The Tree, Car Park Canberra Botanical Gardens

On the way to my car, I looked up and saw this image of this huge Eucalyptus tree (my wife said, it is a Eucalyptus). I love the play of shadows and the colours. The shimmering silver-like bark against the sky blue background. I took just a couple of shots, as against hundreds and picking the "best" ones. I subscribe that if I could not take a good shot in a couple of shots I would not bother. To me it defeats the purpose of the "moment".

My mother loves gardens. So we; my wife and I, decided to take her to the Floriade (www.floriadeaustralia.com/). On the way, we also passed by Mt Annan Botanical Gardens

(www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/annan).

By the looks of it, my mum was not too impressed with Mt Annan, the Canberra National Botanical Gardens; (www.chah.gov.au/anbg/introduction/index.html) as well as the Floriade. It's partly our fault since we took her on the very second last day of the Floriade (take note for next Floriade). The tulips and most flowers are starting to wilt or are wilted. Hence it is not as spectacular as when they first opened the show.

But the saving grace is the Cockington Green Gardens (www.cockingtongreen.com.au/). She was impressed by the miniature village... I mean tiny houses complete with miniature trees, well landscaped grass and gardens. It was a sight to behold. She asked me to take pictures of all the houses and villages so she can probably show it off to my sisters. As well as to provide her with some "free" souvenirs.

For the above tree photo, I used my point and shoot Olympus FE-220 (7.1 Megapixel, 1GB memory) digital camera. Settings is as follows: Auto with auto flash turned off to capture the shadows. High quality mode (3072X2304 image), thus giving me a 1.2 MB JPEG image. The picture shown is not retouched at all (not even cropped!) and no lens filter was used (I don't think Olympus sell lens filter for this model anyway?). I did played around with another picture to make it look like that it was taken in black and white; but decided on the colour version. The other two pictures are also in HQ, no fill-in flash just available light.