Roving-Eye Gallery update and newsletter #27 for September 2023

 

Hello to everyone and thank you to the new subscribers.. welcome aboard!

 

With the latest update just uploaded head to What's New - September 2023 | Roving-Eye.com and you can scroll back month by month for an easy catch up for previous months too!

 

This past month sure has a lot of variety.. wildlife, regional headlands, black and whites and lastly.. the ever amazing Warrumbungles National Park!

 

I have been making a concerted effort lately to cover more regional areas and so have been ranging up and down the coast from Port Macquarie to get neighbouring headlands as well as points of interest in the hinterland such as Bago Bluff.

 

All these locations are of interest to someone out there and so I want to get representative shots of them so it’s ready and waiting in the portfolio for whenever someone wants a shot of a specific place.. and I DO get asked!

 

Black and whites are something I’ve dabbled with in the past and I am now making sure I keep a lookout for opportunities for when a colour shot may also translate well into a crisp and interesting black and white version.

 

Not everything translates that well however, if you’ve ever seen a black and white version of a rainbow and especially compared to the colour original you will know how dull it can appear!

 

It’s amazing what DOES come out well in black and white apart from the classic strong patterns and contrasts. An example for this month was for the lighthouse in early evening twilight colours that, when converted to black and white, made more stars pop out than was apparent in the colour version!

 

There are MANY ways to create a black and white of course so this applies just to the treatment I selected for this particular image that made this really *pop* but it illustrates how much latent information that can go “under the radar” in a colour that finds way more prominence suddenly in a black and white!

 

I’ll be sure to be including more of these alternate views as appropriate from now on as a regular thing!

 

With the blossoms turning out at this time of year it’s a great time to get such as the Rainbow Lorikeets and I have got a nice bagful this past month with their cheeky noises and eyes!

 

With the trip to the Warrumbungles I also grabbed a good slab of Kangaroo pics in various poses and antics.

 

There is a semi-tame mob in permanent residence at the campgrounds there so it’s not exactly hard to get shots but I usually wait for interesting light and behavioural displays to press the shutter button. I never tire of Australian Wildlife and I will never not take a shot at each interesting opportunity no matter how many I might have taken in the past!

 

Of course I didn’t go to the Warrumbungles to get Kangaroo shots.. I wanted all the landscapes and panoramas I could possibly create!

 

I also wanted to get the full moon rising and so that dictated the dates and of course you just have to roll the dice as to what the weather and cloud might do come the time! Lastly it also fell within the school holidays, periods I avoid as much as I can to keep things simple!

 

Being school holidays meant I couldn’t get a single powered site for the 5 consecutive nights I needed so I had to make and break camp 3 times!

 

For this trip I used the Subaru as my base camp structure and trailered the motorbike so once I set camp, thankfully a thing I have got better at with practice, I could leave it there and use the bike to get up at such times as 5am to ride to the trail head and leave it there to go off hiking for my photo sessions.

 

Hiking as a photographer, and especially doing the style I like to do, meant a very hefty pack beyond what a typical walker might use.

 

For starters I have a large camera, lenses and all accessories and ancillary cameras for such as video and Google Street View captures beyond my bread and butter landscape captures!

 

Then I need to carry enough water and supplies for the time I expect to be out in the hotter time of year and which also often entailed walking back out in the dark so I needed other gear such as a headlamp.

 

Lastly there is emergency kit. I head out with satellite distress beacons and comprehensive first aid kit and I also pack other gear such as flares too.  It all adds up in weight believe me!

 

The Warrumbungles have a LOT of trees so it’s rare to get a clear sight of a rock formation of interest for the majority of the time on trail and also in pursuit of interesting angles I will go off-trail to whereever I need to for a clear line of sight and interesting angle.. they are not easy things to find and get to there!

 

The first immediate danger in doing that is stepping on a snake in the undergrowth. To that end I wear “snake gaiters” which are no fashion item but protect the most likely strike zone if you happened to step over a log and straight onto a snake, of which plenty of venomous examples are around, and they are just defending themselves after all.

 

I also carry a snake bite kit which has special bandages so you get the right tension.. enough to do the job but not too much as to cause problems with essential blood flow to the affected limb.

 

Of course after self treatment you need to call for help and stay immobile!

 

That’s where the emergency satellite gear comes into play.. I have 2 since they are backups of each other and one can be tracked anywhere online with a browser so I can always have a known location.

 

That doesn’t make you easy to find necessarily though as the terrain and bush can get quite rugged and I could have just as easily fallen off a remote rocky perch I just climbed up as trod on a snake to be in trouble.

 

So come the time if I needed I have flares for both day and night use to confirm my location in the bush once I know someone is close by and looking to make it a quick as possible process to get to me.

 

All this preparation is just to bring you the shots I want to get and I hope never to use them.. but your day can turn from just fine to near catastrophe in an instant so I believe in having these reasonable safeguards in place knowing I can help myself deal with a bad situation if needed.

 

There were some other spots I wanted to get to and looked promising in my map research but I found the steep drop away in terrain, the thorny bushes tearing at my arms and legs were certainly barriers but this trip showed promising alternate ridgelines I will explore in any future trip and will set aside good time to do such recon efforts for some great new angles on the Warrumbungles!

 

I hope you enjoy the morning and late afternoon lighting I achieved while there and maybe you might see what goes on behind the scenes and appreciate the effort to bring images into the portfolio so we can all appreciate the magnificent natural wonders we have in Australia and that we can all rejoice and take pleasure in them!

 

Don’t forget!

 

There is a handy master index for all newsletter and gallery updates at

https://www.roving-eye.com/whatsnew-index

 

Secondly don’t forget look at the YouTube channel.. I have a growing and significant collection of videos covering so much more than I can on the regular landscape gallery pages.. just head to https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMcNaught/videos on a regular basis.. or subscribe.. since there is plenty of fresh and interesting material being uploaded regularly!

 

I hope you found the images and stories interesting.. who knows what will happen between now and the next newsletter but I will share more then and I hope you hang around to read it and get something from it!

 

Take care and thank you for reading this far and sharing the journey!