Last weekend was our photography weekend at O’Reilly’s Guesthouse in Lamington National Park. It was run by Mark and Michael from  Trekabout Photography Workshops and it went from Friday evening through Sunday lunchtime.

We dropped the kidlets off at Mum’s on Friday afternoon, she was going to take them over to Kylie’s place when her children came home from school. Headed down to O’Reilly’s, up that steep winding road with the precarious edges, and arrived shortly after 5pm. We checked into our room and went to the bar to meet with the other course participants. There were only 16 in the course, and a mix of people from those with the most amazingly spectacular camera gear, to those with a neat little compact camera. A really nice group, and we enjoyed their company all weekend.

Hubby and I got up at 4am on Saturday morning and headed out for a run, hoping to catch the sunrise at a lookout around 6km along the Border Track. Unfortunately we were only a few minutes late, but it was nice to be out there anyway. On the way back I stumbled on a rock and twisted my ankle a little. It was pretty minor and it was fine very quickly, so we headed back for breakfast. The day was spent walking along a track to a waterfall, practicing landscapes and macro photography, then some waterfall shots before we walked back. A couple of hours rest then we drove to another lookout to photograph the sunset. I had a play with a lovely lens which was lent to me by Mark, one of the tutors. It was a Sigma 10-20mm - really wide angle, and really fun to play with, although the sunset wasn’t too spectacular.

Next morning we got up at 3am, determined not to miss the sunrise this time, and ran again along the Albert River Circuit about 8km to Echo Point Lookout - highly recommended by the Guesthouse staff. That was a really nice trail, obviously not many people venture out that way as the path was in many places hard to follow due to overgrown vegetation. I had my Nikon DSLR and Mark’s wide angle lens safely packed in a bumbag at my back, hoping to get a nice sunrise landscape. We got to the lookout in time, but alas, there was such a heavy mist that we couldn’t see anything at all. I guess we were just not destined to photograph a sunrise this weekend. However, I managed to take a couple of okay shots of the trail we were on, it was very atmospheric in the dawn light with mist through the trees. I’ve put one of the pictures below.

On the way back, I managed to twist my ankle again, and I ended up doing a face plant in the dirt. Fortunately the camera was fine! A morning spent photographing birds, and learning more about photoshop, and it was the end of a great weekend. We were exhausted by nighttime though - the drive home, picking up the kids, getting the dogs from the kennels - my bed had never looked so good.

I’m going to do some more Trekabout workshops; Mark and Michael are great tutors. The kidlets had a wonderful time at their sleepovers at Kylie’s and Grandmas, and can’t wait til the next one, the dogs weren’t really thrilled at the kennels, but they survived. My ankle is a little swollen but not at all painful, so a very successful weekend in all regards. I’m going to have another early night tonight, I’ve got a fair bit of catching up on sleep to do!!