Pademelons in the wild

Wild Red-legged Pademelon, Mary Cairncross Park, Maleny, QLD ~ Philli Overton

Photographing wild animals is always a challenge, but sometimes you just get lucky. Such was the case with this image of a coastal red-legged pademelon captured early one morning at Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve near Maleny in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland. I had my camera set up on a tripod to capture a long exposure of the creek scene in-between rain showers, when this little guy casually wandered into my shot when crossing the creek on a fallen tree. Fortunately, the inquisitive pademelon, which is actually a member of the macropod family much like rock wallabies, paused long enough for me to be able to compose this photograph.

This image was my 2024 entry in the Australia Zoo Crikey Magazine photo competition, and although it wasn't shortlisted, remains one of my favourite images taken over the course of the year.

• Camera: Olympus E-M10MarkIV
• Aperture: f/4
• Exposure 1/80 second
• Focal lens: 40 mm
• ISO-6400

Being an early morning image deep in the shade of the Australian rainforest, I didn't have the time to manually play with the ISO to get this shot, and the Auto-ISO later showed as 6400. The image was then brightened in Adobe Photoshop using the hue and saturation, brightness and exposure settings to restore the colours that were missing in the gloom of a wet morning.

Compare the above photo to an original shot only moments earlier on a different angle, (below), and with the exact same camera settings that I have listed above. A lot of post-production editing goes into lifting a photograph into something you are proud of, and I suppose this is a good example of why you don't edit every photograph that you shoot.

Red-legged Pademelon, Mary Cairncross Park, Maleny, QLD.

Philli O Photography.