Resolute Track – Kuringai National Park, nothing but macros – this walk is full of flowers and fauna, even in the start of Autumn.
Park Life…and not the music Festival
Author Archives: gerry
Christmas Spider
ppfft, wrong season spider..fail.
Lonely Beach – WA
Somewhere east of Denmark, close to Crystal Springs
Beaver
Diamond Head – Crowdy Bay National Park Sunrise
Being that time of year where getting up when its dark is actually not that hard I took the opportunity to get out early to a location which I scoped out at Christmas, completely different conditions this time! no clouds and lots of clear sky!
One thing I did learn, which is probably bleeding obvious to most however…take some time to look over your shoulder in the opposite direction to where the sun is coming up! the colours and colour gradients were awesome! there is no way my camera was gonna convey the tonal range and colours but, hey I gave it a go!
HDR vs Non-HDR
HDR is great in my opinion, it gives us plebs with cameras that lack the dynamic range or without a set of graduated filters an alternative for getting those great shots with lots of dynamic range.
I have, however found myself moving away from the HDR option in some instances, there have also been a number of cases where I find a correctly exposed image and some NX2 PP really delivers results that i would prefer over the HDR version, I can also see whats going on behind the scenes so to speak.
I have found HDR images coming from Photomatix, for example, need quite an amount of noise reduction and increased sharpening not to mention that extra amount of tweaking to get that image looking sensible, which in the bigger scheme of things means quite a bit more time on each image and also the increased number of files sitting on my computer.
So for an example I worked hard on the following scene to try and see what image (HDR vs non-HDR) came out looking better and with the least amount of time.
Can you pick the HDR?
Wedge Tail Eagles @ Toolbrunup
Toolbrunup Peak, crazy 4.0km return walk with an ascent of 600 odd metre. This is what real walks are made of! Incredible views, amazing birds all nestled in a tiny 20kmx60km park!
With a wingspan of up to 2.5 m, the wedge-tailed eagle is the largest bird of prey in Australia. It soars and glides majestically in the air currents for up to 90 minutes at a time, reaching altitudes that can go beyond 2000 m.
Dodgy Building Repairs
What do you do with a 70-80 year old house with bearers that are exhibiting rotten ends? Well given the age of teh house, the location blah blah blah, its not surprising its got some rotten members. In this particular case it has resulted from the cover board being removed years ago and never being replaced, this coupled with the guttering which poured water over the edge and the exposed end of the bearer, nonetheless it was really only damaged about 6-8inches along the end.
The repair?
Well it was either replace the whole bearer, holy crap! no thanks, however in hindsight it may have not been too bad..or just splice in a new section for the damaged part. I opted for the splice š
To make things worse the end of the bearer had partially collapsed letting the verhadah post above and the roof sink down, so first of all it was a matter of jacking up the corner using a temperary member on a good part of the bearer at 90 degrees. Up she went a good 3 or inches, creaking and groaning…
Did you know its actually pretty hard to saw a bit of wood (hardwood at that) upside down!? Anyway after selecting the desired aplice point it was a matter of getting a nice neat cut, I had doubts about teh timber since the outer face of the 75mmX100mm bearer looked pretty ordinary. However after about 30seconds of cutting I realised why they use hardwood for this stuff š The condition of the timber at the splice was all good.
on a side note, ever tried getting nails (2-3″ long) out of hardwood? next to bloody impossible.
After making the splice cut it was no real surprise that the end section basically fell out! The joists are not in the best condition here either! However the splice section will give them more bearing area, plus I ain’t replacing them…
After sizing up the filler and the splice piece from rough sawn hardwood – which probably came from the local state forest! it was a matter of getting the pieces temperarily fitted in place and clamping them up. This then permitted the drilling of the bolt holes – note 2x75mm is longer than a standard drill bit, hence this needed to be done in two steps.
Unclamp the assembly, removed from the house and the filler and slice bolted together and torqued, this assembly was then re-installed to the house and the bolted to the good part of the existing bearer, the splice went all the way to the next pier, mainly to give the joist more bearing area.
A new cover panel, some cursing and a lick of paint and well, its got to be better than what it was before right?
A camera in the hands of a 12 year old
some tidy images at the end of the day, with a little PP, mostly to correct very very crooked horizons š
Cessna 310 Interior Refit
Premo interior, not to mention the avionics suite!
