the rain (given the HDR treatment)

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Wet

PhotoFriday :: Tree Fern in the Rain

Tree Fern in the Rain

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Leaves

Hail, Rain & No Moon Shine

The Super Moonrise was a non-event last night in Melbourne due to a big storm. There was Hail, Rail and Shine Lightening but the heavy clouds obscured the eastern horizon and the moon
   

Mainly just darkness, clouds & lightening after that and no moon to be seen. C’est la Vie

Desert Floor after Rain

After the sandstorm a couple of nights ago there was a decent thunder storm and some rain, which clear the air and puddled rather than sinking in. The desert flora enjoyed the drink, but the harsh sun has dried the short lived mud pack and the desert floor is already cracking and peeling.

 

Rain on the Duco

Created with OnOne Cross Process Blue preset in Lightroom followed by Comic Book Vignette in Picasa 

First Photo of 2014

Whilst I intended to get up for the sunrise (which I missed) Im not sure a wintery start to the year if really very photogenic.

More Low Light HDR

I most admit working with long exposures and movement was fun.

There was a great downpour just before the sunset yesterday, and the lights of city traffic where making great reflections of the wet roadway. So why not try some HDR, the movement of course, makes it very difficult to properly register the images. However my android HDR Camera+ app actually did a good job (see image to the right).  Almalence have developed their own HDR algorithms for precise alignment and moving objects handling.

I have this app settings to keep the three bracketed exposure so I was also able to try out how well luminance and picturenaut could handle the movement. Quiet well it appears (albeit with some distinct colour casts, see images below reproduced here for those that want to tut tut at the lurid colours). Both picturenaut and luminace have auto registration and ghost removal features, and many more tone mapping features but I personally prefer the in phone processed image from HDR Camera+

Wet in Wellington

  

Water, water, everywhere

One thing about living on the side of a hill, you don’t except a flooding to come from above. Last night changed my mind. The intense storm saw the roadway turned into a creek (see video below, sorry about the quality it was taken on my phone). My own rain gauge read 155mm from when the rain started yesterday to 8:30am today. Considerable more than the 115mm registered at the Bureau Of Meterologty weather station at Scoresby.

 Having a look around this morning indicated that many of the concrete lids in the storm drains have been lifted, by the pressure of the shear about of run-off water, and several have suffered gouging of the soil around them. However very clearly the storm water and drainage around here largely worked! Well done city planners.

I was a little amazed at how much rubbish was included in the debris.



The Dandenong creek is in flood and at least around Jells Park the flooding effects have been mitigated. The new $1million foot bridge across dandenong creek near Ferntree gully road, fine you just can get onto it at the moment. The ferntree gully road bridge is fine and the road still open.

Still nature always seems to provide something nice to photograph. I’m guessing the spider isn’t so pleased!

When you are out it the rain try to keep your camera as dry as possible. I cover mine with a clean face washer and keep wiping away any moisture. A plastic bag may lead to serious condensation, so use one as a last resort. If you are really worried and have lots of money you could investigate raincoats for cameras.

After the rain, a pink sunset

This is not a HDRi post processed image, but it was one of a set of bracketed shots. It had an -1EV bias (ie slighty underexposed), cropped with picasa otherwise nothing fancy was done. It really was a memorable sunset. This is also posted on flickr if you want to see see the exif details

Decent rains at last!

 

Photographing actual rain is a very complex task, its udsually very poor lighting, its falling fast and therefeore blurs in the slow exposre required, it usually has no center of interests, the list just goes on and on. So I have taken the simple way out, just photographing the effects and really zeroing in on just a small aspects, using the macro setting on my trusty telephoto zoom lens, the water droplettes on a grape vine. Still it tells the story well.

pure

Yet another two panel autostiched image. Taken in Mossman Gorge during heavy rain.

For PhotoFriday, topic purity.

Using stitched images is perfect for work deep in a rainforest where you actually want a super wide angle to take in all the detail, but not end up with a fish eye distortion. I just took one photo one above the other then used autostitch. There is plenty of natural lines and surfaces to help the software do perfect image matching. The results is a very natural wide view, without the disturbing perspective. It was dark and raining at the time so the aperture is wide and most things are in good focus.

IF : Immature

Young (immature) leaves of Ginkgo Bilboa (Maiden Hair tree) in the rain

for friday photo : Immature

What do the ants know that we don't

It has been a dry year, make that several years, yet the start of November has been quiet wet here in Melbourne. One nest of ants near my back door step suddenly constructed their very own air vent, just over 5cm tall. Why? Is it time to start building an ark?

I made the little scaling card some time ago but it is extra handy when taking close up photos where you need a scale reference. Alternatively you can include a common coin (this is only good for the one country) or ruler