Nara Candle Festival

Recently attended the Nara Candle Festival held by representatives of our Japanese sister city. I haven't been out in the dark with the camera for ages, I had no idea what to point it at.

Peace candles

Pushed HDR

Noriko Tadano rocked out with her shamisen

George Kamikawa - Lap slide guitar with a bottle of beer

South Coast Spring

Broulee Beach lookout.

 A fantastic taste of a south coast summer ahead. I went Broulee Beach with some work buddies for the day to get out of already beautiful Canberra, only to be greeted by 27 degrees and cool water.

Some of the gang rode on bikes from Canberra, over 100kms the previous day.

My work colleagues proved to be able surfers despite near flat conditions

Concentration improved by poking out tongue

Avoiding a mishap!

Thanks to the GA gang for making it happen.

Lake George Sunrise

You know you have too much focal length when you have to start worrying about heat haze on a cold Spring morning.

70-200mm@200 + 2x TC + 1.5x cropped sensor = 600mm @ f5.6 - find the swan.

I'm trying a new means of delivering panoramas with MS Photosynth. Be sure to click the full screen option!

Shhh... we're stalking wombats...

At Mt William National Park, NE Tassie. I had the drop on the wombat. Down wind and blowing a gale, the Wombie didn't know I was there till I clicked the middle frame. It then ran off in a surprisingly fast, if clumsy, manner.

Claire and Richard's wedding

Forever together at last. So happy I was there to bear witness.

Vanuatu Wedding - August 2011

Some wedding gear from mid last year. IN VANUATU!! Been under wraps till the newly weds could see them first. Brought the PWs FlexTT5s out to play, and would have been in strife without them. If you need radio triggering + TTL where it's necessary, you really can't go past these beauties. Near 100% reliable. Next time I am adding much bigger lights for fill rather than having to wait for the speed lights to cycle given it was almost straight into the sun shooting.



Mental note, do not wear black to a tropical wedding... even if you are in FORMAL shorts, it just doesn't work. Oh and need to check if gear insurance covers loss during earthquake as there were a few tremors whilst I was there (very exciting for a geophysicist/photographer).


Amazing effort from the groom given the temperature, must have really been pumped.





Final photo: Got the "tweak" I asked for, pretty sure the groom enjoyed it.



Thanks Nick and Leney for letting me put these up. In fact, thank for the wondrous 4 days of glorious weather to scope locations, swim with fishies, go sailing and importantly RELAX.

Some more Blue Mtns Gear

It has finally stopped raining for almost three weeks in Katoomba. I drove to Mount Hay with my parents in tow.



It was a bit wet and boggy with plenty of frogs and tadpoles in the puddles. I really can't express how marvelous it is to have gortex shoes.



I've probably overcooked the colour in these after nearly a month of staring at grey skies, rain and fog.

Happy New Camera Gear... I mean New Year!

Nikon has just released a bunch of new stuffs. Now I need to justify making that expenditure of new gear after a slow 2011.

From Hargraves Lookout in the Blue Mountains - (click to zoom in, or press your face against the monitor)

UPDATE: info on set up, 24mm 1/100, f8, iso400, the magic is in post-processing