Little Trekker

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So, mum wanted to go for a bush walk for mothers day, after presenting the idea to Chaos she promptly choose a the Blue Mountains and more specifically a spot near Blackheath called Mermaid's Glen which we had been to previously. I did say to her, 'thats a long way (in kid terms anyway) to got' to which she responded (quote) ' yeah, but it's worth it'. On that note the trek was decided, with one minor variation, Leura Cascades might be a easier option with Tickles in tow.

Everything did conspire against us, rain, hazard reduction burning and lots of smoke, but we made it and not to be deterred by alittle rain we donned the raincoats and barrelled on down the steps along side the Leura Cascades, its a great spot and such a nice walk even with the kids, both kids made it all the way to the bottom of Bridal Veil falls and even to Weeping falls, where we stopped or some lunch before making the trek back out. Its a fair walk with quite a bit of elevation to be covered, there was some whinging.. 'pick me up' …'pick me up' but all in all, they did very well. Tickles walked about 75% of the way and Chaos about 95%.

Here's a shot from the stairs near the cascades of our little trekker (tickles)

Out of the Wild

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and into civilisation again

Now, you need to look carefully at this image, its fairly large resolution so you can zoom in all ya like – but over on the right side, nestled amoungst the big dunes on the horizon, you can see a big white boundary pole marker… thats where I walked back to civilisation from 🙂

Whilst you zoomed in there, don't forget to appreciate the amazing sharpness that is my secondhand (A$160) nikkor 105mm f2.5 lens 🙂

4 images (landscape mode) stitched together – shot handheld
D750 coupled with Nikkor 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000 seconds
ISO 100
EV -0.7
Out front – a seagull and some lady.

Ripples R us

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Gerry vs mosquito's

gerry: 1
Mosquito's: 1

The tide has turned, both literally and also in the battle between mankind and the flying stinger of pain bug, the mozzie. Last time I came here I got hammered by mozzies, this time, i came prepared with DDT strength insect repellent 😉 On that note, the key thing with insect repellent is not he strength of it, but more the application of it, even the low strength stuff has been shown to be really effective.. providing its applied correctly.

You really need to apply it everywhere, even on your clothing since these little buggers sting you thru tee-shirts. This time around, I only got nailed 3 times, which considering i was trudging thru mud ridden mangroves in the dark is pretty darn good, also with only one face plant with a spider too, my guard was down 😉

Another sneaky session looking sneaky lonely trees.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1/1.6s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL, Lee graduated filter 0.6x

Brumby Heaven

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In light of the recent discussions and decisions (?) about the culling of wild brumbies in the Apline areas of Australia, i figured this image would be a fitting addition.

I really know very little about the brumbies down in the Kosciuszko National Park (damn that name is hard to spell.. i get to the first 's' and it like wtf…) and to be honest know very little about horses in general, however this talk of the culling got me thinking about it a bit more, particularly when I watched a very interesting doco on the can burner (sometimes called a qantas 737) back from brisvegas. Whilst jammed into row 30 on this sardine can, which by the way.. row 30 is… the last darn row.. with no recline, and a seat pitch of about 3mm which results in me spending a very uncomfortable hour and half with my knees around my ears, thankyou qantas for your automatic seat selection – maybe select seats based on pax size?). Back to the story, i selected this doco on Iceland which had a fair bit of stuff about the icelandic horses, most of which are wild and form a very integral part in the psyche of the people there, interestingly enough the animals are wild and roam the mountains areas (mostly in summer) and are brought back to the lowlands during winter after fowling where the farmers capture and break in new horses.

There are similarities between the horse in Iceland and the apline regions of Australia, both are introduced species and can be, at just about any age, domesticated, thats quite a interesting point, i don't think there is any other animal out there which can be domesticated after being in the wild half or more of its life..very cool (and useful)

Anyway, i don't think I am for the shooting cull of the brumbies in Australia, but obviously where they are damaging the natural environment and threatening other species clearly something needs to be done. Another interesting point about the horses in Iceland, one big reason they keep them wild is because it makes for a stronger more resilient horse than if one were to keep it in a paddock all year round, makes sense.. maybe this is one of the reasons why people want to keep the brumbies in the wild in australia, they must provide a very good stock of wild horses for people wanting great horses ?
I guess the diplomatic response to this would be reduce the numbers to a sustainable level thus ensuring you have some wild awesome brumbies but not enough to fundamentally damage the eco system.
Maybe capture the excess brumbies and send one off to each school in NSW 🙂 I know for sure my daughter would love a horse at school (maybe not that appropriate since its inner sydney 🙂 )

Anyways.. onto the imagery – heres a cool horse having a great time with its owner/rider at low tide.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL, Lee graduated filter 0.6x

Crazy Chops Saturday

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how much fun can two kids have on a hill?

