I am gonna just leave this over here… have a look thru these and tell me they don’t freak you out 🙂 imagine this walking over your face whilst your asleep 🙂
Check the one where its drinking the drop of water and notice the position of the fake eyeball and how it follows you 🙂
were made for running on, whether it be up and down, or away from the waves, there is always one thing you will do at a beach (besides swim) and that's run 🙂 guess who slept well this night 😉
well, just give me the free time to come along 😉 I see so many awesome sunsets through the pool glass windows while going for a swim, or as we wrangle.. i mean ..read stories.. to Tickles and Chaos or on the drive home and just about every time I plan to go out its dull.
On the brightside it was a pretty quiet evening on the harbour 🙂
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f10
Shutter Speed: 220.5s
ISO: 100
Out front: Lee Bigstopper
To all those punks who said said it gets easier, what a crock of horsepoo! we are fending off marriage proposals and family planning, although I am hoping that the wiping the snot on the sleeves (and everywhere else) might keep them at bay for a bit longer 🙂
This was a really nice walk along the beach with a storm threatening overhead, nice temperature and really soft light, perfect for photography. For the record, there was no instruction on posing or anything, actually its very rare I get anything but a scowl or funny face when taking a picture 🙂 in this case Chaos said, 'wait a sec' and bent over, flicked her hair over and struck a pose… i blame school 😉
Exif / shot love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm
Shutter speed: 1/400s
Aperture: f/2.0
Exp Comp: -0.3EV
ISO 100
out front – chaos
Colourful ones at that. The thought of sitting out in the dark, like really dark, like no moon dark and tripping over crabs kinda dark.. in spots away from people is not always on the top of my list of things to do – except for the away from people thing 🙂 however it is growing on me, maybe this year I will make more of an effort to get out and capture more the great night sky we have in this part of the world.
The weather was great, pleasantly warm and no clouds and great for the beach or pumping yabbies down the river, yep my arms are still sore :). But all this cloud free weather is not so great for colourful sunsets or sunrise however at the right time of the month, which it was, the moon is a late riser and its a perfect time to get out and see the stars. Chinamans beach is the north most accessible beach from the bombing range which extends for 20 kms or so before you reach Yamba and Iluka, This means looking south guarantees very little light pollution apart from the odd fishing trawler out to sea or the occasional fa/18 sortie on some training session 😉 the latter is pretty hard to miss and luckily fairly rare 🙂 I do also find it interesting that the whole range is located in the area called Bundjalung National Park but you cant get into most of it 🙂
Onto the stars, its amazing to see how much the colour the stars have and star trails are a great way to bring this out, by slightly underexposing the sky and stars means you retain the colour, in this case only the brightest star was over exposed, ie blinking on the highlights display.
This set of trail images is made up of about 30 images each with a shutter speed of 86 seconds @f2.8 (14mm) and ISO 400 with a separate single image for the foreground. The foreground image is only 30 seconds and was lit using a LED torch. The trail images are merged via layers in Photoshop by simply using 'lighten' as the blend mode.
I would have gone for a few hours more, but the promise of 6am wake up call from tickles and wallaby that besides scaring the shit outta me was taking way too much interest in me whilst munching the grass nearby.
goodbye 2016 and hello 2017.
I think 95% of people who go to see the fireworks are not from Australia, i certainly meet my intake of mingling with internationals on this night 😉
I was cruisin' home from work with the plan for a pool session on wednesday night when the traffic, which is normally pretty good when I leave late, came to a pretty abrupt jam, it took a damn long time to get off the M5 tunnel and over to Wolli creek. It was only then that it was clear why traffic had come to a standstill, for a period of time both sides of the Princes Highway were shut and when I crawled through a contraflow on one side was in place. The reason for the delay became pretty evident with a Blue Commodore messed up on the side of the road past an intersection. I missed my session at the pool and it was not until the next day that I found out what happened. A female pedestrian had been hit by by the blue ute which had ran a red light, turns out the driver was pissed (4x the limit) as well.
