Gardening...

Following a visit from my mother, we were inspired to do the garden! So we spent most of today diggin out grass and replacing it with cordylines and pencil pines and generally making the place a bit more like ours, rather than the people's before us. Here's a couple of pics:

Back at Mt Keith...

Stalking around with my camera again. The desert in the evening can be spectacular. The problem is that there is too many things to take pics of! So given that you only have about 30mins of useful light, you just have to snap away! These pics were taken just after sunset and it seemed to work best when the metering was set for correct exposure almost exactly on the horizon (so the foreground is underexposed, the sky overexposed).
And here's that dead plantation again!

One more...

I need to get further south to the breakaways (rock formations for those non-local, non-geo types). Perhaps when I am next in Leinster...

At the end of the day...

Sometimes, when you kick your shoes off, they become the object of artistic obsession. A pair of Blundstone boots is hardly art (though that might be an UnAustralian thing to say) however, in the right light, they can look pretty cool. Then again I think it would take a better photographer to show their full Aussie glory.

And just a further point about cats (see earlier post) as you can see, we are good and keep ours inside in the failing light. Here's proof: 

Bad, eeevil cat

Noodles, our neighbor's cat, (that's right, NOT ours!) climbed quite a tall tree this evening and I was curious as to why. Well after thinking he was stuck, he started to make his way down. I took photos. That mouth of his is not empty. I think he'd found the nest of some local honeyeaters. And I think that is one of the chicks in his mouth. What a shame. He is a lovely cat, but this reminds you of some of the realities of pet ownership (especially cats). I love cats, but you need to keep them in between twilight and dawn else this happens (in case you're wondering, we try to do that with our cat, with success most of the time, but we are comforted by the fact that ours is a little fat and would struggle to get halfway up such a tree, let alone find the nest. He did catch a cicada yesterday though!).

Not sure what to think of this

Its a bit of a lame effort, but thought I'd play with this photo cos it was otherwise fairly boring. Its a little bit of coast between Trigg and Hillarys. Nice area, and again this was taken at about 8:30 in the twilight. For the nerds it was shot at 0.6s shutter, f9 at 18mm. ISO 400, hence the noise and I didn't get the exposure right I don't think which has made it a little less sharp than it could be. Then tweaked in Picasa.

Light painting!

Yes!! It works. Using the bulb setting and a remote, plus a little blue LED light, you can do cool things. I've got a long way to go to master this, but for a first attempt I think it worked out...

The real master is Troy Paiva -- That is art! He has cool old cars and things. At this stage I have a frangipani and a palm tree!

Here's my pathetic first attempt... half the problem is working out what you're pointing at in the dark!!

Trip to Scarborough Beach and Trigg

These after-work excursions are becoming a habit!

Went down to the beach to see the kite surfers. I reckon it looks like it more fun to be on the other side of the camera! Might have to give this a go sometime...

And then there was another cool Perth sunset to stare at. Its a tough life...

And then a last snap from the car on the way out... It wasn't a particularly successful trip, about 110 photos taken, about 4 worthwhile!

Perth Excursion

Took a wander after work  - we've just moved into the new office in the cbd of Perth and it is cosy, to say the least.

But it does have a good view!

Kings Park in Perth is a bit of a tourist photo mecca, yes, one person sits down and starts taking photos and pretty soon several others are too. 

Its a nice time of year with the flowers in full bloom around Parliament House:

It is actually quite hard to find a place that might not have been photographed before in Kings Park, so you just have to take the shot when you see something interesting I guess. This tree caught my eye then immediately had me playing with colour extraction again!

A bit more walking around and then I decided to go home,

but it was starting to get dark, and thats when the fun really begins. The light at around half an hour after sunset is awesome; couple it with artificial light and a camera that can handle low shutter speeds without shake and you get something like these:

 

And that was that for another day...

East Fremantle Yacht Club

We went to the East Freo Yacht Club for Zoe's Research Assistant, Sarah's engagement party. Very nice spot and everyone enjoyed themselves. 

Just in case anyone thought I'd forgotten Bundi

Here he is! Hot off the press from the studio floor!

Becoming a photo-nerd

Ok, I think I'm becoming a photography obsessive. Not the kind that obsessed with camera equipment and f-stops and the like, but the kind who sees the world as it might look through the lens. Is this bad? Is it just a phase? We'll see (see - I'm seeing how it will look - I'll have to capture that...).

I even stooped to sitting with my camera on the plane home tonight. "Just in case" the lighting and the clouds "worked". I sort of got there I think, and this justifies the whole exercize:

Yep, 25,000 feet in the air and I can't let it go.

And the camera has really cool features like the ability to extract colour from a black and white image:

While I'm playing:

New camera - the Pentax K20D

So I have a new toy - the Pentax K20D with a Pentax 18-250mm zoom lens. This is a very cool DSLR camera and at about half the price of it's Nikon or Canon equivalents, is about the best value you can get. Pro-grade at amateur prices!

I'm really just re-learning how to use a proper camera (haven't had one for years). I'd forgotten how enjoyable it is! You do have to be a little obsessive about things to enjoy it I guess, but I find just wandering around is enough to see things that might look good on film. The trick then is to work out how you want it to look and what that means for the camera. The rest is just the push of a button...

The photo above is of a dead plantation of trees east of the Mt Keith mine village here in WA. I took this at about 5:30 in the afternoon in full sunlight. As you can see, applying black and white with a blue filtering option looks cool. The colour version hasn't got quite the impact:

And the other thing, you can see the rubbish in the colour version (plastic bags in foreground).

The great thing about and SLR is the ability to set up shots at night without a tripod. By using a decent shutter speed (can go down to about 1/20s for handheld) you can then play with aperature, sensitivity and white balance to get cool colours from otherwise inane scenes. After much fiddling around and lots of attempts later, an otherwise boring scene outside my room on site looks like this:

That's an emergency eye-wash and shower station - hence the green light (supposedly the last colour you can see before you go completely blind). I just liked the orange of the walkway lighting up against the green.

Morning light is difficult. What looks cool to the eye doesn't always work on film. I have a lot to learn. Here was an attempt at the fairly cool clouds over the Mt Keith mill this morning:

And then you can just do cool stuff:

There will be more, stay tuned.