time to pay the piper

Posted on October 23, 2010

Yes, a winter of leaving the garden alone means I now have to spend the spring getting it sorted.

All the little jobs that would have been ‘easy’ are now kinda bigger and more involved. Well, they’re probably not, its just hotter and sweatier out there!

The plan for the spring is as follows

(today) strip and re-varnish the patio furniture.
re-seat some of the bricks on the patio
dig up and re-home the rotary washing line to a different part of the garden
create a decking area in a currently neglected and overgrown part of the garden
get the fence replaced (insurance job)
create no-dig vegetable patch
plant several fruit trees next to the new fence

Some of these tasks are easy – I can probably do the first 2 today, and the washing line is easy but a brutal physical job. The decking is very involved and requires a lot of clearing and thinning of trees before I can even start.

I cleared the huge pile of cuttings from earlier in the year, the irrigation is all working, the grass is in better shape than last year (but still rough in places) and the pot plants are nicely established, so the garden is starting to feel a little bit more under control at last.

And now, lunch, then sand and varnish the patio furniture.

Category: garden Tagged: chores, garden, jobs, Waikiki

2 Comments

I’ll spin you right round..

Posted on October 22, 2010

..like a record baby (only with a camera held out at arms length)

I’ve seen these shots done a a few times, so I thought I’d give it a go.

Set camera to have 1/4 to 1/2 second shutter, hold at arms length point at your head, spin around on an office chair, press the shutter, try not to look too much like an idiot.

Ok, so I failed on the last point. And I need to to spin faster and have a shorter shutter speed, they’re not sharp enough.

This one was slightly out of focus, which is a shame, as it was the best one. Ah well, practise makes perfect (and also makes me feel really sick **barf**)

Category: camera, photography Tagged: camera, sigma 10-20mm, spin

6 Comments

Internetiquette

Posted on October 21, 2010

Bloody hellfire, the internet harbours the best and worst in people.

Forums, facebook and youtube (and I said this before) are traditionally the very worst examples of this, with slanging matches starting within minutes of people posting something. These arguments are usually childish in nature and often involve a total lack of interpersonal skills or ability to participate in rational argument.

When a person resorts TO TYPING IN CAPITALS or just repeating the same thing over and over, especially when combined with escalating insults or rudeness, you know you’ve met the internet troll.

Shouting, caps, insults, straw man arguments (where you bring in an unrelated topic to the central argument, usually an emotional one and use that to debate with), ad hominem (personal) attacks – all things that indicate that a person cannot formulate an argument, cannot debate facts and lacks the openness of mind to be able to assess the scope of an issue.

More importantly, especially when the person resorts to insults or rudeness, this, to me, indicates a potentially serious issue with anger and loss of control, especially when they are a repeat offender.

The Internet, home of the Troll, just hope you don’t meet one in the street.

Category: whinge Tagged:

3 Comments

busy, like a fox

Posted on October 19, 2010

A rolling stone gathers no moss, as the saying (proverb?) goes, and this week, I am certainly free of mosses, lichens and any rock growing greenery – I’ve been out with the camera again. I know, amazing, you’re all thinking – he never does that.. **rolls eyes**

Anyway, dear readers (of which I have around 100 a day at the moment, apparently – feel free to leave a comment if you like the purdy photos..) – I popped out to the jetty that I took these pictures at in March for a retake with my new wide angle lens.

There were a few people there already taking photos of a couple, the wife heavily pregnant, so I had to wait a few minutes for them to finish. I have to say, given that she was using the pop up flash on the camera and a kit lens, I don’t have that much faith that the photos will be any good.

/bitch.

As I set up, the Coogee women surf boat team were out practising.

In bikinis.

And I learned something new. Apparently, for grip (or something) they have to, how do I say this, splash their bottoms with water and hoik up their bikini bottoms and give themselves a wedgie, exposing their bum cheeks before sitting down. Classy.

And I’m stood on the jetty with the camera, waiting for it to finish a 4 minute exposure, with nothing to do but loiter and pretend I’m not a pervert.. Awkward.

So, the photos. Hope you like them.

Looking along Palm Beach to Mangles Bay

Jetty with the 10 stop (almost completely black) filter on

Jetty a bit later with just the circular polariser on.

I made a few composition errors and the sky was a bit bland – next time I’m going to go back on a windy as well day with clouds to try to capture the motion in the sky more.

And now, its late and its bedtime in this little corner of the world.

Catchya.

Category: camera, photography Tagged: "Western Australia", B+WND110, jetty, long exposure, Nikon D300, Perth, Rockingham, Sigma 10-20

7 Comments

my god, its full of stars..

Posted on October 18, 2010

(thats a quote from “2001, A Space Odyssey” if you didn’t know)

Tonight, Anja had a school astronomy science lesson at one of the teacher’s houses not too far from here. Her class and a few brave parents gathered in the falling light at the back of the gorgeous 5 acre property to look at the sky and learn about the stars.

I’m a real star geek – I had a telescope in England that I used to use a fair bit – it was awesome, but sadly it couldn’t make it all the way to Perth so I gave it to a friend (hope you’re still getting good use from it, Molty), so I jumped at the chance to come and see what a could see. Sadly, the moon was out, which pretty much totally stuffs up the sky, but it was still good fun and you could see Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars and a load of brighter constellations.

I took the camera to see if I could get any photos…

I need to read some books on star photography cos the images were a bit ordinary, but you get the idea..

**edit – I had a little play with layers and blends in Photshop – here’s before

milky way

And after the blend in PhotoShop

Comments/thoughts?

Category: camera, photography Tagged: astronomy, milky way, stars

2 Comments

more new lens pictures

Posted on October 16, 2010

In celebration of ultra wide angle goodness, I’ve taken a load more photos 🙂

I love this lens – its less good with buildings as you get that crazy leany walls things going on, but its awesome with landscapes and settings where it doesn’t mess with architecture too much.

