After hauling all our luggage down to the safari tent/lodge/bungalow we were quite amazed with the accommodation at the Western Plains (Dubbo) Zoo Safari, (+Taronga Western Plains Zoo ) hence there was only one thing to do – hold back the family and grab a few quick snaps before we settled in 🙂 ….
gee.. doesn't everyone think like that? 😉 anyway.. i got the usual 'is this gonna take long?' but with the Savannah right on the door step, Chaos, Mayhem and wifey were suitably entertained by the buffalo's, giraffes, zebras and other things with multiple legs cruising around the very large paddock/savannah, which, by the way is pretty cool to have a giraffe come within metres of your porch!

So I managed to get a few interior shots and a few panos at sunset and as you can see, this place it pretty spanky and great for a romantic weekend away, well that is what the couple in the next bungalow were having, we had chaos and mayhem 🙂 I also think that couple next door certainly thought twice about having children 😉

ANyway.. check out that bath, very cool, very deep and that shower, no water saving head there! I was also very pleased to see the omission of a TV.

So in a nut shell, I definitely recommend this place, it is actually quite good value when you factor in the dinner (which was awesome by the way +Taronga Western Plains Zoo) breaky, bike hire, zoo entry and night/morning tours, on which we saw and fed a Bongo, Chaos thought that was very neat, getting to feed a Bongo then going back to sleep in the Bongo Bungalow!

We are also Zoo friends of +Taronga Zoo which is also great value, just go a couple of times a year and you are well ahead and it is valid for Western Plains zoo.. if only it was not 5 hours away we would be there more often.

So, onto the imagery, all the images are processed using the PS +Nik Collection by Google plugin and this is where the software really shines in my opinion, makes the process very quick and with nice punchy results – which was the intention for these.
The panoramas were done a bit different to my normal process, rather than stitching and merging, I merged in then stitched in +Adobe Photoshop, thus automating the blend process.
The other neat thing with the Panos, particularly the one looking out over the savannah, +Adobe Photoshop adaptive wideangle filter worked wonders, I am still amazed at the software's ability to take UWA panos and remove the distortion and return them to a nice perspective, top stuff chaps.

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 (typically) ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 1.5s, 1/6s and 3 s (typically)
out front – fancy tents, two zebras a few giraffes, dwarf buffalos (i think) and other animals that escape my memory 🙂

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment

In Album 2014-07-31