Charlie's WorldBrrrr, its a bit chilly
Posted on December 19, 2010
Yes, it’s cold, I might even have to put some jeans on.
All of you in the Northern Hemisphere, up to your necks in white global warming, are probably thinking:
“Ha, yeah right, you’re in Perth, I’ve watched some cricket (ok, it’s pretty unlikely that any Americans would say the last bit as cricket is as foreign to them as baseball is to the rest of the world) – it looks pretty warm down there”
Ok, I’m being a wag, I’ve just had the old crappy useless evaporative air conditioning unit replaced with a new big monster one and it’s a bit efficient. Perhaps a bit too efficient for its own good. Jay is sitting at the desk in a one woman huddle, pretending it’s all fine. Being a hot person (I know, you all want me, right?) like I am, this chill suits me just fine!
We all took the doggy for a little walk along the beach (yup, the one that, I have to remind all of you repeatedly about) at the end of the road. I think the dog actually took the girls for a walk, rather than the other way around
Anyway, with all these digs and jibes at your chilly snowy weather, what I’m really doing is setting you up for some photos to give you all some Christmas cheer, so here for your viewing pleasure, are the dreary surrounds of suburban Waikiki.
And Piper, as special as ever.
I know, its a hard life.
Ok, for balance, there are some downsides – being 40C hot in a suit is no fun and it might rain tomorrow for a bit.
There, happy now, snow people? :p
By ‘ek, it’s ‘ot (and more kite surfing)
Posted on November 28, 2010
It’s warming up nicely for the summer. 38 degrees today, which is starting to get to the level of heat you want to avoid.
So I just had to stay in and watch the cricket instead. (c’mon England!!!)
Its a hard life – the cold beers are purely medicinal.
I did get up early today and mow the lawn before it got too hot – cut me some slack!
Anyway. It’s been one of those crazy arsed weeks again, so no time for blog updates, photo taking or, well, any damn thing apart from work.
All work and no play makes Charlie a dull boy.
So, to turn that all around and because, under my layer of winter protection, I’m just an action hero kinda guy, I went out to take some shots of the kite surfers again.
There was sod all wind though, which was a tiny flaw in my plan, but hey, the wind always starts to crank in the end, so full of optimism, I wandered round to Safety Bay to see who was there.
Ah. The no wind thing. There was nobody there. Well, nobody except the Pelicans, and they freak me out. I’m pretty sure they’re not originally from this planet. So I took their photos, and some other random stuff too, just to show them who was boss.
Eventually there was a breeze and the sky started to fill with kites and I could stop taunting the wildlife and turn my attention to the kite surfers.
First up, a totally awesome dad with his son (at least I’m assuming that they were, father and son – might have been a mad uncle, who knows..) – they were so cool and came right up to get their photo taken, poses and everything – hell yeah! Best family ever.
Then, as more and more people came out, and it was low tide, I waded out into the middle of the bay and hoped the kite surfers would come and pose for me, close is good (I soooo need to remember my damn bathers though!)
Within a few mins, one of the girls came up and stopped and said hey, what kind of shots did I want to take, what lens did I have, etc. Awesome! She was pretty interesting (more on this shortly) and had been doing some good tricks already, so I thought I might be able to get some shots.
She did a close fly by (which, of course, I wasn’t ready for) but I did get a few shots before she stacked it and came back for a chat.
We chatted for a bit and it turns out that her name is Nicky Rudd, she’s a pro kitesurfer from England (with a delightful hint of a west country accent) and she’s over in WA for the summer kite surfing season and on the pro tour. You can see more of her here at her site www.nickyrudd.com
I then hopped and screamed like a baby when a crab bit my little toe. No really, I’m not making this up.
Yup, it seems the glorious bay that I have in all my photos is full of saucer sized aggressive flesh-loving crustaceans. Little mo-fo’s! I had no idea they were all over the shallows too, I just thought they liked the weedy deeper bits. Anyway, once I’d recovered my cool (ok, ok, never had any, and with a stupid handlebar Moustache – donate here – I’m hardly James sodding Dean) I realised I was standing in a crab minefield, plus the tide was coming in, so I had to retreat to carry on shooting. Bathers and stout shoes next time. and maybe a spear gun.