Category: camera, photography Tagged: camera, lens, Nikon D300, Perth, photography, sigma 10-20mm, Waikiki

New stuff!!

Posted on October 14, 2010

So, in the background whilst I’ve been posting all the holiday photos and stories, life has been carrying on as normal!

I’ve missed a Red Wine Wednesday (but I have the wine photo and blog post ready for next Wednesday, so stay tuned, vino-fans) and loads of other fun stuff has happened (but I’ve forgotten already), but the main and most exciting thing is

I have a new toy!

I know, it should have taken precedent over everything else, my bad, what kind of techno photo geek am I?! LOL.

So, Jon, one of my friends on Flickr was selling a lens he didn’t need any more as he’s much more into film photography these days, so I bought it from him.

Its a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens, which is brilliant for landscapes and crazy angle photos – I’ve been hankering after one of these for ages and now, its mine! Thanks Jon, you’re a superstar.

Sigma 10-20 lens

So, you may be thinking, what’s the big deal. Well, its super wide angle – take a horizontal photo whilst standing up and you’ll get your feet in the shot. So for landscapes, it means you can get a whole load more in than ever before.

So, here’s some shots for you 🙂

Firstly, my ‘work from home position’ – ok, normally, I’ve got the coffee cup in my hand too 😉

The study taken from the door – you can see the whole room – plus the red wall where all the black and white photos are going to go, once I print them out!

Looking straight up in my back garden – I have lots of lovely shady trees!

Palm trees in my garden, looking straight up from the ground

Tia the doggy. She really did not want me to take this shot! Mind you, as the lens is so wide, this glass was only about 3 inches from her nose when I took this!

Rockingham beach. I popped down there the other night at sunset – shame there were no clouds.

Sitting in the dark inside my car.

I can see myself getting lots of use out of this lens, including stupid self portraits with crazy perspectives. I’ve already done a few and yes, I look like a prize winning dickhead!

Category: camera, photography Tagged: camera, lens, Nikon D300, Perth, photography, Rockingham, sigma 10-20mm

5 Comments

Holidays, the end

Posted on October 13, 2010

And so came the day we had to go home – boooo! We’d had a lovely time, but we still had 950km to drive back, so we had to leave early. We packed everything back in the car remarkably easily, set the chiller bag in the middle seat for the girls to have easy access to food and drinks without having to stop too often.

We had a few viewing places around Denham still to quickly look at on the way, so I dragged the family out to a few places that looked out over the bay first

Then we went 15 minutes south to Eagle Bay. Its well worth going here if you ever make it this part of the world – there’s a walkway on the top of the cliff and you look down on to the shallow clear water below and you can see loads of marine life. In the 15 minutes we were there we saw a couple of sharks and a very large ray. Its a lovely view that holds your attention for a really long time as you scan the water for more creatures.

The ray – this was pretty big and very easily visible, swimming across the bay and out to sea. I zoomed in as much as I could, but didn’t get a better shot than this. I recommend binoculars!

We set off home and drove back along the isolated roads, seeing lots of other 4×4’s and then a whole load of road trains that must have left Geraldton earlier that day at pretty much the same time. These guys are huge – I gather they’re even bigger going across the top of Australia and also south along the Nulabour.

We drove back into the night and got home late that night – an easy but long journey. Coming back into Perth was horrible – way too many people and bright lights – its amazing what a week in the country does for your perspective on things!

Hope you enjoyed the holiday series as much as we enjoyed the trip – I’ll be back to Red Wine Wednesday later 🙂

Category: Australia, family, photography, travel Tagged: "Western Australia", Denham, Eagle Bay, holiday, Monkey Mia, ocean

4 Comments

Holidays, part 7 – boats, pearls, dolphins and dugongs

Posted on October 12, 2010

On the last day, we went back to Monkey Mia to go on a catamaran, the Aristocat 2, which sails out into Shark Bay in search of dolphins, turtles, dugongs and black pearls. It was a beautiful day, in contrast to the day before – we really do have the best luck!

The boat sails early, so we got there in plenty of time and had a breakfast coffee at the Monkey Mia restaurant. Jay and Piper are both travel sick, so they were both dosed up with Kwells, but the sea was millpond smooth so I figured they’d be ok. Everyone was sat on outside the boat and there was plenty of breeze too.

First up we went to the pearl farm, one of the biggest pearl farms in Western Australia. Shark Bay was originally popular for pearl farming in the mid 1800s to around 1900 – but the people were greedy and generally not very nice and the industry collapsed due to overfishing and the depression.

The Pearl farm is run by Jamie, who was on the TV series ‘The Farmer Wants A Wife’ – he was pretty cool and explained how they made the cultured pearls – its a long and complex and careful process – each shell produces 4 pearls over 8 years. Oh, and pearls and nothing to do with sand grains – natural pearls are caused by damage to the shell making organ thingy, apparently.

We sailed off in search of wildlife – there were lots of dolphins around – small pods mostly, but then a bigger one with a juvenile came over to investigate and swam with the boat for a while, which was very cool.

It was a gorgeous day so we pottered around a bit more in search of dugongs. Dugongs are funny things – they’re mammals that graze on the sea grass meadows in the shallow waters. Shark Bay has about 20% of the world’s population – something like 15000 of them live here, happily pottering about in the shallow water. They spend a fair bit of time sleeping, and like dolphins, send 1/2 their brain to sleep at a time, keeping one half awake to deal with breathing and keeping a watch out for sharks. They sleep just on the surface so we sailed slowly about to try to spot one. They’re very shy, so we kept on seeing tails pop out of the water and they swam back down out of harms way.

We eventually found one snoozing on the surface – very cool!