STUART FORSYTH .com

The last two nights have brought lightning, thunder and torrential rains. The mornings have been cool and quiet with clouds of wet mist settled like a brilliant soggy blanket over everything in sight. The abundance of life in the garden and the beautiful softbox effect of the clouds and mist made an ideal haven for an amateur naturalist and photographer. My wife, son and two dogs had loads of fun this morning wandering around the garden and under the giant dripping Gum trees and ferns looking for spider webs covered with droplets of rain for me to photograph.

A spider sitting motionless in the centre of its jewelled domain.

The photograph above is an HDR composite of a web spun within the circular metal pieces of our front gate. I was losing too much detail in the dark areas of the metal and a 3 exposure HDR allowed me to pull that detail back into the image so that it better reflected how my eye saw it.

The tensile strength of spider silk never ceases to amaze me. Looking at the comparative size of those tiny, near invisible threads and the sheer volume of water they effortlessly hold is both inspiring and beautiful.

Not sure what this little Arachnid was up to but he/she was very busy bustling about, back and forth, between the little drops of water in the centre of the web. I have a very active imagination with a propensity towards anthropomorphism and I felt sure that this spider was busy cleaning up after the inconsiderate storm whilst muttering through it’s bristling chelicerae.

This is a little bit of an experiment. There is a Posterous robot available for Google Wave which allows me to add and change content from inside a wave. If this appears on the website then I will actually be rather chuffed.

Here is the robot URL for those Wave users interested in this method of blogging.

I am perpetually cold. We live up in the forested mountains to the east of Melbourne where it is on average 6 degrees colder then the central basin. I love it here, amongst the trees with the natural world bursting on our doorstep; but it is very very chilly in winter.

This year has been odd, both in the protraction of the cold and the abundance of the winter rains. The upside is that many of the water catchments are filling up bringing drought relief to parts of Victoria, the downside? Finger aching cold and damp in the middle of October.

I snapped these 2 images at the bottom of our garden this morning. I would have gone back for my SLR & tripod but as usual I was caught in a frantic rush to not miss my train. I processed them in two of my favourite iPhone apps: photoforge & photoeffects.

On the way home this evening I noticed plumes of smoke curling up from a number of spots into the evening air so like any curious photographer (or resident who happens to live in a bush-fire area) I went to investigate. The municipal services have been hard at work the last few weeks cleaning up after the storms we had recently and today they were doing a burn-off of some of the larger logs which couldn’t be carried away. A short distance from the Ferny Creek picnic grounds I found this pile of smoking logs and just knew I had to return later in the evening when it was dark.

After dinner, and when my son was safely ensconced in his bed, I grabbed my tripod and SLR and headed back to the fire. It was an incredible primal feeling to stand a short distance inside the pitch-black forest, your only light that of the fire and your woefully inadequate head lamp and listen to the sounds of the birds and animals all around you. There was something quite large moving in the undergrowth nearby cracking twigs and rustling leaves but hey, this is Australia and not Africa, and the only danger would be a slightly peeved wombat or kangaroo.

I took my time, revelled in the warmth from the crackling wood and got a great series of night fire photos.

1500 years old, 300 feet high – Photographer Michael Nichols captures a stunning portrait of a forest giant using 84 images and some pretty nifty camera rigging.

Story here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/10/redwoods/bourne-text/1

I have long been a fan of iPhone photography, not because the device takes technically brilliant pictures (it doesn’t) but because I have it with me all the time and the photos it does take exude atmosphere.

There is a new iPhone app on the block called Best Camera. Chase Jarvis, author of a recent book of the same name as this post has teamed up with software gurus Ubermind to bring you a tool with some pretty nifty filters and great photosharing ability. Have fun and join the latest Internet photosharing sensation.

Following up on yesterday's post on the massive dust storms sweeping New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, I was pleased to see the Boston Big Picture did a stunning photographic gallery of the event.  Head on over there for the full set.