So, more Nicky…
Thats quite enough of that before I start sounding like a creepy fanboy. It was lovely to meet you Nicky
There were some other folks out there too by this time and I got some pretty cool shots of them too, but I shall save them for another post or this one will be way too long!
If you like these though, check out these other Kite Surfing blog entries.
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/kite-surfing/
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/kite-surfing-2/
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/learning-to-fly/
learning to fly
Posted on November 17, 2010
I went to Shoalwater Beach the other weekend to see the kitesurfers in action as the wind was blowing and I thought I might get a few shots with the wide angle lens.
Stupidly, I was wearing jeans, so I couldn’t get as close to the water as I would have liked – must remember to take shorts next time.
Anyway, as usual, the guys (and girls – of which there were a good few out) down there were really cool and friendly and happy to chat and pull few moves for the camera, flying upside down and all over the place, so I ended up getting some very interesting shots. I can’t decide if I prefer the ultra wide angle or the 18-200mm that I used on the last shots of Aaron.
So, Michael, Jamie and friends – thanks – see you back down there soon.
Apologies for the sheer number of shots, there are lots of cool ones!
Sydney
Posted on November 10, 2010
So, I got sent to Sydney.
I wonder, is that a bit like being sent to an Australian version of Coventry? – (which by the way, if you’re not familiar with the expression – being ‘sent to Coventry is an ‘old’ English expression which means to be sent somewhere bad).
All good fun you may think, I get to large it up on company expenses, stay out all night drinking and partying and can snore all night long in a hotel bed that gets made for me every morning.
Awesome.
Well, actually, not awesome.
The sad reality of being away from home and staying in a hotel on my own means meals for one, working late (*its 11:30pm and I’m still working) and eventually sending for mediocre (actually, I’ve just ordered butter chicken curry, and it’s not too bad) room service as I’ve kind run out of enthusiasm for yet another trip out to find food.
Joy.
The other think I don’t like is that the hotel I’m staying in is a good walk from the office. About 30 mins to be exact. And Sydney is very humid.
*Melt*
Anyway, its not all doom and gloom – well, actually, thats not true – its is all doom and gloom – its been terribly overcast here so far – thick cloud, heavy rain, thunderstorms etc. So I’ve been somewhat stunted in my ability to take any photos. Well, that and the long work hours.
I did get a few shots on my first day here, before the heavens opened and the mother of all storms rolled in – so, here, for your viewing pleasure are some photos 🙂
weird stormy skies from my hotel room
Apocalypse Sydney
incoming...
convention centre
morning skies from my hotel room
Darling Harbour at night
So, there you g0 – its either work or shots from my hotel – hopefully tomorrow it might be sunny and I can take some photos of a nice bright city…
Tuesdays on the beach
Posted on November 3, 2010
As luck would have it, I have to run big’un around on a Tuesday, so it means I get almost an hour of photography in before I have to collect her again.
At the moment, that hour happens to be the golden hour just before sunset, which is awesome for photos.
Last week, I took the old jetty shots and was pretty happy, so I gave that location a miss this time and went further on up the beach in search of some boats and things to get up close and personal to with the wide angle lens.
Mangles Bay in Rockingham is where all the boats anchor and it’s really cool, underused and very quiet. The yacht club could do with some updating, but apart from that, its lovely.
However, this whole place is under threat from a massive marina development (please visit http://handsoffpointperon.com/) which is will destroy hundreds of hectares of previous ‘permanently preserved native bush’ (yeah – that status was overturned – amazing what happens for a quick buck) and replace it with millionaires canal side houses, apartment blocks and an enormous marina. Nice.
Anyway, so before we lose this wonderful place forever (which, lets face it, once the money starts to flow, no amount of local objection is going to make any difference whatsoever), I thought I’d get some photos.
The light was amazing, clouds make such a difference to the sky and the feel of a shot, plus the circular polariser creates outstanding definition between white and blue.
Thats all for now – I’ll be back out later in the week or next week for another location, work and personal commitments being equal – so if you like the pretty pictures, check back soon.
