This Koala is neither a bear or a native of Western Australia. To get this shot I had to resort to a Wildlife park next to Wave Rock. They had three Koalas there although I only found two of them as they are free to roam about the trees. I guess the park did not worry about escape attempts. But then Koalas do sleep 20hrs a day and eat for 3hrs and could not be described as speedy. How far could they get in a break for freedom? We have settled in to Hopetoun now and are ready to start work tomorrow at The Deck. The weather cleared up today so we walked West along the beach from Hopetoun to the Culham inlet. In hindsight it was a little ambitious and we are currently reliving our aching limbs with a little Aussie alcohol.

This image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for high resolution download here.

Since we left Augusta we have travelled East into the heart of Western Australia‘s forests. It’s hard to believe we will soon be crossing the Nullarbor which is named after its lack of trees. The native trees here are all types of eucalyptus but you would not know it looking at them as they vary from tall white barked trees to ones which resemble oak. This shot was taken as we cooked our diner on the free Barbecue in the National Park surrounding The Gloucester Tree which is a 61m tall tree which was regularly climbed to look out for fires. A job which is now done with light aircraft.

This image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for high resolution download here.

This is Stockton Lake near Collie which was our third camp site after stopping at Ironstone Gully Falls last night. Those of you who know Australia will realize the meandering route between sites. This is largely due to the need to pick up various provisions and water as well as the occasional desire to use toilet more substantial than an eco hole in the ground. We have found all our fellow campers to be very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. So far they have also all been Australian. This is a big advantage of camping over the backpacker hostel route. This lake was created from an old coal mine and is now a Recreation Area for all manner of water sports. I only know this from our camp site neighbour who worked here when it was a mine. As I write this we are heading towards Pine Plantation Picnic Area Camp site. I am planning to fit a cigarette lighter socket to the second battery in our van so I will not be limited to posting images while Karen is driving. I suspect I will not be forgiven if I flatten the main battery with my laptop and we are unable to start the engine in the morning.

This lucky shot was taken on the way home from the Ferry Meadows firework display. The only reason the four figures are not blurred in this 1 second exposure was that they stopped for a moment while their friend in the centre took a shot. Anyone in the right place at the right time with the perfect light has the chance to capture a great shot. As you learn more about photography you can increase the frequency of capturing these images. If you are an amateur photographer you could benefit from selling your work online. It is no coincidence the rise of micro stock agencies has coincided with the increase of the photography hobbyist. I can understand why professional photographers would be concerned with current changes to the stock industry. Crowd sourcing images has inherent advantages. Stock photography sites never reject images without a reason and suggestions to improve your photography. If you can take criticism it can be an invaluable learning tool. Professional photographers would probably find rejection far harder to stomach especially if they had been used to selling their work for much more at traditional stock agencies. The image below greets you when you login to shutterstock as a submitter. It shows where your latest sales have come from. Interestingly none of them have sold in the countries they were taken in.

This sunset was shot in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was taken in 2004 with an early digital camera. In those days memory cards cost 240 times what they do today. In fact the two 256MB cards I used almost cost as much as the camera I used then. In order to save space I was forced to use significant jpeg compression. The more a jpeg is compressed the more speckling occurs. This can be seen best in the dark areas of the left image below. Unfortunately this type of distortion makes it almost impossible to submit images for stock photography. If you want to sell your images always save them at the highest quality. Fortunately as this blog only needs images 800 pixels wide by the time the resolution is reduced the speckling is effectively eliminated. This can be seen in the right image below. The moral of this story is only compress your jpegs if you plan to put them on the web and nowhere else.

This is Braunston in Rutland, UK. It is a beautiful old English village. To make it look a little older I removed all the pylons, wires, concrete and tarmac. To add some colour to the sky I used the color range tool to select the bright areas of the sky. This selection was used to create a mask which was applied to a gradient. The Blend mode Multiply was used as this is the most forgiving when it comes to masks of light colours over dark colours. A rough mask set to Multiply will not cover the branches or leave a halo. The worst that can happen is the thinnest branches get a slight hint of blue. Even this could be argued as a natural effect of soft focus so the end result looks natural.

The first Blue Bells have started. This shot was taken 3 days ago in Barnsdale Wood Rultand, England, UK.

This is the Hawthorn Blossom at the end of our garden in the UK. I tried to get the focal plane through the Stamen but is in front of the petals. To emphasize the anther at the tips I needed to increase the mid range contrast. This can be done with the clarity slider in Camera RAW or In Photoshop by using a high pass layer set to overlay blend mode. I never realized these two methods use the same technique until I read about it in this book. Thanks to Fliss and Alex for the birthday present. In this example I imported the image as a smart object. This means you can edit the RAW camera data in Photoshop and you reduce the chance of degrading the image. In this example I used a smart filter also which allows you to go back and change settings after they have been applied.

These are the Austrian Alps. It was taken on a family holiday in 2008. I used Camera RAW to do the heavy lifting then once in Photoshop I used masks to selectively adjust the colours in different areas of the image.

We went for a walk today and Karen spotted this Jew’s Ear Fungus in a small patch of trees. It was taken around midday on a cloudy day in the shade. These are all factors which make it the bluest that daylight gets. The cameras auto white balance does not know its looking at a red object under blue light. In an attempt to balance the image it set the colour temperature to 3850K. Instead of changing the colour temperature a Color Balance layer was used to bring back the hues of the fungus and the wood.