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

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

Punching above your weight

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albino spider

I don't really like this little guys chance of survival, firstly for being a freakishly white/translucent colour and secondly for having no fear of something that is much, much, much bigger than itself 🙂 . I do suspect it was trying to protect its egg (i think) which you can see on the leaf off to the side (not water droplet dummies 😉 )

However, with much leg waving, sometimes two legs at a time this little guy backed off under one of the leaves , probably finally noticing that I was not gonna be deterred 🙂 he was however giving me serious stick for pointing a camera in its direction 🙂

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 55mm f2.8 @ 55mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO 800
Lightning goodness : SB600 with diffuser