The image is one of the features in my gallery that is located at 76 Mundoo Channel Drive, Hindmarsh Island, South Australia. Open this weekend Saturday and Sunday 11am-3pm.

Picture book image of mother swan and her young chicks along the Mundoo Channel.

Most of the year there are swans in the waters around here but in Spring the young cygnets are new arrivals protected by their two parents against the strong winds and violent storms that come with the season.

©Copyright Peter MacDonald 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Aah, the morning sun, a favorite rock hole out of the breeze….the perfect place to prepare for the day ahead.

One of the many yellow footed rock wallabies that have grown in number around the Arkaroola waterhole in recent times.

They seem to be quite used to people. I made no attempt to hide my presence as it went about its business quite happily.

Nevertheless it was gone in an instant when it needed to.

©Copyright 2015 Peter MacDonald Photography. All Rights Reserved.

Little Corellas like galahs, fly in flocks particularly towards nightfall….circling to find a roost for the night.

The sun’s rays catching their white wings against a darkening sky…perfect for a black and white photo.

Fuji X-Pro1 with 55-200 zoom f13, 1/340 sec, ISO 400.
©Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography. All Rights Reserved.

Cockatoos  noisily posing  in the afternoon sun

The Sturt Desert Pea is often seen in large groups. Photographing a single flower shows just how  unusual the bloom is.           © Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography 2013

Flowers  and animals are like children, best photographed from their level rather than an adult’s view. But sadly this idea is all too often forgotten.

Getting down and dirty with the flowers though is not without its discomforts and miseries.

The Sturt Desert Pea is a beautiful but lowly bloom and in this case ants brought the misery but the result was worth the pain.

© Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography 2013

 Burrs, prickles and three cornered jacks are a common discomfort in the Flinders Ranges and Outback and there’s bound to be plenty around when you are flat out on the ground getting a photo of a Rosy Dock.

From above there would be no way to have the sunlight backlighting the beautiful ruby coloured leaves.

The exquisite Sturt Desert Rose, a hibiscus as it turns out is a little more elevated but it is still  worth getting a low aspect. Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography 2013

It would be unusual if there wasn’t some kind of breeze blowing when shooting flowers. For that reason it is almost essential to have a fast shutter speed – around 250th of a second or more would be ideal.

This will probably have to be achieved by a low f-stop – maybe around f2.8 if your lens is fast enough and an increase in ISO to at least 400.

That will also mean that much of the background will be out of focus. A nice effect that highlights the flower.

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© Copyright Peter MacDonald photography 2013

Again there’s a challenge trying to eyeball a sleepy lizard, common around the area but generally seen from above. This chap seemed less inclined to display his deep blue tongue  and hiss loudly  when I met him on his terms.

© Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography 2013

Similarly this Masked Lapwing looks so much more interesting down at ground level.

A good rule of thumb for flowers, animals, children, even landscapes is to find an aspect that is not the normal eye level at which we see things every day.

Where I come from all animals, kangaroos, euros, wallabies, emus, birds, they all run away when you come near. Even sheep and cows.

So it was a bit unusual to find this rather large sea lion sizing me up as I walked around the sand dunes of the previous post.

It took me a while to become aware that it was right there…not charging back into the sea or disappearing up the beach.

Unaccustomed as I am to these sorts of encounters, we had a good 10 minutes while it posed for me. He/She was pretty relaxed about the whole thing …so relaxed that eventually with a couple of very large and long yawns the photo session was over.

And with that it lay down, rolled over on its back a couple of times to cover himself in sand and went to sleep.

Pretty soon I became bored with the lack of action and went for a walk up the beach in search of perhaps a more lively sea lion.

I returned about 40 minutes later and took this shot.

I did suggest it open its eyes for the photography so that people wouldn’t think it was dead, but a slightly raised eyelid was all I got. So much for wild life photography on the Eyre Peninsula.

I was about 300 metres up, the wedge-tailed eagle was at least that high again.

A 30 knot wind blowing, storm clouds all about.

It hovered almost stationary — completely in control.

I have been working on a commission at Arkaroola in the northern Flinders Ranges recently. It required an afternoon shot, so mornings were free.

It was a chance to visit a really beautiful waterhole there.

I have taken photos of Arkaroola Waterhole previously in the morning light but when it has been nearly full. You can see one of the images here

Now well into summer the waterhole has contracted to where the water level is quite small.

However it has become an essential part of life for all the wildlife that live in the area.

Before the sun’s rays had reached the rocky crags surrounding the waterhole it wasn’t hard to spot yellow-footed rock wallabies.

I counted eight and took quite a few photos. I’ve used just two that show the little wallaby’s extra long tail – a very handy body part that enabled them to be so nimble across the rock slopes that are their home.

I’ve posted articles about yellow-footed rock wallabies before and how they are still considered endangered.

You can find that on the link here.

