Georgina Steytler Photography in Albany, Western Australia | Photography and videography

Georgina Steytler Photography

Locality: Albany, Western Australia

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25.01.2022 Another Yellow-billed Spoonbill taken at the same place as the last one but on a different morning in different light in different position. I think it's good to show the different effects you can get with the same species in the same place but with different conditions (eg light, mist, background). I think I might continue this all week just to ram the point home. What do you think? Personally I think it's a danged good idea ... Yellow-billed Spoonbill (F4, 1/5000, ISO640 with a 600mm F4 lens lying in the mud at the shoreline to get to water level shooting INTO the light)

25.01.2022 Who else remembers Boof? He's so adorable isnt he? This is Yellow-Spoonbill Study Series - Part 4 and these THREE images are all SOOC - STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA except for a crop! If you look at the second image, I even left in all the dust bunnies (spots on sensor)! Like my previous three posts this was shot on the Avon River in Northam. All images were taken mid morning in winter. If I had taken the first two in the Australia summer they would not have looked as pleasing ...as the light on the bird would be super harsh. IMAGE 1&2 Yellow-billed Spoonbill (F5.6, 1/6400, ISO400 at 600mm): This young spoonbill (notice his blue-grey eyes, blue around face and 'pink' bill) was feeding very close to the bank of the river so this time I used my 600mm lens to get a close portrait. The bird was in the light and I made sure to shoot him against the shadows of the opposite river bank. To prevent the whites being over-exposed, I applied negative exposure compensation of -2 to -3 shots. This results in the dark background, "Blackground". You could also use spot metering but I would be very careful to make sure its still not overexposing by checking the blinkies (highlights alert) after the shot. IMAGE 3 Yellow-billed Spoonbill (F4, 1/1250, ISO640 at 600mm): This is the image you get if you turn the camera around and shoot in the direction of the sun. This time I DELIBERATELY overexposed the background so that when you checked the image the background was flashing red at me to tell me I had lost detail! Critically, the bird's face is well exposed with all detail. If I had not applied negative exposure compensation, and just left camera on auto, this bird would have been just a silhouette. It's amazing the different effects you can get in camera.

23.01.2022 Sometimes you fall in love with a little birdy. I'm in love with this female Flame Robin ( F5, 1/800, ISO800) - she is sooooo adorable. She was not far from the boy Flame Robin in my earlier posts. The blue cast is because I slightly underexposed (not intentionally ) and it was already 'cold light', but I really like it in this shot so its staying! Meanwhile I was lucky enough to be a guest on @wildlife_inspired YouTube channel this morning with @skeysimages and @galicki_ph...otography discussing our TOP FIVE images for 2020 - had a lot of fun and gave myself a headache (dinkum) from laughing too loudly. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTqpTVeV26U&feature=youtu.be Don't forget to LIKE and FOLLOW the YouTube channel to help reach the goal of 5,000 subscribers by end of 2021!

22.01.2022 Pied or White-headed Stilt (F6.3, 1/5000, ISO320). One of my favourite species. So soooo soooooooooo elegant (like me... OK, that is a joke ) _________________________________ Top Bird Photography Tip for the Day: Always be prepared for action. If light allows, always set minimum shutter speed of 1/1600, preferably 1/2500sec ... Love what you post. Post only what you love

21.01.2022 Another New Years eve party crowd that just did NOT know how to social distance... Christmas Island Imperial Pigeons (F5.6, 1/3200, ISO1600) taken on, now dont be surprised... Christmas Island!! I do love the yellow eyes

21.01.2022 Tomorrow live (8am on 18th Jan in Perth, Western Australia) with two awesome photographers!

19.01.2022 Hey! How ya hangin' guys? Hanging Cockatoo of Herdsman a.k.a. Little Corella (F6.1, 1/2500, ISO1600 at 840mm) I know I repeat a lot of tips and things but there is a lot to be said for repetition - just ask marketing experts. Many quote the Rule of 7. Interestingly, according to an American Express blog there was a study from Microsoft investigating the optimal number of exposures required for audio messages and they concluded between 6 and 20 was best.... So I may not be selling anything, but I dare say that learning something is similar. If you hear it enough times it will finally stick in your brain like a piece of chewing gum on your shoe on a hot summers day.

