Along the Parachilna Gorge Road, Flinders Ranges. ©Copyright Peter MacDonald. All Rights Reserved.

It’s been a while since a new image was posted here.
Not from want of trying.
Too much time on the road, three projects that have taken up a lot of time, have produced only a small number of images and are not finished yet are the reasons.
However there have been some small changes to the Sentimental Bloke website.
I have finally made an effort to update the gallery section with image, that while familiar to some, have been buried in the day to day posts.
I have also had several really worthwhile workshops in the last couple of months.
Based on those events, I have made changes to how workshops can be conducted in the future, giving more options for those who want to improve their photographic skills.
It has been really rewarding hearing how students, who have been to my workshops, have been reporting back about improvements in their work. Maybe one of the options is worth considering.
You can access both the Gallery and the Workshops sections on the top line of the Sentimental Bloke home page.

©Copyright 2014 Peter MacDonald Photography. All Rights Reserved.

As often happens in the Flinders Ranges, the morning can see a bank of cloud over the eastern ranges while there’s clear skies to the west.

There is a sharp contrast from the previous post but not much time between the two photos. The cloud bank is most obvious though.

It’s taken from the same sharp ridge with another glimpse of the creek referred to in the previous image.

I’d never taken the trouble to explore this area before. It’s between the Glass Gorge Road and the Parachilna Gorge in the central Flinders Ranges.

Rugged country and certainly some grand views of the Heysen Range in the background…….a typical Flinders Ranges scene.

However it was the little glimpse of water that caught the eye. Even up so high on a sharp ridge , the distinct sound of running water was coming from the valley.

It was this running water which would lead to finding a most beautiful stretch of creek bed that would take quite a few days to explore and photograph….The Oratunga.

Fuji X-Pro camera, 35mm prime lens, f11, 1/15 sec ISO 200. ©Copyright Peter MacDonald Photography. All Rights Reserved.

A simple scene, yet one that I find quite interesting, mostly because of the light falling across this bend in the Parachilna Creek .

Of late I have become aware of many landscape photos that are a composite of two or more images which have been worked in Photoshop to the point where they look unreal.

I guess this is a trend like any other but is seems more like graphic art than photography.

I had taken some shots of this location previously but I had missed the light and my composition wasn’t particularly good.

A few minutes of interesting light and a single shot in a location that is passed by many people daily.

The fading daylight along the Parachilna Creek as it reaches the western plains.

Incredibly wide, vast quantities of water occasionally rocket down this stream.

To give you an idea there’s a coupe of pictures here that show the Parachilna Creek in full flood.

The River Red Gum in the foreground is roughly halfway between the two banks of the creek.

It was the sun on the hill in the middle distance that caught my eye while walking in the Parachilna Gorge.

The 50 mm Canon prime lens did the rest.

f14, 1/40th sec ISO 200

Camera details: Fuji X-100 camera fixed lens. f5.6 @ 1/50th sec ISO 400

While most of the creeks and rivers in the FLinders Ranges and the surrounding Outback are now just gently flowing streams, a last chance to show the full force of the recent floods.

Again the Parachilna Creek in the northern Flinders Ranges.

Interestingly, while clambering down the slippery banks of the creek to get these shot I saw what turned out to be a large euro, or hills wallaby bobbing in the waters close to the bank.

The Euro must have been washed downstream in the fast flowing waters but managed to scramble to safety in calmer current.

It quickly disappeared into the nearby bushes.

Unfortunately I wasn’t in a position to record any of this little life and death drama.

This has been a pretty common sight in the Flinders Ranges and Outback in recent days. Outback floods, fast running creeks and rivers don’t get seen by a lot of people when they are at their most spectacular, mainly because roads are cut by the flood waters too.

This is the Parachilna Creek and about the only place I could get to it without running into trouble.

These waters will probably make it all the way to Lake Torrens to the west, but in many cases it disperses across the plains before reaching the lake.

People thinking of travelling in this part of the world should check on road condition here before setting out.

Seemingly endless blue skies can pose a real problem for landscape photographers. Those acres of blue can take up a serious amount of a photograph and to put it bluntly, stuff up a good scene.

Here is one solution to the problem which you start looking for when day after day the skies above remain the same – something that is not unusual in the Flinders Ranges and Outback.

As usual the trunk and the branches of the river red gum provides interesting patterns, while not perhaps as evident, the banks of the Parachilna Creek are at least three metres (8-10 feet) high.

The twisted hills and mountains of the ABC Range are in the background.

f 22, 1/13 sec ISO 100 focal length 70mm