However actually photographing them at the water’s edge is a first for me.

Beautiful little creatures in a beautiful location.

Zebra Finches around an outback stone tank enjoying an unlimited supply of cool water on a 40 degree C day.

I think half of Australia is looking for a cool place today.

A healthy young euro or walleroo enjoys life along the banks of a creek.

It has got some seriously big ears to grow into.

The Flinders Ranges, especially in the north, generally get summer rains so there’s a good chance the water supply will continue over the coming hot months.

I will never make a bird-o but I do like taking photos of birds (all varieties) when the opportunity arises.

I think this is a honey eater of some sort…possibly a ‘singing honey eater’ but that is probably a wild guess.

The shot was taken on maximum 300 mm zoom at f5.6 (lowest aperture on the lens) at 2000th of a second . ISO 200

Location – high up in the mountains of the northern Flinders Ranges.

The Kestrel, part of the falcon family is a familiar sight around the Flinders Ranges.

They are most likely to be noticed hovering 10 or twenty metres above the ground looking for their prey, lizards, insects and small mammals.

They need a bit of a headwind to get into the hover position but it is interesting to watch them at work as can be seen in this picture I posted some time ago.

Click here to see the image.

There are also new images in the Overflow and a couple of new sections added to Gallery called Flora and Fauna and General Pictures.

One of Australia’s smallest doves and an inhabitant of the country’s arid regions.

It’s called a Diamond Dove, distinctive because of its size and the vivd rings around its eyes, particularly in the male.

It’s quite starling when you first see one because the markings around the eye are are very noticeable. Reminded me of a couple of hangovers that a dose of Panadiene couldn’t fix.

So many aerial shots in recent times. Here is a chance to get right down amongst the sand and prickles for a change.

A Gould’s Monitor Lizard also known as a sand Goanna catching the afternoon sun but very hard to spot on the desert floor.

Monitor lizards grow to about 140 centimetres ( 4.5 feet) and weigh up to 6 kilos when fully grown.

This one is all of that.

Lake Eyre isn’t all pinks and blues and silver salt.

At the top of the main lake and the Goyder Lagoon where some water is flowing in from the Warburton River, it’s quite muddy but there is an abundance of birds.

The pelicans stand out because of their numbers and the apparent ease with which they can glide just above the water’s surface.

However there’s cormorants and black swans. sea gulls, banded stilts and ducks to be seen as well.

There appears to be even more in the Coongie Lake system where the water is fresh and abundant fish to feed on.

One of the bonuses of the recent workshop at Arkaroola was coming across a really rare sight.

It’s an albino yellow-footed rock wallaby.

Numbers of these animals have been in decline for many years so an albino is a fairly rare creature.

Apart from having a striking resemblance to a stuffed toy, the albino is at least twice as big as a normal fully grown member of the species and possibly even bigger.

Typical yellow-foots are about the size seen in the photo here

The animal in the right hand corner of this photograph is probably an offspring of the albino which is a female and has a joey in the pouch.

Albino animals are usually very sensitive to sunlight and this wallaby is no different. It wasn’t until I noticed something different about her eyes that I magnified the picture and found that her eyelids and eye lashes had grown very large as protection again sunlight.

The albino seems to have adapted to her environment despite here generic handicap.

Having used a shot of a dingo only a short time ago I would have been a bit reluctant to use another one so soon, but I came across this one this morning while coming down the Oodnadatta Track.

He was quite fearless and had no qualms about marching right up to me as you can see from this photograph.

However he had other things on his mind and quickly headed of towards a herd of cattle nearby. I followed along to see what would happen as the cattle were very nervous about his presence.

Things turned into a bit of a stand-off for a while but while the cattle were trying to figure out the situation, there wasn’t much chance the dingo could be anything more than a nuisance.

The cattle soon figured out that, as a group, they had the upper hand and after a quick charge the excitement was over.

I have finished the last of the assignments for R M Williams Outback Station magazine, which comes out in June.

The dingo is a fine looking animal, unique to our continent and it roams freely around the Outback.

It’s features distinguish it from other dogs. It yelps or howls but doesn’t bark. Dingoes are usually cream to reddish brown in colour like this one. Their ears are always erect.

Together with feral domestic dogs they have long been a real menace to the sheep industry which loses large numbers of animals to dog attacks.

These days there’s probably more domestic dogs that turn wild, or domestic dogs that have interbred with the dingo causing the problems for pastoralists and that requires widespread baiting programs.

The cattle industry, on the other hand is not affected by the dingo which generally lives on kangaroos, rabbits and other small animals and reptiles.

Dingos are thought to have been introduced into Australia thousands of year ago and are related to dogs of South East Asia.

This was shot on a long zoom (300mm) at f8, 1/1250 sec, ISO 200. I haven’t cropped this photography mainly to put the dingo in the country it normally roams.