Charlie's Worldmore 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.
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!
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.
Holidays, part 3 – Kalbarri Gorges
Posted on October 5, 2010
Day 3, we set off from Kalbarri early as we had a long drive (again) to Denham in Shark Bay.
Stopping briefly for petrol and a quick walk along the beach (we arrived in the dark the night before so we thought we’d at least have a 5 minute poke around), we quickly decided that Kalbarri is a place we’d come back to. Clean, pretty, lots of variety of food (for vegetarians, vegans and gluten and dairy free) and enough to keep children occupied for a week.
We drove up the Ajana Kalbarri road towards the Kalbarri National Park so we could have a gawp at the amazing Murchison River Gorge. This was a little way off road – 20km or so along well made dirt tracks – through the vast open bush.
It was a pleasure to see to no evidence of mankind (the road excepted) as far as the eye could see in all directions. We even saw emus wandering through a thin patch of bush just off the road.
We parked up at a little car park and walked out into the heat – it was really warm compared to Perth – and took a walk down a little rocky track to a lookout over the Murchison River.
Wow – it was an awesome view. Not very many folks about either, just a few brave souls and a teenage kid who was curious about my Hasselblad camera. This was also the first time we really got to see the red rocks that make this part of the world so famous.
It’s spring in Australia at the moment, so there were a fair few desert flowers about – very pretty.
We still had a long drive and Anja was in a foul teenage mood, so we didn’t get to see the fabled ‘Nature’s Window’, which I was ok with – it was hot and there were lots of flies about, and besides, its such a stupid twee name for a gorgeous rock arch.
We drove back down the track and continued north along the highway into ever more barren countryside and ever increasing temperatures.
Next up – Hamelin Bay and Shark Bay
Holidays, part 1 – Perth to Lancelin
Posted on October 4, 2010
The drive to Shark Bay is, in theory, too far to do in a day, plus there are lots of interesting things to see along the way. Ok, so not lots, there are vaaaaaaast stretches of nothing much at all, but there are some worthwhile places to see, so we planned to break it down into 3 stops.
The first being Lancelin.
We packed the trusty Kia up early and headed off to Lancelin, our first port of call on the Shark Bay trip.
Lancelin is a little way for us southerners to get to – a little over 2 hours drive north from where we live and way beyond the limits of the northern reaches of suburban Perth. Its quite a pretty drive once you get out of the city – national parks, pine plantations, natural bushland (lots of that) and fruit farms. In no time at all, we were there and pulling up for lunch. I did wonder if we’d gone the wrong way, as there was pretty much nothing there, a few shops and a couple of takeaway places and that was kind of it, but no, that’s really all there is to Lancelin town.
What we came here for were the sand dunes. Lancelin is famous for having enormous dunes just behind the town and people come here with dirt bikes, quad bikes, modified 4×4’s etc to bash up and and down the huge lunar like sand hills.
The dunes really are amazing, almost pure white sand (that gets everywhere) – combined with clear blue skies (and a polarising filter) – the resultant look could really be from another planet.
On of the other things you can do is to hire boards and go sandboarding.
Oh yes 🙂
I had to have a go too!!
Ok, I fell off within a few seconds of this shot – I should have hired the ones with the foot straps if I wanted to stand up!
We had a great time but it was so hard to climb back up the dunes that we could only manage an hour before we had to take our burning thighs and return the boards and go find ice creams.
The hotel was, erm, how can I put this.. crap. The little unit we stayed in was small, old, smelly and I was really glad we were only overnighting. The restaurant was very good though, if a little expensive.
We set off the next day for part 2 of our journey up – The Pinnacles and Kalbarri.
Piccies from a foreign land
Posted on September 17, 2010
I got my films from my trip to the UK back yesterday and they are awesome!
I love my Hasselblad, it produces amazing images – so clear and full of glorious colour and definition in a way that digital images somehow aren’t. The trouble is, scanning these amazing prints and showing them on here doesn’t show them how they are at all 😦
I tried scanning them at 600dpi, but the resulting images lack clarity, so I really need to do them at the full 1200 or higher – which means a scan time of more than 9 minutes per image – crappy scanner.
So, I need to buy a dedicated medium format negative scanner.
They cost AU$750
Add it to the list of stuff I ‘need’ 😦
Expensive hobby, this film lark. Looks like I might be getting familiar with home developing sooner rather than later!
Aaaaaanyhoo… I do have some initial scans to share – they’re pretty much all of my kids and family, but hey, its my blog, I can share if I like! I’ll probably redo these over the weekend – hopefully they will come out with a bit more ‘pop’
Oh, and I’ve done this on my work laptop which has a very bright screen, I don’t know if the colour/contrast on these pics is actually correct or not 😦
freak magnet
Posted on September 11, 2010
Mostly, being average looking, average height and average build, I don’t attract any attention wherever I go. This comes in handy when I want to take photographs, particularly in the street where people are sometimes suspicious of that kind of thing.
Recently though, I have been toting my Hasselblad medium format film camera about the place and as it’s pretty unusual looking (compared to modern point and shoots or SLR’s), people tend to notice more. Mostly, I get good comments – people stopping me and going ‘wow, what the hell is that?’ or ‘OMG, I haven’t seen one of those for 30 years’ or some such – and that’s really cool – I love chatting to interested people, and one of these days, I’ll grow a pair and ask them if I can take their photo too.
But recently, someone seems to have stuck a big freak magnet on my back. Everywhere I go I seem to attract the kind of attention that Tom Cruise and Lady Gaga can only dream about.