18.01.2022 So this was one of those incredible scenes where you just want to pinch yourself that you are so lucky to see it and you busy yourself firing away 50 million photos trying desperately to capture the moment BUT not one single shot seems to do it. Why? Because its a flock of birds all feeding (the orange colour comes from the dust they disturbed - if you shoot through it almost directly into setting sun everything goes orange!) and it's hard to get a good focal point of the ima...ge. What it really needed was two to start a big fight above the others - now THAT would have been out of the park! This is why sometimes big flocks or colonies of birds are the hardest to photograph. You think the abundance of birds would make it easy but it can almost be the reverse because what you want to do is isolate one or two. Still, I'll take the challenge any day! Magpie Geese (F8, 1/800, ISO640) Did you know these birds are unqiue among waterfowl sitting in a family all of their own (Anseranatidae). Also, they have knobs on their heads that grow bigger as they get older. The males are bigger knobs.... ooops I mean they bigger knobs than the females... () Inferentially (is that even a word?), the main bird in this image is quite young.

16.01.2022 When I was on the coast yesterday and there were massive waves crashing into the rocky cliffs and salt spray going so high it covered the cars in the car park I noticed something: I felt FANTASTIC! Like really, roooolly REALLY fantastic, like "I'm walking on sunshine oooh oh..." kind of happy. And not just me. Everyone else I saw, young and old, had a big smile on their face. What's more - the feeling lasted allllll night! This, I realised, is the power of nature. I don't... know what it is about it, maybe the feeling of being in the company of something much bigger and more magnificent than anything we humans could conjour ourselves. It is surely the BEST DRUG in the world! So yeah, if you are feeling down, go out and immerse yourself in nature and let it work its magic... Red-capped Parrot (F5.6, 1/1250, ISO3200) This is a different composition of a similar image I posted earlier this year. Mostly I just loved seeing the red-capped parrot on the red bottlebrush and how its plumage mimicked the plants it feeds on! Nature is amazing and worth protecting!

15.01.2022 Yellow-Spoonbill Study Series - Part 3! So like my previous two posts this was shot on the Avon River in Northam but on yet another morning. This time I am shooting away from direction of the light source (ie the sun ) at the birds. The sun is rising on my left sending raking light across the river and catching some of the vegetation on the bank behind and the birds. The effect is that the dappled vegetation adds texture and interest to an otherwise dull image. ... If I took this same image 1 hour later, the light would still be coming in from the left but it would be much HARSHER and the effect not as pleasing. Plus it would have evaporated most of thet mist (its there). I took this from the far side of the river and chose to shoot quite distant from the birds (with a Canon 100-400mm lens rather than 600mm f4 prime) because I decided that the overall scene would be more pleasing than trying to get closer to a single bird. With a big lens its easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have to zoom in and get as much detail as possible in that bird but to do that sometimes is to miss the bigger, more attractive and wholly unique image. Yellow-billed Spoonbills (F5.6, 1/2000, ISO3200 at 400mm, handheld)

11.01.2022 Answering that age-old question: "Can you ever have too much bling?" ... and the answer is categorically YES! Some of these images in this series I took last year just have too many sparkling things. This is Yellow-Spoonbill Study Series - Part 5. The actual reason there are so many 'bokeh' spots is because of bits floating on the water catching the light. I shot this into the sun. If you direct too much into the sun's direction you can get 'flare' which gives a slightly hazy/washed out look. Sometimes that can 'add' to the image but most of the time it detracts and so you have to find a 'sweet spot' (ie area just to the left or right of the rising or setting sun) that gets you the good bokeh/colour but not the flare. Yellow-billed Spoonbill (F6.3, 1/3200, ISO600 at 600mm)

09.01.2022 Love is in the air! Cormorants are fantastic birds to photograph. Everyone always wants to photograph the exotic and new but time and time again I say to people don't ignore the common birds. You are far better off with a great photo of a common bird than an average photo of a rare one. Taking great images has nothing to do with the rarity of the species and everything to do with the skills of the photographer. Little Black Cormorants (F8, 1/640, ISO6400) This image was taken in the very last light of sunset hence the super high ISO.

