Photo Friday :: Loud

Also taken at Port Douglas, during their reef and rainforest carnivale, for photo friday's topic loud.

Photo Friday :: Vacation

A balmy tropical evening at Port Douglas (far north Queensland)

for Photo Friday, topic Vacation

Digital Cameras on planes

you know the announcement

All electronic devices, including PDAs, laptop computers, handheld games and toys must be switched off during take-off and landing.

Looking back on my photos of my last trip I can see several of the better ones where taken out the plane window, so I got to wondering whether a digital camera is one of those electronic devices that must be turned off during take off and landing. I must admit I assumed it is but as I started to look on the net there is certainly a lot of angst about whether things such as mp3 players and games are really a serious threat, but blogsphere opinion isn't very official is it! I am happy to assume that devices that pump out radio signals may be a problem. So I decided to checked out the restrictions on the qantas website, and maybe all these restriction and particularly ban on using mobile might just be a thing of the past soon.

Well despite a reasonable look around I can not even find mention of a ban on using digital cameras (well assuming they are not fitted with blue tooth wifi or GPS). So happy snapping in the sky.

revisiting a little wonder

I have mentioned Paint.NET before, it began life as a student project as a very simple to use replacement to microsoft paint, but it has grown and blossomed in the open source community




Really the best part of this "little" program is its user interface, designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance. That is not to say that it doesn't support layers and have a lot of image manipulations and filters only found in more expensive graphic & photo manipulation suites. Don't expect it to do everything but you might find a plug-in that does exactly what you wanted, or a on-line tutorial to help you follow the right steps. It is being updated all the time. Check it out

Nice spot for a village

More of Melbourne, originally uploaded by imageo.

This is a bit of a play on John Batman's original quote, but Melbourne is still a nice place to come home to.

Getting a good photo from the tiny modern jet airplane is not so easy, there is the light on the concave shape the multiple pans and strong light over the scene, lots of thong to spoil the photo but once and a while the lighting can be just right and you are in the right place at the right time(seconds later the plane turned and i just had sky!)

The Block Arcade (revisited)

The Block Arcade, originally uploaded by imageo.

My photo of the block arcade (above), in central melbounre, has been included in the updated schmap guide to melbourne, under the historic buidlings category.

two panoramas

Inverloch looking towards Point Smyth

Venus Bay Beach

Busy [as green ants in the daintree]

For Photo friday : Topic busy

These green tree ants [Oecophylla smaragdina] are busy at the work of collecting food, and garden maintenance in the daintree forest.

Putting the sky back

Winter in Melbourne can be a great time for photography, when the sun comes out! The low light puts the landscape into strong relief and enriches the colours, but at the same time that makes it a very hard task for your cameras light metering to make the correct decisions about exposure. So you tend to either end up with a nice blue sky and everything else in shadow or foreground detail and a washed out sky. So if you want detail in the foreground detail in your photo, maybe it will be best to get a light reading low (point the camera down a little and half press the button to set both focus and the exposure settings) then lift the camera (without releasing the button) and frame the photo and shoot (press down fully). Then is you want a blue sky (not everyone will bother) you can use on of the graduated tint/filters, such as the one in picassa, which you will find under the effects Tab, to put a light tint over just the sky. Graduated tints help keep the sky lighter near the horizon, and thus the sky stays natural looking.

How precious are your photos?

I like to backup my photos at the end of each month. when I first started taking photo that meant part filling a CD, now I have my new camera and three 1GB cards plus the 256MB card that came with it. That means I can take pretty much a whole DVD worth of photos at once, so now I usually have closer to a DVD, if not several just to backup one months photos.

Am I being paranoid?

NO being a geologist that takes his computer into the field, and wherever I travel, I know computer and hard drives are not the best place to store your precious digital photos. Sooner rather than later something will happened, maybe a disk crash, maybe a software hiccup, a virus or worm, your computer might be stolen or "someone" just accidentally deleting the whole directory, with a mouse click or two.

BUT don't just make one copy make TWO and it is strongly recommended that you store one copy at a different location (it doesn't have to be a fire proof bank vault but it should be a secure location, ie maybe not in grandad's shed)

FINALLY there is a big difference between backups and archive

So I think I'll write a few blog post over this month explain all my backup strategies (learned from decades of experience in electronic data collection not just photography)

Kalista : Feeding the birds

The native birds, specifically parrots, lorikeets, galahs and cockatoos, have learned that they will get a good feed from vistors & picnickers at Grant Reserve, Kalista, deep in Sherbrooke forest. This is really a great spot to get some terrific photos. Remember, it is important to only to feed them wild bird seed mix, not bread, which fortunately you can buy at the nearby kiosk.




Here is the location of Grant Reserve, Kalista (as a yahoo! map link)