* Powerplant: 2 Ć Continental O-470-B
* Length: 27 ft 0 in (8.23 m)
* Wingspan: 35 ft 0 in (10.67 m)
* Height: 10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
* Empty weight: 2,850 lb (1,293 kg)
* Gross weight: 4,600 lb (2,087 kg)
Gerrys Pushbike Ride GPS track
Setting up VPN for IPCOP
http://www.openvpn.eu/index.php?id=73
http://thinkhole.org/wp/2006/03/28/ipcop-openvpn-howto/
pretty much sums it up!
Remember to run client as Administrator on Vista:
add the following to rc.local if things dont get pused down.
iptables -A INPUT -i tun+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i tun+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i tap+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i tap+ -j ACCEPT
When installing Open VPN (Zerina) remove the “if” block checking for the IPCOP version – cause that will completely stop it š
DSLRUsers Exhibition
Thanks to all that turned up last night (20/03/2010) to open the exhibition, it was great to see a good turn out and people enjoying themselves surrounded by some great images!
The offical results of the tasmanian style election process for the best image are as follows:
1) David Viviers – $200 voucher @ zimprints
2) Jon Dawes & Narelle Power – (Mongrel Creek Wine) Jon you can pick up your bottle when you pick your canvas up, Narelle I will post yours with the canvas!
3) Andrew Trevor Jones
and Craig Rohse with an hourable mention, which successfully confused me and everyone else by the looks of it.
The exhibition runs for a few weeks (up to the 11th April) you can drop in there and look at at anytime when the shop is open, check zimprints.com.au for times.
510 King Street
Newtown, Sydney NSW
Zimprints (http://www.zimprints.com.au/)
It is amazing how images look on canvas, some which I picked to not be crash hot actually look great on the big size and on canvas, so I encourage people who are thinking about do this style of printing to drop in and have a look, check out the images in the (DSLRUsers Exhibition Online Gallery!)and you can see the end result on the wall!
There has already been some sales interest from people dropping into the shop on Saturday, that was with only half the images hanging! I hope there will be some sales, which leads me to the next part, sales.
The general consenus is to have standard price across the range, this means people can come in and know they can have any one of those shots for a fixed price, rather then trying to look at each individual tag and determine whether its a goer for them. The price that was deemed reasonable was $275. I will PM people with images to confirm they are happy with this, if you have objection to this or do not want yours for sale, thats fine just let me know. If an image sells and is processed through the shop it attracts GST, this is the only cost that Callan charges. The image will be reprinted and the difference in the print price and sale price (minus GST) will be given to the photographer.
If you would liek to pickup you image early, that is fine, but I would liek to see them there as a collective until the end. The final weekend is the 11/04/2010, can we ensure those picking up their shots can do so on this weekend, or before hand. That weekend I will also endeavour to package and post those which are heading interstate.
Again, thanks to those who turned up and those with images, it was fun!
Also thanks to my partner Sarah for organising and making food etc…
DSLRUsers Exhibition Opening Night 20/03/2010
The best image will be selected on the night and we need numbers there to critique and vote for the best! Did not get a print done? come along and see what the finished images look like! you can still vote and be part of it!
What:
DSLRUsers Exhibition Images, Canvas theme
Best image selected on the night will get a $200 Gift Voucher from Zimprints for Canvas printing! Image will be selected by those who turn up and via a secret ballot.
Where:
510 King Street
Newtown, Sydney NSW
Zimprints (http://www.zimprints.com.au/)
When:
Opening night 20th March 5pm onwards
Its great to see some more interest and people making the effort to get involved. Are you interested but have not yet found a picture? feel free to post a few up and the wonderful members here will undoubtly give some feedback!! There is still time to squeeze more in, just PM me or reply to this thread or the linked one below!
EOI and History Thread over here : http://www.dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=38518&p=407068#p407068
Not the right time for you to get a print done? not a problem either – feel free to come along on the opening night or even just drop in for 5 minutes during the exhibition weeks.
It would be great to get people together on the opening night, even if you don’t have an image, your opinion is valuable. Come for just 1/2 hour! or stay the whole night, have a few beers etc, it will be fun either way
Images:
DSLRUsers Exhibition Online Gallery!
Firey Coogee
Fire dancing (also known as “fire twirling,” “fire spinning,” “fire performance,” or “fire manipulation”) is a group of performance arts or disciplines that involve manipulation of objects on fire. Typically these objects have one or more bundles of wicking, which are soaked in fuel and ignited.
