It is often said that a good photographer makes pictures not takes them. So this week I was well prepared, unlike last week. I’d packed everything the night before, checked the weather forecast and made the right clothing choices. I’d worked out what species I was going to photograph and how. I knew exactly how I was going to process the images on return home. What could possibly go wrong? As it turned out plenty. Firstly the weather didn’t play ball – I’d wanted mist rising off  the water. When I got up there was  mist, as I was driving there was plenty of mist, but when I got to Lake Leschenaultia there was absolutely no mist at all. I was looking to photograph and video three species – spotless crakes, Australian reed warblers and Australasian grebes. The birds didn’t get the memo and were a no-show. To cap it all the video head on my tripod broke so that meant shooting any video was out of the question.

At this stage it would have been very tempting to go home, but I was there and it was a beautiful morning so I decided to make the most of it by walking round the lake. As I made my way round I happened on a few chance encounters, but, when I left to go home I didn’t think I’d made anything worthwhile and I felt a little despondent. So as I looked at the images on the computer I was pleasantly surprised – out of the nearly forty images I had taken four stood out and after processing them I was quite happy. They’re not masterpieces by any means, but they made me happy and that’s all that matters.