Some light relief is on the cards for me tonight. Why? I’m off to judge the images at my local camera club. The title of tonight’s competition, ‘A walk in nature’. Our little club interprets this as anything that moves, grows, or did at one time or another.
There are two categories, prints or digital projections.
Although I’m tonight’s judge, I’m going to throw in three prints of my own. Of course I won’t be allocating any awards ( Distinctions for great images and Credits for images not quite up to the great standard) to my own work but it gives the ‘mob’ an opportunity to vent their spleen by giving my images a total rubbish if they feel so inclined.
Just between us, I don’t take my best work along when I’m the judge. A simple tactic I picked up years ago. That way the ‘mob’ can say what they dislike about my images and they are probably right and I can agree with their criticism in all honesty. Makers them feel good.
Here are the three I’m going to take along tonight:
This is an Australian Eastern Blue Tongue lizard, the largest member of the Skink family. They are likeable, harmless reptiles and are always welcome in our garden where they devour as many slugs, snails and other unwanted guests they can find. We saw our first one in the garden about 40 years ago and called him ‘Albert’. Now we call every blue tongue that comes and stays,’ Son of Albert’.
‘Son of Albert’ hung around in my garage a couple of weeks just long enough for me to whack the 105 Micro on the camera and grab this image. You can see why they are called blue tongues.
Second on my list is this common pigeon, one of many that flock to our yard when we feed the native birds. I used a 600mm lens to capture this blighter as it glided down from power lines some distance away.
My third offering for tonight is this image of an Australian Perentie Goanna, the largest member of the monitor lizards found in the Land of Oz. They can run at great speed, climb trees with ease and grow up to about 2,5 metres long. They run from humans but when they feel threatened can give a quite nasty bite and scratch with their sharp claws. This one is a juvenile out hunting for food. For some reason the image the image appears here to be quite blurry whilst the original isn’t. I’m sure you will get a good idea anyway of how they look in the wild.
I grabbed this image with a 50mm f1.4 lens.
I’m really looking forward to some fun tonight, there should be about 50-60 prints and a similar number of projected images to judge. Some of the members will be disappointed that they didn’t get an award but I’ll make sure that my comments are all positive and encouraging.
Well that’s it for me, off to the meeting in a few minutes to enjoy pre judging coffee, bickies( cookies for some of you) and a beer or two after it’s all over.
Hoo roo.
CREAKINGBONES 
The pigeon one surprises me. It looks so much more than a mere pigeon ☺ Well done!
Thanks Greg, the light was just right and focus was quick and spot on, more good luck than good management.
I dislike pigeons mainly because they are a nuisance most of the time, but this one looked so majestic in your shot. All your photos were really good, and Son of Albert looks very interesting. I hope to visit Australia one day to see all the strange and wonderful creatures. Enjoy tonight.
I agree about pigeons, I think they are feathered cockroaches. Blue tongues are great little lizards and are safe to have around as they don’t bite and can be tames easily. You have to have a permit to keep one as a pet so Son of Albert isn’t tamed and comes and goes as it pleases. Glad you liked the images. Australia is a lot like your home country, lots of open space and plenty of different animals.
It’s a beautiful colorful pigeon, never seen one like this. Good sharing it
Thank you, I’m glad you liked the photo. It was more good luck than good management to get the shot.
It’s always a good eye to take a good shot!:)
None of the creatures in America have blue tongues. And our frogs don’t have nearly the colors that your do. Luck outs.
We certainly have some unusual animals, lizards, birds and snakes, not to mention our sharks, blue ringed octopus, stone fish, sea wasps and of course our saltwater crocodiles and all sorts of other nasties including plenty of venomous spiders.
Doesn’t stop us from enjoying the sea and being outdoors. Can’t help loving the place.
When I first saw the lizard with the blue tongue I thought he had a piece of cloth in his mouth. Amazing color of blue! The photo of the pigeon is stunning!
The blue tongue is a friendly little lizard, they get used to human presence but totally ignore the road rules and get squashed far too often. Glad you liked the photos, shame that the perenties head bald to appear in the image. Better luck next time.
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your last sentence.
I mean, your next to the last sentence.
In my copy of the blog, for some reason the parentie’s head has been deleted from the image. It looked OK when I posted it.