How do you get down off an elephant?

Tags

ALP, animals, Barcaldine, Dumbo, Elephant, Germany, Mongolia, photographs, photography, photos, Queensland, Schwebebahn, Tarzan, Tree of Knowledge, Tuffi, Ulaan Bator, Western Queensland, Wupper, Wuppertal

You don’t get down off an elephant, you get down off a duck!

Three elephant’s jump out of a plane. Two land on the ground, one in the water – badoom-chish!

Okay, I’m out of elephant jokes – well, nearly.

Why did the elephant paint his toenails red?
So he could hide in the cherry tree.

How did Tarzan die?
He went cherry picking.

Now, I’m tapped. Ooo, hang on.

What did Tarzan say when he saw a herd of elephants coming over the hill?
Here comes a herd of elephants over the hill.

What did Tarzan say when he saw a herd of elephants wearing sunglasses coming over the hill?
Nothing, he didn’t recognise them.

How many elephants can you fit in a Mini Minor?
Five – two in the back, two in the front and one in the boot.

How do you fit an elephant in your fridge?
You open the door, put in the elephant, then close the door.

Okay, really, that’s enough. Stop it now. Enough with the elephant jokes. And what’s with them anyway? Isn’t this supposed to be the Friday photo?

Well yes it is but this time I am using a different pic for the lead in to some of my work. We have a German exchange student staying with us from the town of Wuppertal which is near Cologne. She kindly presented us with some gifts on arrival and one was a book – Faszination Schwebebahn – celebrating the unique and somewhat famous rail system in the town.

One of the photos in the book was a snap taken in July 1950 when a baby elephant called Tuffi went for a ride. Tuffi was obviously not happy with something, or had always wanted to be Dumbo. Either way, Tuffi exited the train a tad prematurely.

Luckily Tuffi landed in the Wupper river and survived – cured of his desire to join the troupe over at Disney. Tuffi died in 1989 at  the ripe old age of 43.

Click on the pic below to see this week’s Friday photos – which are NOT of elephants.

PS: “Do they have elephants in Mongolia?” he asks knowing the answer but wanting to see if he  can get a visitor to hos blog from Ulaan Bator or anywhere else in Mongolia. Shameless.

 

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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!

Huzzah – Greenland has landed!

Tags

animals, end of the world, Greenland, Mayan, Mongolia, Montville, Nuuk, photographs, photography, photos, places, Queensland, travel, Ulan Bator, water, water dragon

What a wonderful Christmas surprise. Well, a couple of days before actually but I have only just got to putting finger to key now, which makes it post Christmas day but… ah well, I am babbling.  What I mean to say is that finally I have had a visitor from GREENLAND. Huzzah!!

Dani Henriksen from Nuuk dropped by to see my last post – Breakfast with Audrey.  Aluu Dani and Juullimi Ukiortaassamilu Pilluarit (thanks omniglot).  Dani is a Filipina whose blog can bee seen here. Maligayang pasko at manigong bagong taon (and apologies for my rusty Tagalog).

So now, the 2013 challenge begins – to have a person from Mongolia visit. So, brush off your penpals and if they live in Mongolia, get them to drop on by. Of course Ulan Bator is somewhat larger than Nuuk but, unlike Nuuk, I have actually been to the Mongolian capital.

When I was there in 1991 the world was a different place. The USSR was coming to an end, China was reluctantly allowing in foreigners and  a ticket on the trans-Mongolian could be purchased cheaper on the black market. Mongolia is definitely on my list of places to visit again.

Now, just because I like this pic, here is a lovely juvenile water dragon spotted near Montville in Queensland the other week. Have a wonderful journey into 2013 and remember, it’s only 981 more days until the revised Mayan end of the world. So, keep smiling.

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.

 

Friday Photo

Tags

Champs Elysees, france, Friends, Greenland, Mongolia, paris, people, photograph, photographs, photography, photos, places, travel

Now this is a real quick post as I prepare for my niece’s 21st birthday tomorrow. This pic was taken in on the Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris. It was one of those that you take when playing with a new camera and kind of surprised me when I looked at in on the computer. It was taken in black and white so no ‘shopping’ apart from the border. Hope you enjoy. And just so I can legitimately tag this to encourage viewers…I reckon the bloke with his back to us is from Greenland or Mongolia.

Have a great weekend.

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.

Aluu Greenlandians

Tags

Friends, Greenland, Greenlandic, Iraq, Mongolia

No one from Greenland has ever visited my blog and I am sad about that. If anyone knows someone from Greenland, can you ask them to come to my blog please so my stat map has a Greenland visitor on it – that would be cool.

Oh, also anyone from Mongolia or Iraq.

Google translate doesn’t have Greenlandic as an option so here is the above in Thai.

หนึ่งจากกรีนแลนด์ไม่ได้เคยเข้าเยี่ยมชมบล็อกของฉันและฉันเสียใจเกี่ยวกับว่า ถ้าใครรู้ใครบางคนจากกรีนแลนด์ที่คุณสามารถขอให้พวกเขามาในบล็อกของฉันโปรดดังนั้นแผนที่ stat ของฉันมีผู้เข้าชมกรีนแลนด์เมื่อมัน – ที่จะเย็น

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