Back to the cold.

Despite the cold, the splashes of yellow (wattle bloom) indicate spring is on its way.

Breakfast Panorama

Breakfast Panorama
Originally uploaded by imageo.

Getting the exposure right from a digital camera when you are aiming at a rising sun is a tricky business. So in order to get the sky correctly exposed I used braketing (using 5 EV ranges) and then took 4 different but slightly overlapping views (ie there were 20 photos in the series). I then selected the -0.3EV from each of the bracket sets and then ran them through autostich. A fair bit of mucking around but I am pleased with the results. It give that big sweaping broad landscape feel I like. (By the way I don't have any kind of "sky" filter for my camera)

An emailed photo

An emailed photo
Originally uploaded by imageo.

This is a gauva fruit enjoying the rain. It is an example do photo that was been emailed to flickr and then forwarded as a blog post (with photo).

Photoblogging by email (using Flickr)

Photoblogging by email (using Flickr)
Originally uploaded by imageo.

I knew It was too good to be true, i should not have praise flickr fortolerating low bandwidth access.

Today when I tried to upload to Flickr, the upload process timed out several times. So I should really explain there are other ways to work from low bandwidth (and that includes WAP enabled mobile phones). Flickr lets you email in your photos. They give you a specific email address, which can be found under the your account section. Look for the Uploading via email section, (it's the first item) click on the link and it will display the address to use (as a MailTo link).

Even better if you look lower (near the bottom) of the Your Account pageyou will see another section about posting to your blog via email. This involves setting up a default layout (you need to do this ahead of travel time) and blog options (see insert). You can then send an email with a photo attached and the text of the email will be used as the body of you post and the photo inserted as per the select format.

This blog post is such an email submission. (with a screen capture instead of a photo)

PS Its just a pity about the way it gets re-formatted!

Passin Bilong Kaikai Buai

For Photo Friday: The common habit of chewing betel nut (kaikai Buai) in the outer island of new guinea, leaves bright red spit and husks everywhere.

Be careful where you step or you will get very stained souls.

Photobloging over low bandwidth

22-jul-2006 lihir_pit02
Originally uploaded by imageo.

The fact that I have been able to post this panorama, from the remote location it was taken, has overcome a couple of real issues that has stopped me photoblogging when I only have access to very low band width connections to the net. (like when you search out the cyber cafe, if there is one, and it has a 486 PC running windows 95 with and ancient dial up modem).

1) Nice FTP base Uploads don’t work (or are blocked).
2) Frequent Line Drops, Time Outs and errors, which mean that any large file is guaranteed not to be uploaded via on-line forms.
3) Trying to geotag photos with complex on-line scripts (or google earth) which also inevitably fail because of time outs.

For this upload I firstly used flickr, and the upload form in my account, to up load a medium sized version of the photo. I’m not sure if flickr have changed this upload but it does seem reliable and doesn’t fall over or time out. Possibly if such things do happen, it can pick up were it left off and continue. Then I used the blog this button to set up this blog post. Saving me to have to log onto blogger and go through a number of steps all of which where prone to time outs.

I have also used the fantastic script localize whilst still in flickr to capture the coordinates and geotag the photo. Again it worked, a little slowly, but without falling over.

Previously I preferred to use google earth, for remote locations, which I felt had better satellite and air photo coverage, but the google maps coverage is catching up fast. Click on the link below and have a look at the open pit mine from above as well


See where this picture was taken.

All of this was done on a shared satellite link at snail pace speed, but it worked reliably!

The story behind the photo

I realize the is a very late submission for Friday Photo's topic Remarkable, but i have been waiting all week to take it

See where this picture was taken.

The story begins when I started to fly from Melbourne to Lihir Island in Papua New Guinea. At Melbourne is was noticed the plane had been dinted by the air bridge, and there was a long delay whilst the damage was inspected and repaired. I had resolved to miss my connecting flight in Brisbane but due to fog in Sydney and general chaos in Brisbane I a mange to catch my now delay flight to Port Moresby. It seems my bag was off loaded, somewhere and didn’t make it to Port Morseby till Monday, but customs would not clear it because it was locked, On Tuesday I discovered this and said they (customs) could break the locks and inspect the bag. They decided they needed to have some one from the airline watch them do it, but he apparently did turn up till after the flight to lihir had left, further he left the bag at the international terminal. that was on Tuesday, it took till Thursday to make the 400 meter journey to the domestic airport and catch a charter flight to lihir. After 5 days in the same cloths, in a very humid tropical climate, the novelty had work thin.


I got to the airport about 15 minutes after the plane has landed last night and everyone was packing up to go home. But there it was "my bag" waiting patiently on the side of the road.. And somewhat amusingly one of the tags on it says RUSH (Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday... that some rush!)

But today I do have fresh cloths and deodorant.

(So there may be a moral here I think if you fly to Bali and don’t lock your bag you will probably end up in jail, where as in new Guinea if you lock your bag they will just keep your bag!)

Early Celebrations

The world cup celebrations strated early in Noumea (it was already the next day), the head butting incident and penalty shoot outs just over.

Summer (in Winter)

For Photo Friday: Topic "Summer" (despite the fact that it is actually winter here in australia, it looks summery on the Low Isles in Far North Queensland)

Happiness Is....

 

For Photo Friday: Topic "Happiness is..."