So I wandered off to the Southbank on Monday after work – it was a scorcher of a day, so I left it till the evening before setting out. Walked from Embankment, over Hungerford bridge and strolled slowly down southbank till I got to the Millennium Bridge, taking loads of photos along the way.

Was a fantastic evening and I got some good photos, even if I do say so myself 🙂

my faves

was a long day, and I didn’t get home until gone 10, but it was so worth it

Skanky girl #1: I’m never wearing miniskirts again!
Skanky girl #2: Why is that?
Skanky girl #1: Well, every time I’m dancing in one, someone tries to sodomize me.
Skanky girl #2: Oh, I hate that–it’s so rude.

found at this wonderful site

http://www.overheardintheoffice.com

4 weeks left in this house, then just under 2 at my parents and then I’m offski.

4 weeks sounds like a lot. Its not. Not when you have to relocate everything, work a job, pack, sort, clean up, do taxes, get a job and life a normal life.

*eek*

stressing? nah

*cough*

went off to the fields again last night to see what the light was doing – pleased to see the previously green wheat field is now a lovely golden brown

so, with the 18-200 again, heres a nice and simple landscape – small aperture for depth of field and focussed about 1/3 the way in. Could do better with the front to back sharpness I think, but I liked it

been mucking about with off camera flash recently (now I finally got the D300 to work as a commander for the SB600 flashgun)

I think its going to take a lot of practice, but here’s one of my boy taken with the (replacement) 50mm (well, why deviate from a formula that works so well)

apart from some softness cos I used too wide an aperture, I love this photo and the flash and exposure being away from the line of the lens makes a huge difference.

Lots and lots of learning to go though

I gave the nikon 50mm f1.8 to Jay as the Sigma macro 50mm is a pain with autofous – hunting about all over the place. Its fine with the D300 as its autofocus is better and finer grained, but the D50 really doesnt like it.

So, I need to buy a replacement.

In the meantime, the 18-200VR superzoom still surprises me. I’m learning where the soft spots are with it now – the D50 was fine and just didnt show them, but the D300 is quite unforgiving of any compromises in a lens. What it is really really good at though is as a travel lens. It has to be the best lens on the market for this kid nd of thing.

To give you an idea – in Dubai airport I was bored and tried to get some people moving long-ish exposure shots, handheld with it. a 2 second exposure produced this

The slight softness is actually a photoshop action – Pioneer Woman’s “lovely and ethereal” action – its was pretty sharp all things considered

So 3 cheers for the image stabilisation and Nikon’s lenses.

I’ve been in Perth for a couple of weeks now, just chilling with Jay and the girls. Its been fun, sunny and warm, lots of time to just do normal things, plus as Jay has a break between courses and the girls are at school, we have time to explore a bit, have lazy coffee mornings on the beach front and generally relax.

We’ve been to Serpentine to see the dam and the falls, to Freo for lunch, to the cinema and wandered up a disused railway line to take photos. Had lots of time to play through the viewfinder with the box brownie too 🙂

Jay’s been doing her 52 weeks shots, getting all creative and I’ve been making tea (you can take the girl out of Yorkshire..) and urban acid-ing every photo in sight.

news wise, I got the pre-grant notice of my visa this week, so I’ll have that in about 10 days, and I applied for a few jobs, spoke to an agency about one in particular (looks very promising) and got info about opening bank accounts. I’ll only have 8 or 9 weeks before I’m out here for good 🙂

Shadow

humm, I have a couple of ideas, trouble is, one of them requires getting up before the sun comes up, and at this time of the year, thats around 3:30am..

Actually, having looked outside into the sunny (about bloody time too) garden, I can see an opportunity for a 3rd shot..

some pictures you take get other people really interested. The last serious photos I took were of a cornfield in the evening (lack of, as it turned out) sunshine.

I wasnt that impressed, but played with the processing and uploaded them anyway. I think all three that made it are in my top 10 most interesting and 2 have made it to explore..