Floriade 2011

In between other more important projects this month, here a some sneaky Floriade photos.

Vanuatu

Went Vanuatu for a friend's wedding. It's a tough life to have to eat a 3 hr breakfast and snorkel all day.

Temora Spitfire

How often do you get to see a pair of eliptical wings and hear the roar of a 12 cylinder Merlin engine with its supercharger whine? Geez it's a thing of beauty.

Corin Dam - HDR Pano

Hi all, quick post of Corin Dam in Canberra. 8 frame (5 EV each) HDR + stitched pano. Some foreground artifacts from stitching and the right and side is over processed for HDR. Missed the full rainbow as it was partially casted in shadow by clouds

Big Band - Big Bang - RMC centennial celebrations

Quick post, Centennial Celebrations for RMC Duntroon with Big Band and Fireworks

Brit Classic Sprint - Wakefield Park Goulburn NSW

It was a dismal drive out to Goulburn last weekend, fog, sleet, ordinary breakfast meat pie... But the highlight was to see my mate's dad's Adelaide housed Triumph Spitfire MkIII doing time trials around Wakefield Park race way.



Other notable classics were GT6s and TR7, some making the trip up from Adelaide too. The foggy start to the morning added to the atmosphere of hearing high performance engines shrouded by mist (and the occasional tyre squeal!)



Access was limited (and I was somewhat lazy), so the shots look kinda samey.



All in all, still need to practice slow shutter speed panning (though 70-200mm VRII does most of the heavy lifting) and shot dicipline to start tracking and panning earlier whilst keeping and eye on composition. I'm most satisfied with the GT6 and Wakefield Park sign in the background.

LoFi - Lensbaby is tricky to use

So a Lensbaby composer pro with sweet35 optic came in the post the other day. I've been aching to get out with it but work sees me at home after dark at the moment. Nevermind, the weekend is here, but it's bitterly cold (falling snow even! but it melted before it hit the ground)

Ducked out on the bike for a quick sunset play with the new toy this afternoon. Definitely not easy to use in a time critical situation. I went with a tacky Lomo-esq processing to see if it made me feel any better about using it. Overall, I'm pretty happy, it gets me an image that I couldn't easily do in post, that crazy stretched blur or without a seriously expensive tilt-shift lens.

If anything it stops me just blatting away taking photos, I have to really work on composition and sweet spot location, AND size based on aperture. Hopefully it will be a good training tool to worry more about my composition.

Pocketwizards Picnic

Just a sample of a wedding recently photographed in the Blue Mountains.

Setting: about midday
Lighting: Single flash + shoot-through white
Magic bullet: PW FlexTT5 to allow sync at 1/1000th, f2.8 over a distance of 10m with 70-200mm

Joe McNally is my Master now, wireless RADIO TTL rocks.

Melaka, Malaysia

As a side trip to get away from the glitz of Singapore, we embarked on a bus tour to historic Melaka.



Once a port to the Dutch, Portuguese and British, the town is now vying for the tourist dollar. There were ubiquitous trishaws looking for passengers around every corner. Seeing how the petite Chinese tourists were fitting 2 to a trishaw, we both tried to squeeze our 'robust' frames into one, much to the amusement of the owner till he realised that he'd have to pedal such a large combined weight. In the end a second trishaw came to our aid and off we went.



Part of our tour included a stop at a Taoist temple where people were coming to pay their respects to their forebears as part of the Lunar New Year. The historic Jonkers street was filled with anachronisms. Motorbike repair shops and traditional flour mills next to small batik tailors and shops of hand made pastries.




Unsuccessfully posing for a photo



With the intent of travelling light, all I packed was the 18-200mm which was a shame given the ornate detail in the carvings at the temple. Also trying some different post processing as the light was very diffuse and overcast.

Singapore Zoo - Wow!

It's pretty easy to think "Zoo - Ho Hum", but Singapore Zoo is one of those world class zoos that should not be missed. It's a great experience for both adults and kids a like.


This is one seriously happy elephant!



The enclosures help showcase the animals and the actual scheduled shows such as the elephants at work and play have a strong message about the plight of endangered species.



There are also free roaming enclosures where you can get very close to lemurs and enormous butterflies.



The cheeky orangutan here is reaching to snaffle some chippies much to the annoyance of the keepers.




Oh to be a monkey.

Breakfast with Orangutans - Singapore Zoo

Breakfast with the Orangutans was a unique and fantastic experience to get up close to these creatures and was worth every cent.



There were several of our forrest chums who came down to eat with us including a little imp who was not camera shy.

ZOMG! Talk about the proverbial mountain of tourists taking photos and blocking the view for the rest of us (though I did partake - but at a modest distance with my 200mm). Most annoyingly were the would-be camera buffs eyeballing each other to see who had the biggest lens and blatting away at 9fps on a stationary ape?! Seriously how many photos do you need? I bet you they just bought their cameras downtown the day before and were shooting skywards at the animals in a strong backlit scene. I hope all they got was some verdant green foliage photos with a big black orangutan sillhouette. I didn't see a single one stop to check their exposures and adjust. SIGH they must just be better photographers than me.

The smarter ones were standing back and picking their shots and eating. So to all adult camera nerds, take yer photo and get out of the way, the kids can't see. Enough ranting.





In my meager handful of photos (at the behest of stuffing my face with delicious breakfast), I waited and got the photo I wanted. HELLO BOYS!