My wife and I made the trip back up to the Warrumbungle National Park. I didn’t get enough the last time. I’d planned to do a few star shots and some more bird photography. Things didn’t quite go to plan.
Arriving in the early evening we set the tents up quickly. The plan was, get the 500mm lens out, load it on the tripod and see if I could get any shots of a nebula or planet For the record, I’m not an astrophotographer. For me, it’s a case of playing with the settings until I get it right. There’s a lot of skill and dedicated equipment needed to get the real stellar shots (like that one?) but being such a beautiful dark sky park I figured I could still get something
All looked good on paper but it turns out I had three things worked against me.
- I left my large lens at home in my other bag
- I left the tripod mounting plate on my remote camera, again at home,
- the moon was on its way to being a supermoon which meant the stars were nowhere near as bright as they’d been two weeks previous
Not a great start. Improvising where I could I gaffed taped my camera to my tripod and shot the landscape under the moonlight.
The lack of a large lens also limited my bird photography (as with the Astro stuff it’s half luck if I get a good shot). I had the 200mm with me and so just shot and cropped where I could. there are so many little birds flitting around but I couldn’t get close enough to them to get a great shot.
In the end, I think it was all in my favour. I took it as a sign to put the camera down for a change, enjoy myself and be present. Too often I am running around looking for my next shot. We camped out at the wonderful Blackman camp, enjoyed the chilly nights and frosty mornings, did a couple of short hikes and some drives to explore the surrounding area
Mistakes were made but still…..round 3 is in the planning. Hopefully, mistakes were also learned from.
If you are heading west then after the Warrumbungles the land goes flat.
