Cloudless, sunny, hot days are not a photographer's friend and this summer we've had a lot of them . Not that I'm really complaining but a change is always welcome so when last Tuesday turned out to be a partly overcast day I picked up my camera and two lenses and drove to nearby Bateau Bay to try my lucky.
I always approach these locations, even if I've been there many times before, full of hope but inevitably come home disappointed without a photo worth keeping.
The renowned American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams is reputed to have said that if you take ten good photos in a year then it's a good year! So maybe my expectations are too high.
This trip I surprised myself by coming home with two keepers.
The first was sheer luck- a shot of a very tame magpie which carried on searching for stuff amongst the grass and seaweed on the fringe of the beach even when I got down on my knees to photograph it.
The photo was taken with my Leica SL2 using the superb APO 50mm Summicron ASPH lens.
The second photo was a seascape from the edge of the mangroves at one end of the bay. I shot it using the same camera and lens combination as the magpie shot. It was taken with the lens wide open at F2 to keep only the centre clump of mangroves in focus.
