Monday, I’ve got Friday on my mind

Tags

australia, Banjo Petterson, Barcoo, desert, friday, outback, photographs, photography, photos, places, Queensland, travel, Western Queensland

So here is last week’s Friday photo. Yes, I know. Late again. But at least it is here.

These Friday pics are more from our trip out west. Today I have a “guest” photographer as well. Click on the picture below for this last weeks Friday photo.

Have a great week!

Return of the Friday Photo

Tags

australia, Barcoo, friday, Great Southern Land, Landscape, photograph, photography, photos, Queensland, Western Queensland

It’s been a long time but they are back. Friday photo has returned – well at least for this week. Today there is a selection of pics from western Queensland, taken on a recent trip. I hope you enjoy. As usual, click on the pic below to take you to shots of a Great Southern Land.

Another rant about renewables

Tags

australia, Australian, Campbell Newman, climate change, electricity, Energy, greenhouse gas, Queensland, Renewable energy, Renewable Energy Target

In today’s The Australian newspaper, reporter Matthew Warren presented an article which was supposedly a bad news story about the decline in the value of the electricity industry. The headline read “Electricity market shrinks by 40pc as prices tumble”.

Unfortunately, as the Internet shrinks behind walls of greed and information becomes available only to those who can afford to pay for it, I cannot find a complete electronic version of the story. It is here:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/electricity-market-shrinks-by-40pc-as-prices-tumble/story-e6frg6xf-1226677358635

for those with a subscription and on Page 2 of the printed version.

Read my full rant here

A new play toy

Tags

art, australia, Camera, Cinemascope, Color balance, Focal length, Mongolia, Neutral density filter, Nikon, photo, photography, photos, victoria

Fun time indeed. My new play toy (home-made $25 ND filter) has had its modifications by way of an old pair of tracksuit pants. Legs cut off, sewn together to create a blackout sock. Once pulled over the camera with style and flair, no light gets in and the pics come out very nicely thank you.

Here are the test shots taken today.

Out of camera (f25, 3:00).

And with white balance adjusted:

Not bad me thinks. Here  is another shot taken with the same settings and same, very trendy, tracksuit pants over the camera.

And  with white balance adjusted using View-NX2 (Nikon‘s file handling software).

And this is the same photo played with in Picassa with the Cinemascope affect added. I kind of like the effect and for a 2 second fix, it doesn’t come up too bad. The vignette around the top may be from my pant legs or from  a little bit of filter because of the 24mm focal length. I am yet to play with accurately focussing on any other focal length. That’s coming.

For fun I took a photo of one of the kids and their grandmother washing the windows. I swear they were moving around in front on the camera for a full three minutes. I have tried this one in a monochrome just to see and this is what I got. Must admit I have added a little touch of green just because I like it.

So, people really can disappear. Am keen to try a city scape now and see how that goes. The low light pics seem to get more camera noise than the bright lights, but not too bad given the camera in use. Oooo, playing is fun!

I’ll get back to more normal posting and stop boring you with this stuff real soon – I promise. 🙂

Oh, and here is a  cool time-lapse sequence shot with a ND3.0 filter in Mongolia by photographer Timothy Allen.

You can see his blog on it by clicking here.

PS: Happy birthday Frank!

The home-made ND filter

Tags

australia, cameras, diy photography, Do it yourself, eclipse, Mongolia, ND filter, Neutral density filter, Nikon, Nikon D5100, photo, photography, photos

Now this is a bit of fun. And I have a loooong way to go before I can be confident in saying “I have successfully built a home-made ND filter for about $25″. But it is fun trying.

Now, stepping back a bit… we had a partial eclipse some months back and I thought I would have a go at taking a photo through a welding helmet I had. This was the result.

Not great but worth a try. Then I did a shot through some glasses which my daughter had been given by a university. These were made for viewing eclipses and I had a much better result – although still not great,

Monsieur Google introduced me to Neutral Density filters (ND) which some people use for photographing these events. But more than that, the filter gives great effects. At between $120 and $300 I couldn’t justify buying one for a play. Madam Google led me to a website called DIY Photography which had a post titled Use Welding Glass As 10 Stop ND Filter. Following the instructions, I scrounged around and found suitable glass in the US for about $8. The welding glass in Australia was all to small for some reason – obviously our welding helmets are made differently.

