Tag Archives: travel

31/12/2012
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Kangaroo Point Views

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night - Rupert Brooke

As my time in Brisbane comes to a close (for this chapter anyway), I recently had an opportunity to spend an evening at one of my favourite CBD vantage points. Kangaroo Point is one of the oldest suburbs of Brisbane, directly east of the CBD giving it some of the best views of the city at sunset. The cliffs sit over 20m above the city giving a brilliant view both up and down the river, across to South Bank and all the way to Mount Cootha in the distance. I also used this opportunity to test out my Fisheye lens for night long exposures. After doing quite a few long exposure shots I became well aware of my 40 year old tripod’s limitations. That said, I did leave it on a bench for 5 mins as I wandered around and it was still there when I came back! This outing prompted me to speed up my purchase of a new tripod (stay tuned for a review later) as I’m becoming more uneasy about locking a proper coin worth of gear on a not overly steady tripod.

Hope you enjoy.

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11/12/2012
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Fishy Forest

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness ― John Muir

I find such peace when surrounding myself with nature, Springbrook National Park really lets you do this. The park is around 100km south of Brisbane (Queensland) and is part of a group of shield volcanoes covering over 6000 ha. I headed out with a few friends and spent the day walking just a small percentage of the tracks to a couple of the more well known sites. Passing through a forest like this, it’s hard to really capture through photography how large and all encompassing  it is. I decided, in an attempt to capture some sort of scale, to take my Rokinon 8mm fisheye for a field test. I’ve not done a review on this lens yet as it’s been a really tricky fella to get the hang of, and I felt it would be unfair to judge it until I’d learnt how to use it properly (my problem, not its).

Some people really don’t like the distortion created by the lens, I personally love it as it really gives that sensation of overbearing and vastness of the forest. One of the issues I’m having is getting the correct exposure so you’ll see a few HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos below. I’ve also included a couple of photos from the 15-85mm.

We visited Natural Bridge first which is a naturally formed arch creating a wonderful waterfall into a cave which is home to glowworms. We then headed on to Purlingbrook Falls, in a few of the photos you can see quite a bit of smoke hanging around in the air from a bush fire that was burning to the south of the hills.

As always, click on the photos to view larger versions.

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10/11/2012
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Off to The Emerald City

Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Bluebirds fly. Birds fly Over The Rainbow. Why then, oh why can’t I? If happy little Bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why cant I? – Dorothy

883km North West of Brisbane lies the town of Emerald. With a population of around 15000 it services a large area consisting of two main industries, farming and mining. As of January, this 133 year old town will be my new base of operations for at least the next three years. One of the many things I’m excited about are the new photographic opportunities that this new area will present! A lot more nature, macro, star trails and wildlife will be coming the blogs way next year.

In September this year we took a few days to fly up and have a good look around… our yellow brick road began at Brisbane Airport not long after sunrise.

Quick shot from airport parking before heading off.

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31/10/2012
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Guns of Brisbane

Fort Lytton was built in 1880 and operational until the 1950′s. It was commissioned in response to aggressive Russian expansion in the 1870′s. It’s position at the narrowest part of the mouth of the Brisbane River put it in good stead to defend against a Naval attack. Although the guns were never fired in anger, during the Boer and the World Wars, thousands of troops were trained there.

Disappearing carriage artillery, anti-air defenses, a fortress and associated buildings are still there, a great weekend visit (open Sundays) with firings of ‘Marc’ and ‘Antony’. There are also two museums with great historical displays. The land was set aside by the surrounding oil companies and funded to create a National Park in the late 1980′s. It’s an odd feeling having this wonderful historic park surrounded by heavy industrial oil equipment, but at least it wasn’t allowed to be consumed by development.

Enjoy

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15/10/2012
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Castles in the sand

Marcoola is an area around 120km north of Brisbane on the east coast of Australia. There is around 12km of beach front with a very minimal visual human footprint. Unlike the internationally well know Gold Coast (A.K.A Surfers Paradise), Marcoola takes the more laid back approach at beach life. I thought I’d share a couple of family snaps from a trip up there earlier this year.

Enjoy

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09/10/2012
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Brisbane Festival – Needs more Dragons and Lasers!

