I got some great Black Cockatoo images from the recent open day at Native Animal Rescue here in Perth but I wasn’t expecting this!
This particular trio of images feature Obama, one of their resident Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos chewing on a gum nut. It wasn’t until I got home and checked out the images that I realised that his nut had exploded with perfect timing.
A Short Timelapse Video Experiment
The trio of images looked so good that I decided to experiment with a short Timelapse video showing just how seriously these guys take their gum nuts 😎 I just love how his claws open up in the second shot as the nut explodes.
I’ve been meaning to make some video’s for a while now and initially thought I should just do it in Photoshop. While I did successfully create a video very similar to the above in Photoshop I found it somewhat inefficient, especially when I just wanted to make small changes.
Eventually I remade the video in much less time using Premier Pro, and that included reminding myself exactly how Premier Pro worked. However, if Photoshop is all you have access to then it will work fine for simple videos like this one 👍
Here are the individual images …
Obama the Red Tailed Black Cockatoo
Obama the Red Tailed Black Cockatoo with Exploding Nut!
Obama the Red Tailed Black Cockatoo
These 3 images are available now as Fine Art Prints or on any of our Photo Products. I’m thinking a Triptych of square canvases or Aluminium Prints would look amazing 😃
Please remember that these magnificent Black Cockatoos Cockatoos are highly endangered, if you want to help protect WA’s Black Cockatoo population then support the local organisations that are working hard to keep these amazing birds alive:
Also available at the Gallery are Greeting Cards, Magnets, Keyrings, Mugs, Scarves, Tote Bags, Wall Tapestries, Lens Cloths, unique 3D Printed Gadgets & Gizmo’s and much more …
The Carnaby Black Cockatoos were out in Yanchep National Park last week when we turned up there for a walk. Noisy as ever they paraded around the treetops with their usual majesty and charm allowing me to get some great photos.
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Black Cockatoos truly are magnificent, you really have to see one up close to realise just how big and beautiful they are. They each have a unique character and are very friendly & gentle creatures.
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
But the sad thing is Black Cockatoos are highly endangered!
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
A survey in April last year known as the “Great Cocky Count”, held here in South Western Australia, reported that Carnaby Black Cockatoo numbers had fallen by 35% over the last year. Carnaby’s are only found here in Western Australia and their numbers are dropping due to increasing decimation of their habitat and food sources due to urban and industrial development.
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
There will be another “Great Cocky Count” in April this year, conducted by Birdlife Western Australia, volunteers will count Carnaby’s & Red-tailed Black Cockatoo’s at known roost sites across South Western Australia.
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Carnaby Black Cockatoos, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
If you want to help protect WA’s Black Cockatoo population then support the local organisations that are working hard to keep these amazing birds alive:
Also available at the Gallery are Greeting Cards, Magnets, Keyrings, Mugs, Scarves, Tote Bags, Wall Tapestries, Lens Cloths, unique 3D Printed Gadgets & Gizmo’s and much more …
Our latest Fine Art Image release is a beautiful shot of “Sturt’s Desert Peas” (Swainsona formosa) in Kings Park. These wildflowers are backlit by the afternoon sun giving the leaves a bright green luminance bordered by the white glow of the sun highlighting the fine hairs around the leaves.
Sturt’s Desert Pea, Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia – Full Image
There are so many ways to present an image like this, in it’s original 2:3 format you can really appreciate the narrow depth of field isolating the Sturt’s Desert Peas by blurring the foreground and the trees in the background creating such a tranquil Forest Scene.
Sturt’s Desert Pea, Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia – Panoramic Image
We are always happy to provide custom formats for our images to suit your decor. Cropped as a Panorama the image focuses entirely on the Peas and looks amazing further cropped to 3 squares and hung as a Canvas Triptych.
Sturt’s Desert Peas, Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia – Living Room Triptych
Then again, if you’re looking for creativity I’m working on some new designs emulating the effect of printing on wood without all the drawbacks. Can’t wait to see how this artistic approach works out …
Sturt’s Desert Pea, Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia – Photographic Art on Wood
Post Processing
This image was created using a combination of Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 & ON1 Photo RAW 2018.
Would you like to make your Mum’s Mother’s Day a Natural Experience?
