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

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

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

Jetty Shadows

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A place which is becoming a favourite for a rest stop on the way home from up the coast, there are also a couple of nice fish chip shops nearby which make for much better break than the freeway roadstops.I think I can also handle all the people too smile emoticon of which there are always lots here.

2 shots blended together in PS

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 1/10s and 1/1.3s (over exposed shot)
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and Lee graduated filter

Storm

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I got very wet this day, in the space of a few minutes a front of rain crept up behind me and and dumped a load, then to add insult to injury the sun came out 🙁

It was very dark and the sun was trying it's hardest to pierce the clouds, it was meant to be a larger panorama, but the edges just sucked out some the juiciness from the headland and sunrise 🙂

Exif love:
4 landscape orientation shots stitched together
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16
Shutter Speed: 4s
Out front – Hoya CPL and Lee Graduated Filter 0.9X

Spatial Disorientation

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This scene reminds me of many stories told about spatial disorientation, basically a condition, usually when flying, where one loses sense of which way is up or down, typically results (for the inexperienced at least) in a graveyard spin, no guesses for what that means 🙁

In this case, whilst the the removal of colour adds to the effect, in reality it was a struggle to distinguish a horizon, couple this with the blurring of the ridges from sand being whipped up by the wind and I reckon it would not take much to end up walking on ya head 🙂

Luckily I was not doing much walking at that point 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 25s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL

Oasis

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I journeyed for days and nights to finally reach the oasis that lay between the death that is…

well kinda of , I did walk a really really really long way and all there was sand and more bloody sand:) I did however fall back in love with a old lens of mine, one which has been neglected for many a year now, relegated to the bottom of the bag or the box of photographic stuff, which is actually remarkably small 🙂 This is the Nikkor 105mm f2.5 lens, I always forget what a joy it is, so very sharp and punchy and in such a small form factor, in recent times I have been swayed by the neat luxuries of the autofocus lens, but no more 😉 any enough gaff 🙂

ya gotta view it large, go on, zoom in and find that naked person ;), – this pano is actually half of the what it originally started out 16 portrait orientation images at 105mm

16 images (portrait mode) stitched together – shot handheld
D750 coupled with Nikkor 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f8 and Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO 100
EV -0.7
Out front – oasis

Park Couple

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careful, that kinda snuggling leads to other things 🙂

you really have to view this large, you just cannot appreciate the expansive vista from just a thumbnail, plus, you need to zoom into really see what this couple are up to 😉

5 landscape images stitched together to give the panorama, noting that nothing else was cloned out, all pure timing to get only those two in the shot 🙂

Taking on a slightly different processing and feel for this one i really wanted to let the texture and shape of teh sky talk rather than bold colours.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 mm f2.8 @ 70mm Aperture: f5 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s
ISO 100
Out front – nada

Minnehaha Falls

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the hidden joint

What I love about photography is the way you can arrange the composition, the elements and to an certain extent the light to suit what you want to portray, conversely you can use these to not show something. I had a few hours to burn so I plugged into google 'waterfalls and blue mountains' closed my eyes and clicked , the result was Minnehaha falls (after Leura Cascades but i choose not to go there 'cause its a bit busy)

What a cool name, apparently it comes from a Native American female name which is translated as 'waterfall' would be interesting to know why the falls are called this, probably some dude just thought it sounded cool hence the name 😉

Back to the image and the stuff about showing and not showing stuff.. I rocked up here late i the day, probably later than one should given its a 30 minute walk in and it was close to sunset, however shortly thereafter a couple turned up and sat on the edge of the pool. I thought it a little strange being so late in the day, however they came prepared with a couple of beers and a joint so all good i suppose 😉 anyway I really did not want anyone in my shot so I composed them behind the big rock on the left 🙂 and my scene was once again people free 🙂 mission accomplished.

For the record they were very polite and took their stuff out with them, so they get a big tick in my book 🙂

Exif love:
a bucketload (11) of portrait orientation shots stitched together in PS this is about a 180degree view.
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f13
Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO 200 (things were getting a bit dark down the bottom)
Out front – Hoya CPL.

Missing Falls

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So I had this mad composition in my head which would be taken from this little knoll off to one side of the Empress Falls, I had walked down here a few times over the years so I kind knew where I wanted to be (or so I thought!). After walking down the path i spied the spot I thought would be perfect, a small amount of bushbashing (gently as always to minimise my impact) and i was there, on my knoll… now i was there the view turned out to be rubbish, could not see Empress falls and i was balancing on some slippery moss cover rock which felt like it wanted to catapult me done the valley.

Not to be deterred and after spending a painful amount of time to get to this spot i was determined to take a shot from here, so i turned around and looked the other way, which was into a nice little glen with what looks like a set of falls which only runs during some heavy rain.

In the end the shot worked out ok and I did not end up sliding down into the Valley of the Waters 🙂

9 images (portrait mode) stitched together
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f11 and Shutter Speed: 30 seconds
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL.

On the Edge

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of two worlds

I am going thru a bit of a pano phase at the moment, I really like the challenge of being able to slice a piece of scenery to show something different and to be able to capture additional elements that just can't be achieved in a single 6×4 frame.

As a true testament to the ease of pano taking, i shot a whole bunch of images (just about all panos) from this area and I reckon I was happy with just about every frame – thats pretty rare for me btw 😉

So the next time you out punching some light with that digital fang-dangle thing they call a camera or smart phone, consider the pano option and watch the world just open up to you 🙂

Happy freakin' hump day too.

View large or go home 😉

The image is made from 5 horizontal landscape images stitched together in PS, the kicker here is that simply by adjusting the exposure on each frame I could capture that sweet dark area under the foliage and also the relatively bright falls, having a cloudy day certainly helped too.

D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 32mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: varied from 5s to 30 seconds
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL.

Hudgee Nudgee

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Sometimes in life ya just get a result out, even if your not happy that its perfect

Thats gonna be my motto for the next day or so 😉 sometimes better to get a result out in a reasonable time frame then nothing at all…

I have a couple of shots from this morning similar to this one with various compositions etc, but have sat on them for quite a while, not quite happy with them, the sunrise is nice, but the composition is just not what I had in my head – hence whilst it is not what I necessarily wanted, better to get a result than none at all.

Exif love:
2 frames blended in PS
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 8s (over exp) 4s (normal exp)
ISO 100
Out front – LEE GND (0.6x) and Hoya CPL