Photo Rebel

The sun rises and it is a beautiful day here in Melbourne! Barry suggested we drive out into the country side… Barry knows best and off we went. Wow!!! The country side is so awesome around here. We drove through small towns and the views from the mountains were quite stunning. We travelled through the areas where those huge fires were about 8 months ago. Very sad to see these huge trees in a densely populated forest that had been burnt, but amazing to see Nature fight back with new growth.

We stopped by a remote coffee shop and had tea with scones in the wilderness. Very relaxing and a very nice place. Barry and I decided to get our cameras out for a few shots. We played with the dogs and had good fun with our cameras.

This is where we had tea and scones. Lovely garden...

The front of the cafe...

Playing "throw the stick" with the dogs.

Me taking photos of the garden. Photo by Barry Johnston.

After tea… we headed off again through the country side. Some really nice views…

A house off the main road... Driving through the country side, there are many houses off the main road like this.

A dam on route...

These trees are huge!!!! You can see the size of the car in front...

These roads are popular with motorcyclists.

There are S shaped roads at nearly every corner.

The trees on the right side of the frame are burnt and are showing signs of life once again.

A close up of a burnt tree. It feels strange to be standing in a spot where there was a raging bush fire with flames 60 meters above the trees!

Now for the fun part! Photography is a hungry and thirsty business! So off we went to a Brewery for a fresh pint of beer and a ploughman’s lunch. I looked around and thought, man we could take some nice images in the place. I spoke with the barmaid and asked if was okay to take a few pictures? Well… Out came all the toys!! Stands, umbrella, multiple flash units, cameras, the works!!!

But before we get to the flash shots… here are some normal shots of the location.

Where the beer gets made...

The bottling of the beer...

The White Rabbit Brewery. Barry getting the kit out of the 4x4...

Then it was time to setup the venue for the shots we had in mind. We setup 2 flashes to illuminate the background. Flash off steel edges works really well. A flash to the right, and a flash to the left. We setup another flash about 10 feet away from from the subject of the frame (i.e. one of us). The barmaid had gone home unfortunately 😦 She would have made a good model! 😉

Me reading a magazine called "Beer" 😉 hehehe Photo by Barry Johnston.

Barry is the model... 😉

Then it was time to head off again and stopped by some vineyards where some Australian wine is made.

Fields of grapes. I used a 3 stop Neutral Density Gradient filter to balance the exposure of the sky and ground.

I placed the sun in the top left corner deliberately in this frame.

Then we stopped by a small picnic area for a short moment and there were some Rainbow Loriketts birds. Very colourful!

Eastern Rosella's flying off...

Very tall trees!! Probably 50 meters...

Finally the day ended with meeting up with family. Kyle met Barry and I in Melbourne city center. We had a beer and a meal and chatted all night. We had a lot to catch up on…

Barry, me and Kyle in the JP O'Brian pub...

Kyle standing next to the good stuff 😉 I've been told that beer has all sorts of good things, like vitamins and minerals. 😉 hehehe