Featherdale :: Family & Photography

The girls were really excited about our first trip to Featherdale. So when their cousins weren’t able to come due to sickness (good old winter), Ella talked Dave into coming along. And we all really loved it. Dave used the opportunity to spark Ella’s love for photography (she’s also started sitting beside me as I edit wedding albums and pointing out things she thinks I have missed). But with everything going on, we didn’t really encourage Adia to do anything other than enjoy watching and patting the animals. We took the funky little Fuji X100 & XPro, light and retro-looking, but with a viewfinder so you never know exactly how the composition is going to turn out. The colour shots are Ella’s, the fancy colour are mine, and the black & white are Dave’s.

I love that Dave and I took such similar shots of this wallaby – even though it was about 5 minutes apart. We were both looking for the same moment. Ahhhhhh that’s 11 years of marriage and working together on weddings for you …. xx

Dave’s wallabies eating icecream cones …

And mine.

We were sooooo proud of Ella’s bravery in going straight up to the wallabies without hesitation to pat them. Adia, not so much. But I loved it. In Ella’s words: “I saw them just look at me, and I knew they weren’t scary.”

I’ve never touched a kookaburra before. Amazing.

Had to get the tassie devil sleeping in the sunshine. (This was right after, in Adia’s words “the animals didn’t make me cry, I cried when mummy was frustrated in the toilet”. Why is there always a frustrating toileting expedition – with the girls that is – every time we go somewhere like this? And now Adia is articulating so well, what else is she telling people?)

Yay! Patting a snoozy koala!

The wombats …. by Ella. We both lifted her up for a shot each.

My wombat.

Ella’s cassowary and pelicans. (You should see her do a pelican face). So awesome seeing her world view. We taught her how to shoot close to the fence so it goes blurry. And Dave lifted her up for the pelicans.