In other news – its the middle of the week, which means – Red Wine Wednesday – stay tuned 🙂
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!
We sailed back to Monkey Mia and we sat up front in the sun, enjoying the warmth and the gorgeous blue sky and turquoise water.
In all, a beautiful day really and well worth it. We had some lunch before heading back to Denham.
On the way back, I took a some pictures of the Monkey Mia bay – its very beautiful set against the red rocks that dominate the landscape here.
Next up – the journey home – some last minute sightseeing and then the loooong drive back.
castles castles and more castles (part 1)
Posted on April 18, 2010
The thing about England (and the rest of the UK come to that) is that almost everybody lives in a castle.
There are simply millions of the things scattered about the country that if you don’t live in one, you live next door to one or a pile of stones that used to be one. I’m not even kidding – where I grew up in Kent, where my parents still live, there are probably 30 castles within 20 minutes drive of their house. There’s even a handful of Roman Villas, an old (now ruined) Palace (one of the biggest in the country in its day) and a bunch of pre-historic remains.
Kids love castles – they come with tales of knights, dragons, torture, kings, princesses, behead-ings, dungeons and, of course, garderobes (toilets that empty poos into the moat)
So we went to see some of the local ones.
First up – Leeds Castle. Not near Leeds, West Yorkshire, but Leeds in Kent. Its one of the prettiest best preserved castles anywhere, set in a large parkland with a fairytale moat and stories of King Henry VIII, plus it has a massive maze and lots of things for kids to do.
Sadly, it was frickin’ freezing and miserable on that day, but we kinda wrapped up (not enough though) and just went for it.
There were also (as is customary in these places) lots of peacocks.
first shots
Posted on March 28, 2010
As I mentioned previously, I bought a B+W110ND filter – a wondrous thing which is basically a piece of very dark glass that reduces the amount of light into the camera by 10 stops.
For those that have no idea what I’m talking about – a stop on a camera is, for example, like the difference between a shutter speed of 0.5 and 1 second.
So if your camera was going to shoot at 1/125th second, adding a 10 stop filter means you have to shoot for 8 seconds to let the same of light in. Which means you can have quite a lot of fun at sunset when exposures are already down to a second or so without the filter. You have to check the exposure based on the aperture settings you want, frame the shot, get it to focus where you want, switch the camera to manual everything (inc focus), screw the filter in, which is so black you can’t see anything anymore. Then work out the correct exposure with the filter on, set the remote timer and basically leave it to do its thing for the 200 odd seconds that is needed.
Anyway, all this technical mumbo jumbo is all well and good, but the upshot of the camera being open for at least 3 minutes is that the ocean is totally smoothed out and the camera has captured the clouds moving.
Like this:
And yes, I am pleased with the results!
Next step, more location scouting and to start thinking in black and white…
new toys
Posted on March 20, 2010
I just bought some new stuff for my camera as I’m very interested in long exposure shots.
I got a B&W ND110 filter reduces light by 10 stops so enables long exposures during the day (interesting, but not *that* useful) or more importantly, longer exposures at or around sunset.
The longer the shutter is open on the water/rock/beach sunsets that I like, the smoother the water and the sky become. So focus onto something nice and sharp, like a jetty or a bold rock and set the camera to take a shot for 5 minutes, you’ll get (hopefully) amazingly smooth looking landscapes which tend to convert well to black and white.
I had a little go today, but I didn’t get anything totally fab, just the slight oddness of a daytime shot with smooth waves over rocks.
I need loads more practice, but at least I have something to aim for.
take a look at these guys if you have time
http://www.davidburdeny.com/
http://www.silverlandscapes.com
http://www.michaellevin.ca
Some target, eh? 🙂
having said I was crap..
Posted on March 17, 2010
…I take it all back. Well, not all of it, but some. back onto the subject of cool black and whites and living the 60’s Parisian cafe shooters dream
I went through some shots of Melbourne again and decided to convert a few to black and white to see if I could get that street photography look, and well I’ll be buggered – some of them look fab, with a hint of abstract (which is becoming something of a “thing” for me)
Now, I’m not claiming some kind of greatness here, but I kinda like this lot.
Charlie's World 
