The underside A707J 32894/475

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natures studio, view this marvel of modern aero engineering full res, even count the access panels if you like 🙂

Some days the conditions are just right to get the perfect light on the heavies coming out of YSSY, a smattering of cloud cover after its rain gives a crisp clear frame with a natural softbox feel to it.

The poor old 777's have copped a pretty bad media rap in the last several months with the recent issues with the Malaysian airline ones and before that the Asiana one that kinda missed the runway .. nonetheless I reckon they are a great beast, just plagued a bad luck at the moment. Although one could argue that they have had some fairly consistent issues with the thrust reverser.. even the sultans 772 dumped half its thrust reverse out the back 😉 but then again what large aircraft manufactured in the US (or EASA i suppose) has not had issues with thrust revers 😉

Techie love:
D7000 with Nikkor 300mm f4 @ 300mm – Aperture: f/5.6 and Shutter Speed: 1/1000 seconds
ISO 100
out front – fresh sydney air

#777

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Rolling Hills of Kurnell

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view large and smell that clean air 😉
Taken adjacent to a little old lighthouse perched on a hill near the cliffs of Kurnell , you can probably just see it in this shot: https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/TjrckK8cvha

I love the stark contrast of the scene, from the natural rolling hills to the oil refinery to the container terminal to finally the CBD of sydney, I do wish I had a lens with a longer focal length, but Rods 27-70 had to suffice.

3 shot panorama
Thanks to +Rodney Campbell for the loan of the 24-70 for this shot.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a Nikkor 27-70 f2.8 @70mm Aperture: f/6.7 ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 1/250s
out front – bushes..oil refinery botany bay some container terminals, mascot, randwick and somewhere behind that the city 😉

Windswept tones

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When you feel like you're out there on your own, know there is someone watching over you, When out at sea, feels love can let go
Oh sailor, we will blow the wind right

Damn I wish I could write like that 🙂 anway, they are not my words, but the part thereof the lyrics to a 2013 song by Mr Little Jeans, how cool is that band name by the way! 🙂 the song name is "Oh Sailor"

Those words to seemed to fit the image and as such here I find myself.

View this baby in full resolution goodness and feel the wave of clouds as the city envelopes the last of the warm sunlight rays.

3 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 24mm – Aperture: f/6.7 and Shutter Speed: 122.8 seconds
out front – LEE 0.9 Graduated Filter and Lee Fatstopper

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

I found your keys dad

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Not much stops Mayhem, even with being hit with her second bout of Bronchiolitis (which is pretty rare apparently) she is still motoring around, albeit wheezy-ing around :), this child has got one very fast crawl happening and is becoming very helpful when I misplace my car keys 🙂

Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm – Aperture: f/2 and Shutter Speed: 1/90 seconds ISO 400
out front – one of my beautiful girls! (the othe one is not far away 🙂

Golden Dilemma

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stay wide? crop? remove left headland? remove right headland? way too many choices, hence picked a middle ground.. literally 🙂

3 frame panorama, each shot bracketed.
frames blended in by +Nik Collection by Google
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 6seconds and 20 seconds
ISO: 100

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Railway to the centre of the Galaxy

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the next train is leaving platform earth in …

Following on from the previous night Star Trail session (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/7dfL8PdWNbg), this time I opted for more data, like any engineer, more data is never a bad thing – this set of trails was over the space of 5 or so hours and included the moon rising in the early morning.

Its very interesting to see how the AutoWB deals with the scene as the light changes over the night, over the 5 hours there was about 4 really significant changes in the white balance, all which would have been easily sorted out if I had set a fixed WB. In the end it actually makes little or no difference to the actual trail set since alot of that data actually gets cancelled out.

Techie stuff
331 images stacked together using the statistics method in Adobe PS CC and yep it takes awhile
This time I shuffled the foreground shot to get things to line up and fullfill the iniital vision of the tracks leading right into the tip of the galaxy. This time I changed the shutter to a bit long 55 or so seconds, really this makes little difference but just meant things ended up pretty bright, I actually had to darken the sky considerably to get the trails to stand out the way I wanted.

D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm- Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 55.6 seconds (331 shots)
ISO: 3200
out front – long metal things commonly referred to as railway tracks.

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.

McMahon Serenity

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Just a sneaky little long exposure while at Maroubra, this one was 3 exposures taken each at 238seconds and merged into a panorama, I really wanted the bigstopper filter to remove the ocean craziness and leave me with that beautiful rocky coast line, whic h it has to an extent and even the little old fisheramn was kind enough to hang 5 for a few minutes 🙂

This was a super low tide and barely any swell, the rocks you can see in the centre of the frame are usually being smashed by each wave set.

3 shot panorama
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @17mm Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 238.2s
out front – LEE graduated filter 0.9, LEE bigstopper and screw in circular polariser

Icing can hide a multitude of sins!

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Well it still tasted damn good!

I make two cakes every year and I have made a total of 10 cakes in my entire life and I have to say, its actually somewhat enjoyable, therapeutic even!

This year, the theme was fairies, and of course, fairies need a toadstool to hide in – this and the obligatory number cake were on the cards 🙂

FYI, no cake mix here, everything from scratch, not that its really that hard, lots of butter and sugar 🙂

Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 55mm – Aperture: f/3.3, ISO 800 and Shutter Speed: 1/60 seconds
SB600 Speedlite up top
out front – sugar, butter, flour, egg and lotsa lollies

In Album 2014-08-04

Chaos and Mayhem

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Happy 5th Birthday Chaos, you have brought happiness, joy and an insightful perspective into our lives and its a privilege 🙂

Mayhem (aka tickles), is yet to have a birthday, but is well and truly living up to expectation and terrorising everyone around – but we still love ya 🙂

Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm – Aperture: f/2 and Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
out front – beautiful girls!

