Panorama title: Mason's Falls, Kinglake National Park Location of Pano Shoot: Victoria, Australia
Shot at 9am (DST), Saturday 21st March 1998
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/2730/ http://www.activeconcepts.com.au r.fox@activeconcepts.com.au
Kinglake National Park is around an hour's drive north of Melbourne. It is a popular day trip for families, being close to the city and well-suited to walkers of varying abilities. The park supports a diverse variety of flora and fauna, the vegetation being a mixture of both wet and dry forest types. Animals to be found include black wallabies and echidnas, a many birds including lyrebirds, cockatoos, rosellas, wrens and robins. Probably the main attraction is Mason's Falls, with a drop of 45m over two stages.
I left Melbourne early Saturday morning and arrived with plenty of time at 8am, which was just as well because the gates weren't due to be opened until 9am, when I had to shoot my panorama. Fortunately it's only a short walk from the gate to the lookout over the falls anyway, so I packed up everything into daypack and tripod bag and headed off down the track. I was enjoying the stillness and solitude of the morning when I startled a wallaby (I was walking down Wallaby Track, so I should have known!). Unfortunately the camera was safely packed away, so after regarding each other for a few moments the wallaby decided to continue its breakfast farther off. I arrived at the lookout and was disappointed to find that the falls were hardly a torrent, but then we have just had summer so that is to be expected. Also, the viewing platform is placed so that it's fine for looking down at the falls, but not so useful if you want to get a level shot of them. As you can see, the park has done its best to compromise between accessibility and protecting the environment, by putting in walkways and platforms in areas of high usage.
Camera: Minolta Dynax 500si, Tamron 28-200mm zoom lens, at 28mm VR rig: Kaidan Kiwi, Manfrotto 141RC/344B head and tripod Film: Agfa HDC400, cheap bulk processing, flatbed scanned Shoot: manual exposure, manual focus, 18 shots Authoring: Macintosh G3 and PowerBook3400, Apple QTVR Authoring Suite 2.0, Photoshop, Apple MoviePlayer, saved as QTVR 1.0, Cinepak, SoundEdit 16
More info at http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/2730/
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