Its hard to find compassion for people who make these kind of choices, which, thankfully only rarely end in tragedy, but I am sure this driver and his passenger never thought this would happen to them, but then again, the female who was killed did not even get a choice. Now sadly a family have lost their 22 yro daughter and two other lives are gonna be messed up resulting from what would appear to be two very poor choices, driving pissed and running a red light.
Choose wisely.
This image is for you Nicole – rest in peace.
Garden of Stone – Dry Canyon
10 frames, each frame bracketed
D750 with Samyang 14mm f2.8 @ 14mm
Shutter speed: 3s (normal exp) and 1/2.5s (under exposed)
Aperture: f/9
ISO 100
After a dismal sunrise, if it could even be called that 🙂 it was time for a breakie, Leura was the spot of choice and at the only Cafe that was open, quite fortuitous since the markets were setting up there just afterward and I could grab some not so local honey (it was good stuff apparently tho:) )
Katoomba falls is pretty cool, you can see it from the cable car skyway thingy and you can see it from the top at the park and I assume you can probably get to the base as well, however there also is access to the base of the first drop, a bit more than half way down – I remember taking a shot from the cable car a few years back and seeing some dudes down near this spot and kept that in the back of head for a time when i near here again..
So, here is that shot from a few years back, check out amount of water going over it and you can even see two people at the first drop and someone at the very top in a red jumper – definitely gives some scale to the falls.
Fast forward and its pretty darn dry now, however that does have the advantage that you can walk out onto the shelf pretty easily, so in this shot you can probably work out were I was standing to get it, whilst it probably looks a bit hair raising its really not, hardly any water and its a pretty large shelf 🙂
The walk down is pretty easy, the walk back up, not so easy, however 20 minutes tops – next time I will get t the very bottom, if you can do that.
Be careful when wandering the tunnels, you never know what, or who you will find…
Slot Canyon
The last time I went out to Newnes and the Glow worm tunnel was about when I was 6 years old and pretty sure it was with my old man (i'm looking at you here Alan Blacklock 🙂 ). I have been really keen to check out some the canyons out in the blue mountains for quite some time and the Dry Canyon at the Garden of Stones is probably the easiest option, bar the bone rattling drive in there.
So after a slight deviation in plans for another trip planned on this weekend and with Rodney Campbell and Suren hassling for some kinda of plan more than 15 minutes in advanced 😉 I locked in this spot, mainly 'cause Suren promised to drive 🙂 little did we know he had never driven on a dirt road before… or eaten a chiko roll …lols.
There are no signs and no mobile reception out at Garden of stones so I kinda wished I had spent more than 5 minutes reading some instructions on how to find the place, but after a quick reccy with Rodneys drone and some instructions from a old couple walking out we were on the right path. It is such a great spot and as promised nothing more than a stroll in the park with a few logs to hop over, it also gives a great insight into some of the other canyons in the Blue Mountains and what they must be like with water in them. Pretty cool to be able go the whole length and not get wet…
I quite liked this fern which had kinda gone wayward and fallen over, whilst not showing the real extents of the canyon it certain shows some of the quite lush foliage buried deep in the darkness of the slot canyon.
5 shot panorama with each frame bracketed
D750 with Samyang 14mm f2.8 @ 14mm
Shutter speed: 2s and 1/4s (under exposed)
Aperture: f/9
ISO 100
The never ending jetty..
It started off as a 18 shot (6 vertical frames, each bracketed) panorama and got seriously whittled down. Realistically it could have been done with 3 landscape shots, but hey, wheres the fun in that 😉
Taken a few years back when there was a bit more rain about – for some reason I was looking for a image deep under some magnetised bits of my hardrive when I found this folder and had a look in, plenty of unedited images sitting around waiting for some love (and time).
Located at Leura just under the main Falls (which I think is actually the Bridal Veil ones) its only a 30 minute walk down, a bit longer up since its mostly stairs 🙂
Nikon D7000 with the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 30s
ISO: 100