This reminds me so much of my childhood, we did not have bundles of toys or the latest game console (think original.. yes the original and first nintendo console 🙂 ) but we made our fun on our pushbikes in the parks, bush, local creek or anywhere else where we were probably not allowed to be 🙂

Its great that in Sydney we do have alot of open spaces and parks where we (and the kids) can go and ride pushbikes and get outside. Sydney park is one of the great spots I reckon, only slightly ruined by the large number of free roaming dogs (and the resulting dog shit from inconsiderate owners…). This hill is a particular favorite of mine, we can watch the NYE fireworks from here, have a BBQ (on the new electric BBQ's), roll down the hill, run up the hill, run around the hill, walk around the hill, sit on the hill, watch planes from the hill, watch other people from the hill, ride bikes up the hill and yep you guessed it.. ride them down 🙂

on this day, we chose to run up and down the hill, in a exercise that ding-dong daddy (thats me apparently) calls energy extraction No 5. It involves them (chaos and tickles) running up the hill then down to be caught by me and thrown up into the air (that part is called damaging ding-dong daddys back, but as you know we do anything for our kids 🙂 ). and for some multitasking talent I even took a few photos during the process 🙂

Fallen

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Whats really cool in this image is the fact that if you look closely you can see a casualty on the petal of the flower, a fallen bug who lies there in an almost comical way which looks like it flew right on in and went splat onto the flower…..

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 300mm f4 and TC1.4 @ 420mm Aperture: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1600s
ISO 800
-0.3 EV
Out front – flower, a bee and a splatted bug 🙂

Peaks

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I had a very enjoyable first visit to Crescent Head on the mid north coast of NSW, lots a really cool spots with very interesting rocks, even met a another crazy photographer nut out in the rain 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f20
Shutter Speed: 10s
Out front – Hoya CPL and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9X

Blocked

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So, after a pretty cool weekend which involved street food markets, kids, sunrise and planes and long queues (at both the street markets, Addison Road Centre I am looking at you here 😉 and the airshow – i waited 20 minutes for a coffee 🙂 ) I jumped on the train to head to work and tap my Opal Card (transport card) only to see it flash -$40 and a low balance – geez man… I thought that last trip musta been a cracker for that amount 😉 anyway after getting on the train I fired up the opal.com.au website and tried to login… "Blocked, please call 13 67 25" to unblock.. wtf ?

no probs I thought, I'll ring 13 67 25 (notice I have typed that twice now, I have it mesmerized now cause of the large number of times I called it 😉

So I ring the Opal Customer Care number and its a completely automated self service system, no option to talk to a operator and no option to unblock your account, yes, i tried all the menus, 3 times 😉

So in frustration and in the need to vent, I rang the Transport hotline and spoke to a very nice young chap (these people are under appreciated) who said, you need to press '0' when you ring 13 67 25 to go direct to a operator, righto I says, and ring back the 13 67 25 number and double check see if that menu is read out, nope.. anyways, pressed 'zero' and life was grand again after speaking to another nice operator, who I also politely mentioned to that their automated system did not provide a option to speak to a operator..he was very helpful accepted my feedback 🙂 normal programming resumed 🙂

onto much more interesting things 🙂 my blocked opal card inspired me to process this image which I titled it Blocked – the rain squalls and heavy cloud held back what was a pretty epic sunrise and after a few minutes won the battle and forced the sun into grey submission…

Exif love:
3 image blend
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 14s (under) 22.7 (normal) and 63.19s (over)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL

Nanchang CJ-6

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I just love this aircraft cause it's name is soo cool – and 'cause its based on a russian design with an equally cool name, the Yak18 🙂

‪#‎wingsoverillawarra‬

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 300mm f4 and TC1.4 @ 420mm Aperture: f14
Shutter Speed: 1/200s
Out front – plane with a hole in da front of it 🙂

Sabre

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CAC Avon Sabre A94-983

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 300mm f4 and TC1.4 @ 420mm Aperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500s
Out front – plane with a hole in da front of it 🙂

Long Jetty Sunset

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ya gotta view this one large!

I used a pano head to capture the shots which made it alot easier to stitch the frames together, in this case I used PTGUI, however even with the pano head there where still a few dodgy stitch errors, one you can see if you zoom next to the sun you can see the horizon is not quite perfectly aligned (did not notice this until it was all finished 🙁 ), however another issue was the slight misalignment of the jetty poles and also the distortion in them, even after using PS adaptive wide angle to correct the image and straighten things up there was still some funny bent jetty poles, not that bad, but just enough to be annoying. I used a new technique (for me) to tweak this, I used the liquidify filter in PS to just to squeeze the poles back to a straight profile, worked relatively well i reckon .

Exif love:
5 landscape orientation shots stitched together (each shot is bracketed 0EV and -3EV)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16
Shutter Speed: 4s
Out front – Hoya CPL and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9X