I am a 78 year old retired business CEO and enthusiastic amateur photographer from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia (right at the very top end of Australia), a tropical climate with a monsoon/cyclone season (November to April) and a rainless dry season (May to October).

My favourite subjects are birds, other animals, natural landscapes, flora including trees, sunsets and sunrises, weather and historical and cultural buildings and structures.

While most of my photography is done within a 500 km radius of Darwin, I also have a particular interest in photography in Japan and Singapore (spending 3 - 4 weeks there each year when international travel so permits), and in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia, where my eldest daughter lives.

All my photos are taken hand held. I am always moving in search of animal and floral subjects and find a tripod or monopod distracting and limiting in terms of image captures. With a hand held outfit I can capture 10 times or more the number of images I could achieve with a tripod in a given time period, with little noticeable impact on image quality, due to the stabilisation capabilities of a modern lens.

I spend an average of 15hours per week on photography (travelling, capturing images and processing and publishing).

I took up photography seriously in 2012 after 40 years of boating and fishing as a main hobby.

Most telephoto images have been captured with a Fujifilm XT-3 mirrorless camera equipped with a Fujinon 100-400 Lens and (except when doing birds in flight) a camera-mounted Fujifilm EF-X500 flash unit (I use flash fill on almost all static telephoto wildlife images, regardless of distance and lighting conditions).

I generally use a standard setting for most static wildlife work of shutter priority, 1/250th - 1/1,000th, with AUTO ISO which normally falls in the range 200 - 1600. Aperture varies between f/8 and f/11.

All images are captured in RAW and JPEG and edited with Photoshop Elements 2024. The quality of Fujifilm JPEG images straight out of the camera (SOOC) is very high and often only minimal adjustment is required (i.e. frequently no need to process from RAW).

For non-telephoto work I primarily use a Fujifilm XT-5 Mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) with a selection of Fujinon lenses - 16-55 f/2.8; 14 mm f/2.8 or 18-55 f/2.8 - f/4.

I frequently use the AE bracketing function for landscape and non-moving subject work - producing 5, 7 or 9 images, depending on the subject, which are processed through the SNS-HDR program and finalised in Photoshop Elements 2024.

Ar major advantage of the Fujifilm X-series cameras is the fact that the vast majority of functions are controlled by rotating dials on top of the camera and can be almost instantly changed. There is rarely the need to work deep into menus such as was the case with my DSLRs. For example, one click of a dial allows transferring from single shot to multiple shot AE HDR bracketing - it takes no more than 2 seconds. Or moving from single shot to continuous (e.g. for moving wildlife) is again a single click of a dial - no delving into menus).