Oops! It seems I’m
a bit late on the whole ‘Weekly Post’ promise. I get so caught up in my
research I just lose track of time. Sorry about that; hopefully today will make
up for it.
Last night I went
to the Little Penguin Observation Centre in Burnie, Tasmania, to photograph
(you guessed it!) penguins.
From around September
to the end of March just about every coast of Tasmania plays host to at least
one colony of Eudyptula Minor,
commonly known as Fairy Penguins or Little Penguins. After spending most the
year at sea, these little guys and girls head to their colony’s traditional rookery
or nesting site for mating season. During this period the males show off to the
females to gain their attention and fight each other for the right to mate. It’s
a bit like penguin high school.
Luckily I live on
Tasmania’s Northwest Coast, which seems to play host to the largest
concentration Fairy Penguin colonies in the state, so it was a simple thing to
find the best place to take my camera gear to shoot – photograph! I mean
photograph! – these fantastic birds.
Capturing images
of Fairy Penguins in Tasmania is quite challenging because, as increasing
pressure from human settlements threaten to cause the extinction of Tasmanian
penguin populations, the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania has introduced
a number of stringent guidelines to protect the current colonies. Follow this Link for a complete list of
the guidelines laid out by Parks and Wildlife for penguin watching (and if you
decide to go penguin watching, follow the guidelines, yeah? They have the right
to be safe, too).
After looking at
this page myself I decided that, until I am better prepared to approach a
colony alone, I would go to one of the sites where guides would be available to
help make sure I didn’t do anything wrong. Hence my visit to Penguin
Observation Centre in Burnie; a free observation experience run by volunteers
who offer education and guidance to visitors, as well as helping to spot the
penguins as they come out to play. It’s only five minutes’ walk from Burnie CBD
(I walk kinda quick, though), so if you’re in town for the night over the
spring/summer period, have a look!
Now, while the
visit to the Burnie colony and its volunteers did take away many of the
challenges a visitor might face, it didn’t take away the challenge a
photographer will always face. Light
and the absence thereof. Did I mention that our fairy friends only come out at
night? More specifically, they start their onshore activities at around sunset
and are snug in their burrows by the time the sun is fully up. And, according
to the guidelines I was spruiking earlier, you are not permitted to take any
light source to view the penguin colonies unless it is a red light source. Red
cellophane over a torch is fine but, because the penguins are cautious little
souls, if they see naked torchlight they will assume there is a threat nearby
(and yeah, we humans are a threat, even if by accident) and they won’t come out
of the water.
So, it was a
dark, moonless night and the only light source available to me was red. The
resultant photos looked like this:
Into Lightroom
for a bit of post-processing, then. I pulled back the reds, then the oranges
and finally those little hints of yellow, and I wound up with black and white
images. A red torch will wash out any other colour in an image. Who knew?!
So I reset the
images and set about giving them my usual black and white treatment. The end
result looks a bit like this:
What do you
think?
I like them
myself. But I’m sure there is an element of bias informing my judgement. I had
a fantastic experience, got within metres of wild penguins and got to witness
nature doing what nature does. That has got
to have coloured my assessment! That’s okay, though. If an experience leaves a
positive impression, how can it be a bad thing?
I’d love to know
what you think of my photos. Did I do alright? What would you have done
differently? Do you know of a way to recover natural colour from a red-lit
image? Share your thoughts, gang, and
help improve my togging life!
For more information on Tasmaina's penguin population check out Park & Wildlife Tasmania
And don't forget to have a look at Bob Cartledge Photography, it's where I keep my good stuff!
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