During September, Brisbane gets bathed in lasers and lights for the whole month each weekend and topped off with a massive fireworks display called Riverfire. This year I headed out with a couple of friends to watch the Santos City of Lights show, set on the Brisbane River. We were watching from South Bank which also had a wonderful lantern garden, Spiegeltent, bars and live acts. The laser, light and special effect show was set to music and went for around ten minutes.

There were lots of photog’s out, tripods and more people staring down their viewfinder than watching at some points! I decided to just take my trusty ‘nifty 50′ (Canon 50mm f1.8) and go hand held. I was very happy with how the shots came out considering the low light, water mist and smoke, and I was pleased further with the performance of the Black Rapid sports strap (check out my review here Part One, Part Two). The only thing I dislike about the ‘nifty 50′ is the lack of a good focusing motor, it’s slow and tends to hunt. That said, for a $100 lens it’s amazing! I would love to step up to the f1.4 or f1.2 but at $500 and $1000 that’s a way off for now. Also a camera that handled high ISO noise would have been brilliant eg Canon 5D MKIII.

Enjoy

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08/09/2012
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Brisbane City by Night

A while ago I headed into the city late one night to have a wander around and take a couple of shots that had been busting to try. I took my trusty 40 year old tripod, 15-85mm and headed towards the city lights. I’d never tried a nighttime long exposure before, so it’s fair to say there were a few test shots and lessons learnt. The two main things I’ve picked up so far are that I need a new, more stable tripod and to switch image stabilisation off. I should also mention that bringing my cable release along would have been a good idea as well!

This shot was taken at f/13 for 30s. My understanding is, when IS is on, and your camera is mounted on a tripod, the correction element in the camera will look for movement that is not there. This can result in a soft/blurry photo.

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31/08/2012
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Articles, Reviews

Black Rapid Strap RS Sport Review – Part Two

Following on from Part One that can be found here, I’d like to share my thoughts and findings after two days of good usage.

Overall, VERY happy with the strap. The first day of usage was a wedding. I had the strap under my jacket and the camera hung just below it, next to my pocket. When needed, the camera would glide up easily and the strap would sit well against my body. The connector showed no signs of movement, and I was very comfortable with the security of it. After watching the swarm of wedding photographers (I say swarm as there were three on stills and two on video) struggle with two full frame cameras with large wide angle and large zooms swinging around, I couldn’t help but think they would benefit greatly from a strap similar to this.

 

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25/08/2012
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Black Rapid Strap RS Sport Review – Part One

After using the ‘stock’ Canon strap for nearly a year, I’ve begun to loath it. A photo heavy holiday, a few hiking trips and enough hours wandering with the camera has cemented my need for a more friendly strap. As per any purchase I make, I hopped straight onto the web and scouted around for options. Quite a few popped up, all with the usual fan boy followings and inter-brand rivalry. Carry Speed Pro, Sun Sniper and Black Rapid seemed to top the list quickly. Both the Sun Sniper and BR were at a higher price point, and the Carry Speed had some good design innovations but some worrying user feedback about its build quality (albeit aggressive pricing). The curved padding, underarm strap of the BR and it’s good industry standing  (unfortunately resulting in its inflated pricing) then began to look more favorable.

So I pulled the trigger on one of these bad boys last weekend. I was over near my ‘local’ photography supplies store and thought I would pop in and have a feel/play with one of these straps. I discussed at length with the salesman about his experiences with the strap, then tried it out for myself. I’ll split this brief review into two parts; one, my first opinions and expected results, secondly actual results (after a wedding on this weekend).

I went to a store to buy this, unlike most of the stuff I get online, as I really wanted to have a feel and play… That said, my local is very aggressive with their pricing and were only $10 above the online price. I suggest you all do this for this kind of purchase as we’ve all got different body types (I’ll cover this later).

Unboxing:” Comes in a nice box for those of you who care about that kind of thing. You get a basic ”user guide”, a sticker and the strap nicely bundled with a elastic strap (that could be used for storage).

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30/04/2012
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New Zealand in 8 days – Final Part

In eight days we had seen some amazing sites and even though we covered only a small portion of the north island, we got a great feel for what makes NZ such a great place to visit. On our last day we visited a small zoo/butterfly house called Butterfly Creek. I had been wanting to visit right from the early planning stages of the trip. It was a great chance to have my first go at photographing butterflies, and it proved a great learning experience.

As always, click on the images for larger versions.

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