Spoiled

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view large to see the pain only those who do not live in the blues point tower have to suffer
I wonder if anyone asked…"so whats this highrise gonna look like? will it spoil the view of anything in the harbour?……………..like the operahouse or bridge?" 🙂

I will welcome the day that this piece of building (Blues Point Tower) is gutted and filled explosive ready to be brought back down to the earth, then I will come back here take a much much nicer picture 😉

That is unless someone who lives there offers me a spot for New Years Eve 2015 😉 then I might consider retracting my opinion. 😉

In the meantime, when I get a bit more time and my photochop sklills are a bit better, I am gonna clone that building out and see what the view would really look like.

It will also be very interesting to see the view in a few years when the Barangaroo site is complete.

This was the last of only a couple of sneaky shots i managed to fit in before dinner, I would have loved to get a few more images as the blue hour really developed, however reality and kids bath time takes priority 🙂

Pretty easy going image, 6 landscape orientation images stitched together, its one of the few times I have used the LEE 0.6 graduated filter, normally I opt for the stronger 0.9 filter.

6 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8 @ 55mm – Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 15 seconds
out front – LEE 0.6 Graduated Filter
Out to the right – sunset 🙂

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Bongo-tastic and glamping

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After hauling all our luggage down to the safari tent/lodge/bungalow we were quite amazed with the accommodation at the Western Plains (Dubbo) Zoo Safari, (+Taronga Western Plains Zoo ) hence there was only one thing to do – hold back the family and grab a few quick snaps before we settled in 🙂 ….
gee.. doesn't everyone think like that? 😉 anyway.. i got the usual 'is this gonna take long?' but with the Savannah right on the door step, Chaos, Mayhem and wifey were suitably entertained by the buffalo's, giraffes, zebras and other things with multiple legs cruising around the very large paddock/savannah, which, by the way is pretty cool to have a giraffe come within metres of your porch!

So I managed to get a few interior shots and a few panos at sunset and as you can see, this place it pretty spanky and great for a romantic weekend away, well that is what the couple in the next bungalow were having, we had chaos and mayhem 🙂 I also think that couple next door certainly thought twice about having children 😉

ANyway.. check out that bath, very cool, very deep and that shower, no water saving head there! I was also very pleased to see the omission of a TV.

So in a nut shell, I definitely recommend this place, it is actually quite good value when you factor in the dinner (which was awesome by the way +Taronga Western Plains Zoo) breaky, bike hire, zoo entry and night/morning tours, on which we saw and fed a Bongo, Chaos thought that was very neat, getting to feed a Bongo then going back to sleep in the Bongo Bungalow!

We are also Zoo friends of +Taronga Zoo which is also great value, just go a couple of times a year and you are well ahead and it is valid for Western Plains zoo.. if only it was not 5 hours away we would be there more often.

So, onto the imagery, all the images are processed using the PS +Nik Collection by Google plugin and this is where the software really shines in my opinion, makes the process very quick and with nice punchy results – which was the intention for these.
The panoramas were done a bit different to my normal process, rather than stitching and merging, I merged in then stitched in +Adobe Photoshop, thus automating the blend process.
The other neat thing with the Panos, particularly the one looking out over the savannah, +Adobe Photoshop adaptive wideangle filter worked wonders, I am still amazed at the software's ability to take UWA panos and remove the distortion and return them to a nice perspective, top stuff chaps.

Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 (typically) ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 1.5s, 1/6s and 3 s (typically)
out front – fancy tents, two zebras a few giraffes, dwarf buffalos (i think) and other animals that escape my memory 🙂

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment

In Album 2014-07-31

Burning Galaxy

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Probably the last of the images of the 'gerry tree' which I will post, however similarly to Rodneys version I did take a partial liking to the vertical composition and also the option for a milkway background to the wool spin. This image was taken from a recent trip with +Rodney Campbell and +Suren J to the Stockton Dunes, by the way chaps, it is quite possible to walk to the ship wreck too, keen? 😉

Two frames manually blended together, one for the milkway and one for the steel wool spinnage.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/6.7 ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 169s (steel wool)
Aperture: f/2.8 ISO 3200 and Shutter Speed: 25s (milkyway)
out front – nada,

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Cosmic Rays

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Light speed down the railroad 😉

I always wanted to try this technique, its pretty simple, just zoom the lens whilst the shutter is open – a couple of tips, which i will use next time (i learnt the hard way) to hopefully improve it.

– carefully zoom so not to move the camera/lens, otherwise you get non-straight zooming stars 🙂
– time the zoom sequence to fill up the shutter speed, also try starting slow and speeding up to create a ramp down effect.
– slightly defocus the lens to get more prominent zoomage

you basically need 3 shots for this , one with the zooming star trails, one for the foreground and one for the sky (under the zoomage), simply stack and mask out the zoomage where it kits the foreground, otherwise it looks like gamma rays.. you know the ones that past thru everything…or is that alpha rays? anyway, you get the idea.

3 shots
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm

Shot 1 (foreground, twilight ) Aperture: f/9.5 and Shutter Speed: 1/3 seconds
ISO: 100
Shot 2 (background) Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 45.5 seconds
ISO: 3200
Shot 3 (zoomage) Aperture: f/2.8 and Shutter Speed: 45.5 seconds
ISO: 3200 with lens zooming

Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.