Jacaranda Season in Brisbane

October is always a colourful month in Brisbane with the Jacaranda Trees in full bloom and the paths and streets blanketed with their bounteous purple blooms.   There's no more certain sign that summer is well on the way and that the short transition through Spring is in full swing.

I currently live very close to the oldest building in Queensland, the Tower Mill at Spring Hill which just so happens to be surrounded by Jacaranda Trees and has a commanding position looking out over the centre of Brisbane itself.

Constructed in 1824 as a flour mill it was wind powered in it's early days.   There's a good Wikipedia article on the building here The_Old_Windmill_Brisbane which reveals some of the Tower Mills dark past...

After several days of watching the progress of the local Jacarandas I judged that sunrise on the 22nd October was going to be the best time to get photos of this historic landmark and it's Jacarandas in full bloom.   Here's the final picture cropped down to 16 by 9 ratio off the EOS 5D Mark III, with the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens.   Settings were 17mm, ISO 400, f/16 with 5 exposures between 1/160 sec and 1/25 sec at 2/3 stop intervals - these 5 images were exported from LR4 into Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2 and blended into a HDR image, with some further adjustments in PS CS5 and dFine 2.0 and Vivenza 2.

I've left the flag pole on the right in place as it too is a historically significant structure being one of the first places that radio signals were transmitted in Brisbane and also being the site for early TV transmission tests in the area.   The Tower Mill is on the right, with the Stores buildings in the foreground left and middle.

17mm, ISO 400, f/16 with 5 exposures between 1/160 sec and 1/25 sec at 2/3 stop intervals - photo captured just after sunrise.