Author: kristarella

Kristen Symonds, aka kristarella, works as a Happiness Engineer for Automattic. She is a WordPress fanatic with a love for photography, craft, SciFi and Fantasy, board games, and more.Kristen is married to Dave and has two pet rabbits named Monty and Zoë. She is also a Christian and plays flute and guitar.

014: Finally here

Often it feels like a long road to a wedding… The stress of organising everything, the family quirks, foibles and tensions. It’s nice to see the faces when all of that stress fades away.

I was playing in the band at the wedding, so I set up my camera on a Gorillapod next to a foldback speaker and triggered it with a remote. The focus wasn’t perfect, but I still caught some nice moments, and got a perspective that no one else did.

  • Aperture: ƒ/4
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 4 February, 2011
  • Focal length: 24mm
  • ISO: 640
  • Location: 33° 46.08′ 0″ S 150° 50.44′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s

011: Lorikeet in a tree

This is one of the Lorikeets I mentioned earlier… and it’s also the tree I mentioned that attracts the birds. I spent the morning trying to catch the birds flying, but the only decent photos were the ones I got in the tree.

I love how this bird looks like he’s telling another bird off for something!

  • Aperture: ƒ/7.1
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 2 February, 2011
  • Focal length: 300mm
  • ISO: 400
  • Location: 33° 48.57′ 0″ S 151° 10.96′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s

010: Panning practice

I wasn’t sure what to take a photo of on this day, so I went out to practice panning. I’ve learned that I used to try to pan too slowly… you actually don’t have to have a particularly slow shutter speed o get a panning effect (depending on the subject I suppose).

This photo doesn’t really excite me, but it is one of my better panning shots, with most of the car in focus.

  • Aperture: ƒ/11
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 1 February, 2011
  • Focal length: 24mm
  • ISO: 200
  • Location: 33° 48.57′ 0″ S 151° 10.96′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/30s

009: Flying Lorikeet

This is a Lorikeet flying away from our building.

Lorikeets are pretty common in Australia. Like rabbits, they tend to come out at the start and end of the day, and there’s someone in our building that has a nice tree and puts out bird feed to attract them. I’ve tried to capture them in flight, but they’re bloody fast! I quite like the abstract nature of this photo though: it looks like a painting despite little post-processing, and it seems to emphasise that they actually are quite quick, and beautifully colourful.

  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 31 January, 2011
  • Focal length: 300mm
  • ISO: 400
  • Location: 33° 48.57′ 0″ S 151° 10.96′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/100s

008: Water St in summer

This is the street that my church is on. Many of the streets in Wahroonga have a tree canopy. I find them beautiful, but I imagine it would be irritating living there because they drop a lot of goopy leaves underfoot in autumn and winter (the leaves get goopy from the rain).

  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 30 January, 2011
  • Focal length: 24mm
  • ISO: 400
  • Location: 33° 42.94′ 0″ S 151° 7.28′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s

007: Wickham bunny

This is one of the bunnies that frequents Wickham Park in Artarmon.

Artarmon is teeming with bunnies that come out in the cools of the day (after sunrise and during sunset). Some people tell me it’s because people keep them at their apartments and then let them loose when they move away. That’s a bit of a sad reason, but whatever the reason I don’t mind because they’re so cute!

  • Aperture: ƒ/2.8
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 29 January, 2011
  • Focal length: 24mm
  • ISO: 200
  • Location: 33° 48.59′ 0″ S 151° 10.85′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/320s

006: Pompey

This is my friend Steve’s snake. His name is Pompey (after Julius Caesar’s ally). He is well cool.

Yes, he is in the middle of eating a mouse (it was dead first, although Pompey didn’t know that).

  • Aperture: ƒ/1.8
  • Camera: NIKON D300S
  • Taken: 28 January, 2011
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 400
  • Location: 33° 42.29′ 0″ S 151° 6.23′ 0″ E
  • Shutter speed: 1/40s