Show your Mum how much you love her with a Mother’s Day Gift from Mother Nature
Tawny Frogmouth from Native Animal Rescue, Perth, Western Australia
What’s your Mum’s favourite animal My Mum loves Owls, her house and garden are full of them
Barn Owl from Native Animal Rescue, Perth, Western Australia
Whether your Mum loves Owls, Blue Wrens, Koalas or any other of natures amazing creations we have a the perfect gift for her
Koala from Yanchep National Park, Western Australia
So why not come visit us at our new Gallery & Shop in Wanneroo Markets to see all the wonderful Mother’s Day gifts we have in stock
Blue Wren from Margaret River, Western Australia
Help us support Native Animal Rescue here in Perth, part proceeds from sales of NAR sourced images are donated back to help them support our local wildlife
Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, Native Animal Rescue, Perth, Western Australia – Photographic Art
Buy Prints & Photo Products
Visit our Gallery & Shop at Wanneroo Markets:
Shop 136 Wanneroo Markets, 33 Prindiville Drive in Wangara. Open Fri to Sun & Public Holidays 9am to 5pm.
Did you know it’s a proven fact that being out in nature is great for your mental and physical health
While you won’t get the full health benefit from our range of prints and photo gifts they are always a great reminder of where you’d rather be 👍🐬
Perth Zoo is an amazing place to visit and experience some of the incredible wildlife from Australia & around the world. To be honest we haven’t been to the Zoo for many years, must be time for another visit, I’m sure there have been many changes over the past few years.
African Lion, Perth Zoo, South Perth,Western Australia
Baby Giraffe, Perth Zoo, South Perth,Western Australia
Bonzai the Numbat, Perth Zoo, South Perth,Western Australia
These gorgeous creatures were captured during our visits between 2003 & 2010 when we were working with the Zoo on their website and I decided to have a play around with them to create some Perth Zoo Photo Art.
Sadly Bonzai the Numbat has since passed away but we were proud to have our images used on the signage around his enclosure for a few years before he died.
Perth Zoo and many other zoo’s around Australia and the World do an amazing job help protect & preserve our wildlife, we owe it it to them to do what we can to support these efforts.
Post Processing
All images were processed in Adobe Lightroom, ON1 Photo RAW 2018 & Adobe Photoshop.
Did you know it’s a proven fact that being out in nature is great for your mental and physical health! While you won’t get the full health benefit from our range of prints and photo gifts they are always a great reminder of where you’d rather be. So be sure to check out our range of Fine Art Prints here in our online gallery and our unique photo gifts (scarves, wall tapestries, beach towels, tote bags and much more) at madaboutwa.com.au.
Note: Our Perth Zoo images are not for sale currently though we would dearly love to create more amazing images and products that could help support the Zoo.
Southern Boobook Owl Triptych, Mindarie, Western Australia
Bird photography can be a time consuming process but rewards can pay of at the least expected times. a few days a go I got a call from my mum to say she had spotted a small owl in her back garden. As an avid owl lover mum has owl ornaments and images all around her house & garden so maybe this little guy just felt at home in her garden …
Southern Boobook Owl Triptych, Mindarie, Western Australia
Anyway, we headed off to mum’s to check out this visitor of hers hoping that he would still be there … and he was. We found him nestled in the foliage of a small tree in the garden. Luckily for us the tree’s foliage was dense enough to keep him protected but with enough gaps that we could get a good view of him, it’s not often you get so lucky 🙂 Ironically the only reason mum spotted him was because the local birds were going crazy about his presence, fluttering around the tree and and making a rawkus noise. But then it is spring and no doubt they were a little concerned about their nests becoming potential dinner plates!
Southern Boobook Owl, Mindarie, Western Australia
Maggie began looking into what type of owl he was while I started snapping away with my 70-200mm. The late afternoon sun was behind him making the light interesting and challenging. I knew the bright blue glimpses of sky would be blown out but the important thing was getting the owl exposed perfectly and retaining the brilliant green of the backlit foliage. The little guy was barely moving so shutter speed wasn’t so important but I still needed to keep it up high enough to prevent any camera shake. It was pretty dark inside that tree and after a bit of experimentation I compromised at manually setting my exposure to 1/160th, f7.1 & ISO 1000 and I was very happy with how that worked out. Noise levels were very low even with the shadows brightened up in Lightroom and the level of detail around his eyes was astounding as you can see from the exploded view below.
Lightroom Close Up of Southern Boobook Owl, Mindarie, Western Australia
Although the owl was not moving all that much it was a windy day and the leaves were blowing around all over the place making it tricky to frame the owl and causing the sunlight to randomly blow out parts of the owls body.