When the DHL man delivered it I tried to follow the instructions on DIY Photography but their rubber band trick just didn’t cut it. So a trip to ye local photo shoppe landed me an $11 rubber lens hood. This and some $5 epoxy resin gave me my first effort at an ND filter and it looks like this:

Okay, don’t judge me. It may not be a work of art but it kinda works. The white smudges are from the super glue I used to hold the lens hood to the glass. It still lets a little light in so my next job is to get a light-proof shroud to encase it all.

Now I have a hunk of dark glass on a screw-on lens hood. Problem 1: When you look through a dark bit of glass and try to focus you see (yup, you guessed it) NOTHING! So, I set my 18-55mm lens on about 24mm, focused it, set it on f22 and bulb and screwed the ND on.

It was a windy day and these next two photos were my first real attempts. I had no idea of timing so I gave it 1 minute 30 on a bright day. Of course this was only possible with my new remote (Christmas present from the world’s best partner). The Nikon D5100 has a maximum time of 30 seconds. I can use bulb but then I have to hold it and count – increasing the shakes. So my new remote from JJC in China solved the problems. It’s a corker with interval timer and bulb of up to 99 hours and some change.

Here’s the couple of shots that I have played with to get half way interesting.

The glass gives everything  a green look which you then adjust through changing your white balance. As you can see from the shot below, there seems to be a light leak across the top of the picture which changes negates the green tinge. This may be something else but I still have to investigate it fully once I have ruled out light. None-the-less, the pics are good fun. I love what it does to the water. The day was very windy and the tripod was shaking like a frog faced by a lizard with a taser.

I shoot everything as raw and that gives me some more control during the post-shot processing. This enables me to push the pic a couple of shots if  necessary and also to get rid of the green. Because my Photoshop can’t handle Nikon‘s NEF, I then save it as a jpeg for a bit of play around time.

Today I  had a quick play after using some super glue to hold the lens hood on tighter (trying to block out all light).

The 2 minute shot gave me this:

As you can see, very green. The people in the bottom left appear ghostly which is a nice effect as well. I don’t really like the picture and had a little play to come up with:

All a bit too dark so tomorrow (or the next day) I shall have a go at getting the exposure a bit closer.

I want to try a night shot as well. Should be interesting to see what happens when you point to a dark sky for a long time. Maybe I could do that from the Gobi desert in Mongolia (and he increases the chances of having a visitor from Mongolia to his blog).

Keep smiling!

Umbrellas

Tags

australia, brisbane, Greenland, people, photographs, photography, photos, places, tourists, Umbrella, Victoria Bridge, water

In 2009 I went for a walk around Brisbane taking photos of reflections. While crossing the river Victoria bridge I glanced across to the other side of the road and saw these wonderful tourists just passing. Of course, I didn’t have my camera ready so had to quickly snap what I could. The result is below.

Now, normally I don’t play too much with pictures as I am in the mood of trying to get the photo right at point of origin. That doesn’t always happen 🙂 This one I played with and kind of like the effect of the coloured umbrellas.

Which version do you like?  I wonder if the tourists ever went to Nuuk (ha – I bet you didn’t pick up the link between this and Greenland!).

 

Enraptured

Tags

Accipiter, animal, australia, bird, Bird of prey, Brown Goshawk, Flora and Fauna, Greenland, magpie, photo, photography, red rock, travel, victoria, Volcanic field

On our last trip we were literally surrounded by winged creatures. Looking down gave us the bees of my last two posts. Looking up gave us another delight – a beautiful raptor had come to check us out.

I think it is a brown goshawk but would welcome another opinion or confirmation. Until such time as I get told otherwise, I’ll go with this.

It soared over the fields checking out the tourists and the prey far below. It’s hunting grounds used to be alive with volcanic action, the last one lashing the earth with its fiery tongue some four millenia ago.

Today it is fertile grazing land and home to a multitude of rabbits and small furry raptor lunches. We have probably driven past this area a gazillion times but this time, we made the effort to stop and look at the Red Rock lookout.

It was an extremely windy and cold place, the kind of place I loathe. My partner was wrapped in a rug from the car and looking a lot like a shivering tartan souvlaki. I had on my rainbow jumper which screams to the world that life is great. The Accipiter fasciatus hovered over us seemingly oblivious to the winds which were buffeting us.

Finally it decided to leave us. On its way to a who knows where, a magpie decided to put on a brave show of attacking the bird of prey. The goshawk flew on, ignoring the worrying being dished out by the bird.
Does anyone know what raptors live in Greenland?

Life is good.