An example of this – I was in Perth with a few friends last week, trying to take some photos when a frail old lady came up to me and got right in my face and started having a go at me about taking photos in public and how I had to put the camera away right now. I smiled sweetly and told her nicely that as I was in a public place and that I could take photos if I wanted to. She stared the finger waggling at this point and I’m sure I caught the smell of cats on the breeze as she muttered something about metal in her neck, knowing her rights and how it all started in Belgium (no, really, that’s what she said)
I simply pointed to a police car parked a little way up the street and suggested that if she had a problem she should talk to them about it. She waggled her bony witch finger a few more times, said ‘I will’ and walked away in the other direction away from the police car.
I’m sure I saw a pair of green eyes peering from the crack in the top of her pull along shopping basket.
Then, not 2 minutes later, a happy Aboriginal fellow came bowling down the street, took one look at the camera and ‘posed’ for me – getting in my face and pulling a huge toothless gurn with his arms held up high. If it hadn’t have been so dark, I would have taken his photo, but I was a bit taken aback! He was harmless enough, but still..did I happen to step into Freakatopia without realising?
On the train home wasn’t much better – there was a denim clad 80’s reject of a drunken man in the seat in front loudly yacking on his phone for the whole journey. He tried to call his mate and do a prank call, but was too drunk and stumbled over his words and it ended up being what was possibly the worst crank call ever in the history of ever. He should probably be the poster child for the Government’s anti drinking campaigns.
‘drink too much and you’ll look like this sad sack of shit’
I think I have a bright future in marketing and advertising.
Anyway, enough of picking on people, its time for me to pick on the dog.
The little cowbag was barking madly at 6:30am this morning, causing me to get up and spray her with the ‘stop fucking barking you stupid dog’ water spray bottle. She stopped. Well, for a while anyway.
Trouble is, once I’m up, I can never get back to sleep, so thanks for that, pooch, I really wanted to be wide awake before 7am on Saturday. I’m gonna wake you up at 11pm tonight when you’re all slumpy and take you for a long walk and see how you like it.
Meh!
Holga and Hasselblad
Posted on July 22, 2010
So, as you are aware, I got my films back – I was especially looking forward to seeing the shots from the Hasselblad, given I paid a small fortune for it and am betting the farm that it’ll produce images that will stir my creative soul. I know, not too much pressure then.
First, the Holga, which never ceases to surprise and amaze
Next, the Hasselblad – early days with this beastie, only just got hold of a lightmeter so the early films were guesswork and counting back from Sunny 16..
I think it’s safe to say that the camera has done ok 🙂
Pretty happy with those so far. I have another 2 films I’m scanning and there are some interesting shots there too.
Can’t wait to get out again and take more shots now!
slackest blogger award goes to..
Posted on June 29, 2010
er, me. bugger
so, whats new in my world?
1. Its got cold.
A feet numbing kind of cold. Infact it’s almost record breakingly cold in Perth. We’ve had a couple of frosts this week and night time temps have generally been around 1 or 2 degrees all week. I know, I know, its not exactly cold compared to Europe or the US this winter, but remember that our houses aren’t really insulated, we don’t have central heating or double glazing, as normally, the temperature is in the teens or higher.
We do have ducted gas heating, but it’s way too expensive to run – last year, winter cost us $1500 in gas, so that got switched off and out came the blankets until it got so cold that we gave in and bought a wood-fired heater.
A big pot belly stove now sits, roaring in the corner of the open plan, kicking out no heat whatsoever until I get up and light it. So I still have cold feet, but later in the day, the house is well toasty. And it chews through wood like it’s going out of fashion. 2 trailer loads and 3 20kg bags and it’s only been a few weeks – it might not be cheaper to run than the gas at this rate, but I do get to play with matches, so that makes it worth it.
2. Work.
I’ve actually had some. Quite a lot and multiple projects too, which I must confess (to any potential employers) I find kinda challenging. Not the work bit, it’s the multi-tasking context switching bit. My job is normally quite involved and detailed and requires a lot of analytical thinking – I find I need time to settle my brain into the zone and then I can do what I need. If I have to keep jumping in and out of different trains of thought, everything takes 4 times longer. Well, not 4 times, but you get the idea. I have a 10 minute window where my concentration ebbs away, so if I can get back to my zone within that window, then we’re all good, but if not, I have to come back up for air, change the air in the tanks and begin the long journey back into the depths of the ‘zone’
3. Busy.
Although I cannot for the life of me remember doing what. So here’s a photo of a kid with a mullet that I saw wandering around the DIY store. His Dad had one too. And the smaller son had twin plaited rats tails. Classy. I am in Australia, not West Virginia or someplace aren’t I? People of Walmart, eat your heart out!
Oh yeah, just remembered whats been taking the time every weekend so that I haven’t been anywhere – gardening – had to rip out a load of stuff from next to the fence cos its broken. Fences here are stupid – they’re big sheets of fibreboardy stuff that are actually dug into the ground then joined together at the top with a metal bracket. When they break (as they do), they have to be dug out with a special machine and new ones put in place. So all the plants (massive honeysuckle and a big creepery thing) along a 20 metre section have had to come out. I now have a pile of cuttings 3 metres tall and 5 meters around to be fed into a chipper that I don’t have the funds to buy just yet.
Plus I’m painting the girl’s bedrooms at the moment – a nice shade of lilac with a deeper colour accent wall (their choice, I blame their mother and her arty ways). That was pretty much the whole of this Sunday and last night (and I foresee every night this week) taken up
So that’s taken up lots of time. No slacking for me after all then 😉
4. Photos.
Precious little of that recently due to the mysterious loss of time due to the above point 3. However, I do have a few pics to show and tell.
reflections
sunset
So there you go 🙂
Next post – my lovely new camera! Oh yes.
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…
Charlie's World 