We have a couple of feeders in our park. One hanging off the pergola and another off an oak tree.

After I put this one up and started to put seed out we had Australian King Parrots pay us a visit. They hadn’t been here before then although I knew they visited a place across the road.  I was told they don’t come over this side. Well, they might not have, but they do now

We have a very old camelia bush in our backyard. It’s more like a tree and is heavily laden with flowers at the moment.

The national (Australia) Thanks Dad Photo Competition is on.  This is the brainchild of 3 men, Chris Hawke, Michael Hawton and Greg Schlieman who have all been involved in men’s welfare issues and who wanted to bring positive images of Australian fathers to the attention of us all.  There is so much ‘bad news’ about men or fathers these days, that these guys wanted to show the good side of fatherhood so they’re encouraging people to submit their photos by email or mail before Wednesday 25th August.  Winners will be announced on Father’s Day 5th September.  The “Thanks Dad” exhibition will tour libarires and community centres throughout the year.  The website www.thanksdadphotos.org.au gives full details.

Below is a photo of my husband (on the right) and his best mate with one of our daughters in the middle.  Miriam and Graham often went bike riding together and on this occasion it was a bike race in Beechworth in 2005.

Here’s another view of that pergola. It is a pleasant place to sit during the day and watch the bird life, or listen to it.  The cats like to come and sit with me in there too.

I’m loving discovering all of the flowers on our still new property. We’ve been here almost 9 months and the winter flowers are now out.  This is a protea.

Thought I’d give another update.

Well, I’ve got some photos that have now sold several times over.  So it’s starting to pick up. Time for me to upload more images and keep building my stock.

Interesting though, that I heard from yet another stock agency overnight.  I’d loaded images to them weeks ago and had forgotten about them.  They’ve now got back to me and accepted 7 out of 27 images.  So I went to see what ones they’d accepted and rejected.  Out of the ones they rejected most of them had a reason of ‘composition’ listed and nothing else. That could mean anything. But the funny thing was that several of the images they’ve rejected have sold several times over at other agencies.

So, if you’re like me and just starting out with this whole stock photography scenario, make sure you submit to several sites, not just one or two and don’t despair when you get pics rejected. If they give you reasons take note of the reasons and improve where you can but if the reasons really give no clue, just shrug your shoulders and move onto the next agency – they may just accept the photo and sell it, just as I’ve had happen!

I’m participating in a couple of photography projects this year.  One is Project 52, taking a photo of the same thing each week. It can be at different angles and at different times of the year. I selected the pergola in our park as the subject and have seen the surrounding bushes and wisteria change.  Below are two of the images I’ve taken through this year and you can click on the top photo to see the rest of the set.

These birds are almost the size of our crows, or ravens.  A very dark grey, almost black with the distinctive white strip on their wings.  They have an unusual call that travels long distances.  The lilly pilly tree is heavily laden with berries and they love them. But I am sure they keep flying over our house and dropping berries (or perhaps twigs) on our roof. I have had them throw things at me when I’ve been outside on occasion.

This is a brown thornbill I saw on one of my walks.

19th August marks World Photography Day and at the time of writing this post over 1700 photographers have so far registered to participate.  Including me!

The idea is to photograph your part of the world and share it. Something I do already anyway, hey?

To get involved, register at http://www.worldphotoday.org/ and then tweet it, announce it at Facebook and even at Flickr!  Have fun snapping!

Below is my part of the world during winter.