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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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.

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.

Breakfast with Audrey

Tags

arts, Audrey, Audrey Hepburn, Greenland, London, Madame Tussaud, people, photographs, photography

Who would I have at my dinner table if I could? Well, I must admit that Audrey Hepburn would be at the head of the table. This photo was taken last year and, for a woman who has been dead for 18 years, she looks incredible. Imagine what she was like when she was alive!

Actually, you may have guessed that this isn’t really Audrey. Madame Tussaud’s in London has this scene set up for people like me to ogle. She really is quite stunning, even in wax.

While looking around the Intramanet, I came across a whole lot of Audrey Hepburn related briefs on a site called (and I kid you not) Greenland Culture File. Check it out here.

I haven’t posted for some time – competing priorities and having a dud spell on the photography  I have been experimenting with my camera and have produced some spectacularly bad pics which will never be seen by human eyes. They have been recycled into ones and zeros on my PC.

Hopefully, looking back over some old shots will inspire me and maybe produce some postings over the coming days/weeks. And I still await a visitor from Greenland!

 

And a couple of departing quotes from Audrey:

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’

 

The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters.

 

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.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking bee two?

Tags

animals, apiary, bee, bugs, flowers, honey, insects, nature, photographs, photography, photos

Okay, sad title but found another of the bee shots which is kind of nice. It was taken with my 70-300mm lens which meant I had to stand about a metre away from the flower, crank up the zoom and hope I didn’t shake too much. I like it and hope you do too.

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.

 

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.

Friday photo

Tags

baby, child, cold, cuddle, Greenland, mother, motherhood, Nuuk, parenthood, parrenthood, photo, photographs, photography, rowing

Okay, so  there have still been no Greenlanders visiting my blog. The capital, Nuuk, has about 16,000 people. Surely someone has a computer there. If you know anyone in Greenland my challenge to you is to get them to visit my blog. Better still, get them to comment on a photo or musing. 🙂 Also looking for people from Mongolia or Iraq – preferably natives and not visitors or expats.

In the meantime, this week’s Friday Photo is one of warmth and cuddles and parenthood. You can find it here or by clicking on the photo below.

Have a great weekend.

Friday photo

Tags

art, art gallery, artist, arts, brisbane, gallery, GOMA, illustration, indigenous, painting, people, photographs, photography, travel, women

When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it. 

– Alberto Giacometti

Today’s Friday Photo comes from a trip to the art gallery.  Hope you enjoy. As usual, click on the picture below, here or the drop down menu at the top of the page to see to see the full image.

Friday photo

Tags

france, Friends, hat, holidays, Louvre, Musee de Louvre, museum, paris, people, photographs, photography, photos, places, sleep, tourist, tourists, travel

“To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.” Hamlet certainly captured the essence of today’s Friday photo. Click on the picture below to see the full view.

Hope you like it. Let me know what you think.

Friday photo

Tags

boats, bsra, gps, oars, people, photographs, photography, photos, regatta, rowing, water

 

 

 

Today’s photo comes from a day at the lake watching my daughter and her friends in the rowing regatta. Click here or on the photo above to see my Friday photo.

Hope you enjoy.

Friday Photo

Tags

brisbane, circus, park, people, photographs, photography, photos, picnic, places

A teaser. To find our what today’s photo is you are going to have to click here or on the photo below. While you are in the clicking mood, check out this article of unemployed life by Claire Varley – Just when you thought you would never laugh at unemployment

Have a great weekend.

 

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.

Friday Photo

Tags

art, brisbane, contemporary, images, people, photographs, photography, photos, woman

At a recent art exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, I came across my own Contemporary Woman sitting in one  of the rooms. I took these photos and had a play with a dark and moody look to see if I could capture the essence of a sixteen year old girl.

I also sent one to my resident Photoshop guru to have a play with and he zapped a gorgeous version back in about 10 minutes flat.

Click here to have a look at three more versions.

Contemporary Woman

Friday photo

Tags

bicycle, bike, brisbane, lipton, photographs, photography, photos, sustainability

Ever take a photo that:

1. you nearly had it right;
2. you wish you had more time to stop and set it up a bit neater;
3. figure it was close,  but no cigar; and
4. haven’t got the heart to hit the delete key?

Well, nearly every one of my photos fits category (D) and I have thousands of snaps which really should be ground down into a series of ones and noughts.

Today’s photo is one of those. It’s a quite unremarkable photo but I thought it could be spiced up with a bit of cropping. Let me know what you think. It’s over here or click on the thumbnail below.

Friday Photo

Tags

canberra, friday, photographs, photography, photos, sky

Canberra is a great place for photographing statues, monuments and people. Last December a family birthday took me there and this Friday’s photo was one of the great memories I bought back. Hope you like it. Click here to see the photo.

England, Berlin and The Netherlands

Tags

buildings, england, images, people, photographs, photography, photos, places, stonehenge, sussex

So a while ago I posted some photos from Berlin and The Netherlands here. Just pointing this out as some people mentioned they had not seen a post about them).

Today I add to my galleries some pics from England. As I was going through the photos it struck me that most of my England pictures were of my family. I spent very little time looking through the lens at the surrounds. That kind of paralleled my feelings of this last country in our European holiday. The thing I enjoyed most about England was being with my family and friends. Having been to England many times, I think I did not find it as inspiring as the other countries. Hence I am pretty disappointed in the photos which do not feature my peeps.

But, keeping with my long held conviction, I am not going to post my family shots up on the web. They are my private stock 🙂 I hope you get some enjoyment out of the others which can be found by clicking here or on the photo below.

“A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.” – Ansel Adams

France

Tags

france, images, paris, people, photographs, photography, phots, places

This gallery is a selection of images from France, 2011. They are simply some of the images which caught my eye while in Paris and the surrounding region. I hope you enjoy. A click on the picture below will take you to the gallery or you can select from the Photographs tab at the top of the page.

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”  – Imogen Cunningham