08.01.2022 Great Crested Grebe (F5.6, 1/3200, ISO1250 at 840mm) Confessions of a lazy bird photographer: sometimes I wake up and I can see from my house a beautiful mist on the still, still waters of the harbour and I think my goodness, this would be a perfect time to go out and take some bird photos and I'd probably get something reaaaallly beautiful . But then I roll over in my warm bed and go back to sleep... We need to make sure we are taking photos coz we love it, not because we... think we ought to. We need to give ourselves permission to say no. With social media, there seems to be more pressure than ever to keep producing images for the 'next' post or pretend that you are the 'perfect' photographer with no faults at all who just cant wait to get up at 4am every single day! It's OK to post old stuff (I almost never post my latest images except for Olympus ones). It's OK not to post at all (though admittedly the algo punishes you...) and its OK to just be lazy. So I don't feel like taking photos, then I won't. Recently I heard @PeterEastway (amazing landscape photographer who I notice has been posting bird images lately - what's going on!) say something like: take photos coz you love it, not coz you want to post it in social media.

04.01.2022 This image has fine memories of being out photographing with friends. Such a magical morning with mist and light and Yellow-billed Spoonbills! And to top it off my friend @wildlifewithsue got a photo from that morning (way better than this one) shortlisted in the Australian Birdlife Photo Awards - yay!!!! Yellow-billed Spoonbill (F5.6, 1/3200, ISO500) Taken with a 100-400mm lens. I often find that with scenes like this, you are better off zooming out than in!!!! You wouldn't want to lose all that atmosphere!

04.01.2022 Australian Fairy Tern* I took this at F5.6, 1/2500, ISO1000 at 700mm. The foreground blur comes from a sand bar between me and the bird. Don't forget to get effective foreground blur, the object in the foreground needs to be at least half way between you and the subject. The closer to you it is, the more blurred (and pleasing) it will appear. Please follow my friend (and fantastic photographer) @fairy.tern who is doing incredible work with these beautiful endangered ...birds. She is documenting the highs and lows of the nesting season and highlighting the precarious lifestyle of beach-nesting birds and why it's so important to alleviate the additional human pressures (including impacts of bird photographers who get too close) that drive reproductive failure. [*Super Repeat Alert! I am on insta free holiday with family]

03.01.2022 How would you like a FREE 12x18in FINE ART PRINT (on white matt board) of this photo (worth, including postage anywhere, $165)? All you have to do is tag one friend in the comments section of my instagram account @georgina_steytler (as many times as you like but they have to each be in a different comment) and I will use one of those crazy app thingies to randomly select the winner. AND I will also send the friend who was tagged a 6x9in print (different but equally nice pho...to) on matt board as well! AND AND I will also add in a set of 8 Multi-Edged Steak Knives with Olive Wood Handles.... ok that was a joke . You won't get the steak knives but I will post the prints to anywhere in the world. It's an idea I have had for a while and I hope they would arrive by Christmas but in this age of coronavirus there are no guarantees! In the coming weeks I will also be offering another 12x18in Fine Art Print to one of my email subscribers - so make sure you are subscribed! Go to my website and you should get a subscribe pop-up. Splendid Fairy-wren (F5, 1/1600, ISO320)

02.01.2022 There's no emoji for this cute little fellow! He is a Chuditch, or Western Quoll (, /, ,) You can see by my settings (ISO 10,000) that I took this in quite dark circumstances. That is because these little native carnivorous marsupials are nocturnal. There were several (wild ones) living in a friend's shed near bushland in Toodyay. I spent a few nights waiting outside (lying in camo in the dirt) for one to get up when it was still light enough for a photo - and was super duper excited to get this shot as one stood in the doorway - unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) it stood in front of a blue bin, hence the unnatural blue behind.