I have two major achievements that I would like to show you from the last week and a half. The first is this shot of a Rainbow Lorrikete.

There are a heap of these little critters that hang around on a tree not far from my balcony and so last weekend I decided to get out and snap some shots. This was the best one of the lot (I personally feel anyhoo) and the colours and vibrancy of the shot really made me proud of it. If you are interested the full gallery of the Rainbow Lorikeets can be seen here.

The rest of these shots are from an outing that I took on Friday to Manly Beach (Sydney, NSW, Australia). There are several different galleries that I have set up from the one shoot so I thought that I would pick the best photo from each to show you.

The first gallery is the Sneaky Lizard gallery. Nearing the end of my expedition I stopped for a rest on a bench overlooking Manly beach and after a few minutes heard a rustle behind me. I turned around to see this little critter hiding there.

He (it) actually seemed really tame and I was able to get quite close up, however at the time I was still using my 70-300IS lens as I did not want to miss the shots while changing lenses. I was able to get some really great shots so would recommend a visit to this gallery.

The next gallery up is the Oz Jetboating Gallery, now I actually did not go on this, but while I was out on the ferry on Sydney Harbour they circled around us a couple of times so I was able to get some great shots.

I really liked this photo because of the brilliant spray of water that came out from one side of the boat, it almost looked like the spray from a waterfall and I felt it just captured the moment in time really well.

The last gallery that I will pull a photo from is the Seagull Gallery, now while I know that the good old seagull is not the most elegant of all the bird family, they are a great start for a budding photographer.

I really liked this shot because of the contrast between the dark green trees and the blue sky and then again between the dark green tree and the white of the seagull. Unfortunately when this image is blown up to full size the seagull is a tad out of focus but on these smaller images it is not noticeable.

Finally there are two more galleries that you might be interested in checking out, Manly Beach Shots contains some great stills of water breaking over the rocks and the beach as a whole while Sydney Harbour Shots contains a lot of great images of the harbour when I was going to and from Manly on the ferry.

As always I welcome any feedback, either comments here or comments in the galleries themselves as the only way I can learn more is to have my work critisised and learn from my mistakes.

Look forward to anyone’s thoughts.

Stuart