Thanks to all who turned out for what was a beautiful day at the BLWG, the weather was excellent and the surroundings much more beautiful than ever. The turn out was so good that camera club members cars formed an orderley queue at the gates waiting for the gardens to open. There were around 10 – 20 members and guests that attended, most of us meeting at around 10:20 at the gates. However, it was noted that one couple did turn up a little later than everyone else due to the male half of that partnership’s refusal to get up early. Yes 10:30 is early for him.
The owner kindly reserved a covered area for us so we could have our lunch alongside the lake as all of the BBQ areas were reserved. The flowers were well in bloom and I saw many tripods set up around taking close up shots so you can expect to see a few of these shots in the up and coming club competitions. Coffee time arrived and it was here where Peter Myers and I found these very successful garden’s achilles heel, the cafe is too small. The gardens were so busy by 11:30 that we had to queue 10 minutes and wait a further 30 minutes for 2 coffee’s and a tea. We decided that now would also be a good time for lunch and we had a lot of technical chit chat going on whilst eating. One highlight was why Fred’s Nikon camera wasn’t producing a similar result on the viewscreen to the flower he was photographing alongside the place we were sitting although my Canon camera was, need I say more?
Break, lunch and chatting over, I and others took more flower images before deciding to move on to another location at around 2.30. The problem was that the beautiful sunshine and great weather is not the photographers friend at midday and as the gardens opened at 10:30 we were pretty much stuck with what we had. The three hothouses and trust me they were hot, provided some great diffused light to take shots but the limited subjects and the narrow walkways around the ponds within made for difficult setups as we always seemed to be in peoples way.
Most people having taken their fill of flower photographs, started to slowly drift away home at around 2:30 so several of us went to Kirth Kiln Regional Park on the Gembrook Road to photograph the pond on the corner near Swallowfield Road and the nearby Ship Rock Falls both of which had a lot of bright overhead sunlight spoiling the photography. There were a lot of rocks to negotiate at the falls and it was noted that I did get stuck at the bottom and needed a pull up using a very helpful extended tripod, that’s the trade off for having all that heavy gear I guess. A last coffee and cake at the Gembrook Bakery and good chat about club affairs and we all went our seperate ways home.
The following weekend is the club trip away to Airey’s Inlet so we’ll hopefully see you all there and to those not going, unlucky, there’s always next year.
Images to follow