Busy as

Tags

animals, australia, bee, bees, honey, insects, photographs, photography, photos, pollen, spring, travel

Yesterday  we went for drive in the cold, windy south of Australia. Despite the bleak conditions, it  seems that Spring is in the air – for the honey makers anyway. Came across this little fella hard at work.

Nanna’s garden

Tags

australia, cold, flora, flowers, garden, Greenland, images, photographs, photography, photos, places, soringtime, spring, victoria, Warrnambool

Nannas do gardens well. And my mother-in-law (Nanna to my kids) is no exception. Being in the south of Australia in springtime gives an array of different colours. The flowers that thrive down here in the Greenland-esque cold are very different than those of my warm northern home.

If you click here or on the picture below, you will see a few of the wonderful ornaments which adorn the chilly outdoors of Nanna’s garden.

One of those photos

Tags

australia, Greenland, health, humour, Mongolia, people, photographs, photography, places, travel

Okay, due to unforeseen circumstances I have missed a couple of Friday Photos. Hopefully I can make up for that over the coming days/weeks. In the meantime, I have travelled to Victoria. Every  now and then that photo comes along which aligns the stars. You know, the one which everyone says “That must have been conjured in Photoshop” or “Nah, that’s a set-up”.

Yesterday, while driving back from a heavy-duty shopping expedition, our car drove from the carpark (with us in it) and showed us “One of those photos”. Now if this pic does not tickle the fancy of people from as far away as Greenland and Mongolia, I don’t know what will. Notice the way I added Greenland and Mongolia in an attempt to boost this blog’s page rank on http://www.google.gl and http://www.google.mn (queue maniacal laughter).

So, here it is – one of those photos. I believe it is worth a full 1000 words. What do you think?

Hope you enjoy.

 

Monday I’ve got Friday on my mind

Tags

australia, Greenland, humour, Mongolia, photographs, photography, photos, pirates, places, public, sunshine coast, toilets

So here is the link to Friday’s photo. Fans of pirates, hopscotch and toilets will enjoy what I found up in Kawana a couple of weekends ago. This photo is more unusual than anything else. I would love to find out what the story behind it is. If you know, do tell. And if anyone can let me know if the same kind of picture is found in Greenland or Mongolia, I would love to hear that as well.

As usual, click on the teaser below to see the full Friday photo.

Report: The Critical Decade: International Action on Climate Change – Climate Commission

Tags

abbott, australia, carbon, carbon tax, climate, climate change, emissions, environment, flannery, Politics, tax, world

Report: The Critical Decade: International Action on Climate Change – Climate Commission.

On June 21 this year, the Opposition leader said:

Well, I think the Prime Minister should be waking up to herself and waking up to the fact that the rest of the world is not taking decisive action by way of carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes. Sure, lots of other countries are doing the sorts of things to help the environment that the Coalition is recommending – they’re taking direct action – but they are not putting in place economy wide carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes and the Prime Minister should finally admit that Australia’s carbon tax is an international orphan.

The above quote comes from the Liberal Party of Australia’s own website (http://liberal.org.au/Latest-News/2012/06/21/Tony-Abbott-doorstop-interview.aspx)

Yesterday, the Australian chief climate commissioner released the aforementioned report. The report estimates that by next year 33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions will have a carbon price in place.

Can someone explain the rationale behind  Mr Abbott’s ill-informed statements? Does he really think that the populous is ignorant?

{sigh}

Friday Photo

Tags

animals, australia, brisbane, conservation, endangered, photography, photos, savetigersnow, tiger, tigers, wildlife, zoo

Last week, the last of school holidays here in Sunny Queensland, we took an eruption of kids to the zoo. It was a great day – albeit overcast and a little rainy at times. (Note to weather gods; please see first sentence which gives Queensland its proper title. Please adjust weather accordingly!)

Anyway, the zoo we went to was Australia Zoo, started by Bob Irwin in the 1970s , made world famous by his son Steve and now run by Steve’s widow, Terri, with help from kids Bindi and Robert.

It was a lovely day with the five kids wee had with us at times sounding like fifty and at other times quietly looking on in awe at the beautiful animals. Yes, they are caged, and yes, it would be better if they were not. But it does give one an appreciation for their mere eexistance and if one animal in captivity can raise enough awareness to save hundreds in the wild, maybe that is a good thing.

Enough rambling. Today’s photo is over here. As a teaser, here is a photo of his/her room-mate at the zoo. Let me know what you think.