This week’s trip to the Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan was a little different. Pushed for time so had one hour from the time I left home to when the Gardens shut so about 15 minutes of actual photography time in the gardens. During that time I managed 93 shots, 66 of one mushroom, with various light changes, angles and intensity, plus a few wild rabbits in the gardens. So fifteen minutes wasn’t long to go finding mushrooms or birds.

I quickly found last week’s mushroom and set up my speedlites and moved them around for different effects.

When I get home each week after a shoot I have to go through the shots see which ones are worth publishing on Google plus and see if one is a better one that I have in the galleries on my portfolio tab on my web site.  So in today’s case I had 66 mushroom shots to go through all very similar.

The first thing I do is a quick review of each shot working through them all and any that look like the exposure is OK, focus seams good and there is nothing obviously wrong with the shot like a leave of stick over the shot.

After I’ve listed the better shots as one Star I’ve now got a short list top review. At this point I usually get the first of these and start to work in the development module of lightroom and adjust the shot, adjusting the highlights, shadows, highlights and blacks, I start with the shadows lightening them to being back some of the details, I usually drop the highlights to make sure they aren’t to bright, then I bring down the blacks to darken the back ground, this is usually not to much as the lighting has usually done most of this. I’ll use the graduated filter to darken and distracting elements in the back ground, any that are in the main shot I’ll use the adjustment brush to drop the exposure leaving the main element of the shot the brightest part of the shot, (This is what the eye is usually drawn to). I’ll usually raise up the contrast and clarity a bit and depending on the shot raise the vibrance and saturation as well.

After that I’ll check out the sharpening raising it as much as possible without bringing in any artefact’s and bring up the noise reduction a little as well. Lastly I then add in a Vignette darkening the corners of the shot again to bring the main element to the main focus of the shot.

Once I’ve done all these settings for one shot I’ll set the filter to one star showing only the shots I’ve selected as one star, and then sync all the shots with the one I’ve just updated, this will bring them all to the same level of processing in one go.

Next I go back to the library module and select the survey mode with then shows all the one star shots in the main panel,

at this point I close all the side tabs plus the top and bottom tabs so the main pane is not full screen, this increase the size of the shots, in survey mode as you move the mouse over each shot there is a small cross shown on each shot in the lower right corner,  any shots that are not the best if you hit the cross they are removed from the survey as you remove more shots the remaining shots get larger. So makes it easier to choose as you get less shots. I’ll usually get these down to around three shots, these I’ll mark as two stars.

I then go out of survey mode and adjust the filter now to 2 stars which will bring up the three remaining shots, these I’ll look at in full screen mode and look for the best shot, which is the one that has best focus and exposure on the whole mushroom (In this case) including the stork which is often in shadow if I haven’t got the second speedlite angled right.

The three shots below are the final shots I had to select form this week, the last shot being the one I decided was the better shot of the week.

THis one I rejected as it was to wet and lost some of the details as teh water makes it look soft and out of focus. This one I knocked back as the front edge of the cap seamed out of focus and angle seamed a little of to me.

This one was the one I selected for the week and made the google plus posting. Once selected I'll do a little more work on it in light room till I'm happy with it and then release it for viewing

It’s a very similar angle to last week’s shot but the lighting is slightly different and the mushroom is a week older as well. I think I like this shot better than last weeks shot.

Hope you enjoy the behind the scenes detail that going in to how I finally come up with the image and some of the work flow involved. 

Thanks for dropping by, hopefully next week I’ll get more time for shots and have a different mushroom to shoot.  

Glenn.

This week’s outing into the Australian Botanical Gardens, Mount Annan, didn’t have the same feel to it as last week and reviewing the shots, seems like it wasn’t the same as last week, I don’t feel the shots this week are as good as last week, Started off promising as when I got up this morning there was fog about but by the time I got my camera in the car and out of the garage the fog had cleared all in about ten minutes, Would be good to get some shots with Fog on the various dams around the gardens with the water birds coming out of the fog, Oh well another day I guess.

The day started of early again so in the gardens again just on 7:00 am, first thing I found was a few rabbits still about but they high tailed it out of there before I even got a decent focus on them, this was the best I got and sort of how the day shaped up.

From there I wound my way through the Terrace gardens where I found these bottle brushes out the red and yellow really stood out so I had to have a go with them and with the speedlite and soft box some of these turned out OK, so I thought my luck was turning.

I then walked via the lakes to the Stolen Generations Memorial (A memorial for the memory of the Australian Aboriginal families that were separated from their parents by the European settlement) Around this area there is always abundant bird life, and again today was no exception I managed to get this Eastern Yellow Robin sitting still long enough.

Then  Eastern Rosella exploring a tree hollow looking for a nesting site.

 Time was getting on and I still hadn’t found my Mushroom for the week so I headed back up the to the Wollemi Walk of Discovery where I found last week’s Mushroom and there was still a few left, this one was the better of the three remaining and the texture of the Cap reminded me a bit of a brain to look at so it made shot for the week, luckily as it was the only one found all day.

 The last shot is the behind the scenes shot showing the set up with two speedlites and everything on the ground, the Swivel screen on the Canon 60D is certainly a back saver.

Thanks for dropping by my blog. Don’t forget you can browse the various galleries I have under the portfolio tab at the top of the page for those wanting more. 

Saturday, so that means a trip to the Australian Botanical gardens, Mount Annan, to see if I can find a mushroom to shoot for this weeks +ShroomshotSaturday shot.

This week I decided to take advantage of my membership to friends of the gardens which allows me access before the normal opening at 10:00am, so I was able to get in at 7:00 and the light was still good. This allowed for some early morning shots of some of the wild life that’s not so active during the middle of the day, starting off with a mob of Wallabies.

As I was shooting these a Kookaburra was sitting in a gum tree (don’t think it was an old gum tree) looking for his breakfast and diving on any lizards and insects he could find this shot was of him still on the ground.

As I turned around to head further into the gardens about 5 metres away from me was a lone Australian Wood duck, watching me, guess he was seeing what I was up to.

After taking his portrait I went up the hill to the connections gardens where a family of wood ducks were heading down to the lakes for their morning paddle, the light was still good at this time so managed to get them back lit though there front, so some nice light this morning. Worth getting up early for.

The Gardens have abundant bird life and on their web site there’s a bird list to down load (http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/annan/the_garden/wildlife/birds) Just click on their link to down load the list. There about 177 know bird species within the gardens at various times of the year and I’m slowly working my way through the list, so far I’m nearly at the 50% mark so still a way to go yet.

Today I added two more to my list firstly a White‑browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis) In the leave litter in the connections gardens.

I then found a small flock of Gold finches and one was perched high in a Bunya pine, made a nice silhouette against the sky.

From there I walked into the water gardens where the Gardens usually have a good display of Australian Native flowing plant, by now the light wasn’t at its best so had to make do with my own lighting now so out with the speedlite and soft box, where I got a Kangaroo paw and various other native flowering plants.

So far no mushrooms and I thought with all the rain we had in Sydney this week the gardens would be alive with them, but no such luck as yet, so my last change was up on the Wollemi pine walk of discovery where I often find mushrooms so I walked up the hill to the Sundial of Human Involvement and there I found my second new bird of the day to add to my list A Richard's Pipit  (Anthus novaeseelandiae) running along the grass like a little road runner.

From there I went along the Wollemi pine walk of discovery and found a lone mushroom for the week so I didn’t return empty handed.

Here are a few behind the scenes shots as well as the final shot for the day.

Thanks for dropping by.