Blown Out Patches – Southern Boobook Owl, Mindarie, Western Australia
All up we were there for around 40 mins, I took 213 photos and got some crackers. Turns out he was a Southern Boobook Owl, quite common around here though not so much in backyards! One good tip for photographing animals is to always focus on the eyes. At 200mm in low light depth of field is often sacrificed for shutter speed and if the eyes are not pin sharp then the whole image can be ruined.
Focus on the Eyes – Southern Boobook Owl, Mindarie, Western Australia
As usual my initial processing was done in Lightroom followed by adding effects in the new ON1 Photo Raw 2018 with some final tweaking in Photoshop, the Master File is then imported back into Lightroom from where I can export it in any format as required. All 3 tools have their benefits and work well together to produce a final image that is extremely high quality and suitable for any purpose.
Southern Boobook Owl, Mindarie, Western Australia – Tabletop Print Suggestion
I haven’t really looked at the new version of ON1 Photo RAW 2018 short of using the effects module to create & apply presets. Keep an eye out for my upcoming review of this very interesting photo processing software package that is becoming serious competition for Lightroom.
Image Details
Location: Mindarie Backyard, Western Australia Date: 26th December 2017 Time: 3pm – 3:40pm Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk11 Lens: EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM Camera Mode: Manual Exposure: 1/160 sec, f7.1 at ISO 1000
It’s a proven fact that being out in nature is great for your mental and physical health. While you won’t get the full health benefit from our range of prints and photo gifts they are always a great reminder of where you’d rather be. So be sure to check out the rest of our range of Fine Art Prints at madcat.com.au and our unique photo gifts (scarves, wall tapestries, beach towels, tote bags and much more) at madaboutwa.com.au.
We heard that there are some baby Swans around Lake Wagardu in Yanchep National Park so we took a trip out there for our daily walk, sadly the Swans were a no-show but we did get to see a lot of other bird life around the Lake.
Abundant Bird Life, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Wester Australia
If you look closely at the above image you can see a Pelican and numerous other wading birds and ducks going about their daily business. The Park really is a natural wonder 🙂
Hungry Duck, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
One thing Yanchep National park has in abundance is Ducks!
When we sat on a park bench to eat our lunch three Pacific Black Ducks waddled on over to see if they could get some crumbs. One was immediately chased off by the other two, obviously he wasn’t part of the “In-Crowd”!
Luckily for the Ducks we know more about what is good for them than they do so they weren’t very lucky in the food department. It is really important not to feed Ducks or any other wild animals as it can upset the balance of nature as well as causing serious health problems according to the Department of Parks & Wildlife.
The first couple of Duck shots weren’t quite so sharp, something to do with having a shutter speed of 1/40th sec I suspect 😳 However, you can get some interesting shots of animals with slow shutter speeds sometimes, the first 2 photos I took looked like the Duck was shaking and nodding his head …
Duck Says No, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Duck Says Yes, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Maybe he was just going Quackers
Being Spring there were also a lot of incredibly cute Ducklings around this extended family of Australian Wood Ducks were gorgeous …
Duckling Creche, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Spring Ducklings, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Ducklings On Watch, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
These two Pacific Black Ducklings cuddled up by the Lake were pretty damn cute too …
Twin Ducklings, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
While on our walk around the lake I spotted this awesome carving on one of the tree stumps, no idea who did it but it looked cool.
Kangaroo Carving, Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia
Hopefully we’ll spot the Swan’s Cygnets on our next trip to the Park.
All of these images were processed in Lightroom CC & ON1 Photo 10 & Photoshop CC. You can download free trials of these programs or purchase them from the links below:
We went for a bush walk in Whiteman Park last week and spotted these two Twenty-Eight Parrots having lunch while being cleverly camouflaged by the yellow Daisies.
Twenty-Eight Having Lunch in the Daisies, Whiteman Park, Perth, Western Australia
Twenty-Eight Standing Tall in the Daisies, Whiteman Park, Perth, Western Australia
Whilst only found in Australia these guys are not considered endangered though they do compete for nesting space in the south west with the introduced Rainbow Lorikeets.
According to noongarculture.org.au the Twenty-Eight Parrot or darlmoorluk is the ‘guardian or protector of the camps’, not that that stopped them from being eaten when the need was high 🙂
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