Dennis Goulet — Page 17

Dennis May 17, 2009

The Pinnacles

Nambung National Park is a three hour drive along the coast 245 km north of Perth. Within the park is the Pinnacles Desert, an area of yellow sands and limestone outcroppings. Thousands of stone pillars stud the area, some up to 12 feet high. Starting as a area of sand dunes blown inland from the beach, rain water leached lime from the sand near the surface and concentrated in lower levels of the dune, cementing the sand together into limestone. The pillars were a result of a hard crust of calcrete that formed over the top of the limestone. Water seeped through cracks in the crust and further dissolved the limestone leaving columns of harder limestone under calcrete caps. Winds blowing the sand away exposed the columns we see today.

I arrived at the Pinnacles at mid-day, making photography difficult, although the day was clear, with little breeze.

Dennis April 22, 2009

Australia Wildlife

With the exception of the Fox Bat, which was photographed in the wild, these images were made either in Sydney Wildlife World or the Sydney Aquarium. I took many photographs, but photographing handheld through glass in a dark environment proved to be too much of a challenge. Many of the images were distorted slightly, especially in the aquarium where the interfaces between air-glass-water distorted the optics.

In order from left to right, the photos are Fox Bat, Bull Ant, Hedge Grasshopper, Forest Tree Frog, Red Eyed Tree Frog, Gippsland Water Dragon, and Crocodile.

Dennis April 5, 2009 Leave a Comment

It’s Spring and Love is in the Air

After seeing only male turkeys in our yard over the winter, the big males have gathered up their harems and are displaying to impress females, and to chase off any portential rivals. There are eleven turkeys in the group that visits reguraly, one big male, a couple of juvenile males, and seven females.

The colors on their heads changes dramatically when they are displaying, with vivid blues, a whte cap on top of their head, and bright red neck. the colors in their feathers are spectacular in the morning light. The male puffs up its feathers, spreads his tail and extends his wings down to the ground. He also angles his tail so that it shows in the direction of the femals (or to potential rivals) to show how big and flashy he is.

The images in this post were take with my new Sigma 150mm F2.8 macro lens