Moving target

The Bus Trip
Originally uploaded by imageo.

I been to the Earnst Henry Mine, near Cloncurry. A trip that involved a couple of bus trips. One, Mt. Isa to Cloncurry was a very long bus trips. So I took a few, more than a few to be honest, photos.

Taking photos with a digital camera from a moving bus can be harder than you might think. There is the issue of focus and just framing the image. Everything is flashing by.

By the time you select te image and press the buttin. then wait for the camera to autofocus. The picture you were going to take is 400 metres behind you. also anything close to the road edge is likely to be out of focus

and relection on the glass are likely to spoil your image

Unless of course you make the reflection part of your composition

Shadow self portrait series

P9170685,
originally uploaded by imageo.

I'm back to experimenting with the blog post from flickr again.

I have been routinely taking my shadow as a kind of rough exposure test in the field. A big advantage of digital cameras is that you can get immediate feedback by looking at the image you just took. However you often have to look at it on a small LCD screen, out in the full sun light. Whilst my olympus does have a larger than average and very clear screen it is still adversely affect by strong light. Having a strandard-ish reference image with strong contrast, like your shadow, helps get a better understanding of how the exposure worked out (or not!)






Well my experiment didn't work so well, I couldn't find a way to do multiple posts. So it was back to picasa/hello for the four photos above. In desperation I've decided to make these a set in flickr, watch this set for an ongoing collection.

Bend in the Tarwin

I had actually gone to this spot to photography the reflection of the setting sun on the river. The clouds stopped that but I still snapped away. I like the colours and the feel of the brewding clouds, not exactly the picture I originally had in mind. Such is Life!

A sign?

A shaft of light breaks through the storm clouds. If you wish to capture momentary events like this, you should make it a habit of carrying your digital camera around at all times and everywhere. The most important point being you should take more pictures, and always be on the lookot for good picture.

The harsh bass strait winds

an exhausted mutton bird is washed ashore


Another struggles to get out of the wind.

The strong winds on the weekend has bought tragedy to the annual migration of mutton birds, with hundreds of the young exhausted birds forced down or ashore. Dead birds outnumbering the survivors by at least two to one on the Venus Bay beach. The next morning many birds had recovered enough and a few small groups could be seen flying low over the waves to resume their long journey north.

More Autumn light

The low light of late afternoon at this time of year, is perfect for
modeling form in photos. However be careful with strong contrasting light
and your light meter readings. Maybe take a bracketed group of different
exposures, is warranted if your camera has this feature (my Olympus has a
feature call BKT, which automatically takes a series with slightly different
EV settings)

Another all email post (test)

It may be dull and overcast but the ducks love the weather

is this a bit weird?

I was uploading some old images into , to repair broken links back in my archives. When I notice this amazing coincidence,
or was it?

My account is the free type and I get "relevant" ads down the right hand side of my photo stream. I find it hard to believe that they are picture matched as well.

My office is messy, I know

My office is messy, I know
Originally uploaded by ímageo.

This is actually a test post, entirely via email, using flickr, rather than
via picassa and hello and editing the post in blogger. Anything for less
tedium, but want that might mean I have time to clean up my office!

Dawn, in two parts

I took these to be a panorama that I could stitch together, but i like them as side by side images as well.

(hmmm now the challenge is to get them formatted so they display side by side in the blog, points off picass on this one, ok st a bit more HTML fiddling!)

The Ibis

Each night at dusk, flocks of Ibis fly in from the inlet and spend the night in pine trees near my place at Venus Bay


Trying to photography them with a humble 3X zoom has been a little frustrating, beacuse of the combination of their speed and the low lighting. Still it is certainly a magical time to be out taking photos.

Autumn afternoon delight

A silver afternoon


don't be inclined to put your camera away when it if overcast. the contrast of strong lighting and the darker sky can produce wonderful images, (you might have to trick your automatic light meter when you are pointing directly at the sun)

Seaweed - light & shade

 

Flickr versus Hello in wide format

P4160703
Originally uploaded by Imageo.

I love wide format for natural and lanscape photos. In this one I just cropped out the sky and reeds in the foreground. They added nothing!

Looks like wide format is ok through flickr just a bit tiny


 
This image was transfered using Hello and BloggerBot, and it did gives more control over the size. Both ways had the pictures posted on my blog within 1 minute. Which means they both definitely passed my "anything to reduce the tedious stuff" desirablity test.

Digging deeper into Flickr

Whilst is was very easy to use the posting to blog technique in flickr, it wasn't what I was looking for to help repair all the dammaged links back in the archioves of my blog.



Then I found this autogenerated HTML code, deep in the viewing options. It still take you to flickr to see a more detailed image, but it will make the editing task so much easier.

My first flickr to blog post

P3060125
Originally uploaded by ímageo.

This is a photo of Cape Litrap, and is my first attempt at sumbmitting a photo to this blog from flickr.


VERDICT: it is easy & it works, but where are the formating features?

So if you are happy with this style of post, it did save quiet a few keystrokes compared with the Picassa2/Hello/Blogger combination I use at the moment. Also the link to the larger image takes you straight back to flickr (good marketing, i guess). Further if you are into technicalities, there is a link called more information link beside the photo there, that displays the EXIF information embedded in my Jpeg file when I took the photo. Pity they can't spell my name

Be daring in composition

A semi-candid shot of my son & his girlfriend


I must admit the vast majourity of "people at a function" photos are boring, everyone lines up and looks at the camera (and smile or at least try to smile). Thousands if millions like that are taken daily. It might be time to dare to be different cahnge the composition, use nice available lighting, let the picture tell a story. It will be the photo people likeand remember!

Net based photo sharing

I did follow up the comparison in wired magazine in the link to Thomas Hawk's blog last sunday (ie look below) It compared smugmug, a conventional looking photo sharing service, that would have cost me money to investigate so I didn't, with flickr.

I instantly liked flikr, from the intro "this isn't your grandfather's photo sharing site". To me it nicely differentiates this site from the first generation of awkward photo sharing sites and the very tolerant user base they have appealed too. Flickr does seem different and nice for photographers, for example being able to store and see rthe EXIF data( EXIF stands for EXchangeable Image Format and is information such as exposure seedings that is embedded by most modern digital cameras into jpeg format files), there is good contol of privacy & public accessability, some nice blog friendly features and some easy to setup phone camera stuff.

They offer a free trial account so I'm going to investigate it as a simple way to fix up all the broken links way back in my blog. This occured when XPPhoto turned off their free accounts. I'll keep you posted

PS Their flickr blog is a good example of what I was staying about authority and up to date relevance on the Net in my post last week. It has hints and some pretty inspirational photos so worth a look

Using In-fill Flash

Strongly lighting contrast on your subject is something that most digital cameras find very hard to correctly expose. A lot depends on the type of light metering you have in your camera, some use spot metering, other center weighted, there are lots of methods. They all the adjust the average exposure to get that light reading to become a mid tone. When your light is very contrasty to may end up with black silhouettes and/or totally waste out detail in the highlights

Renata in the backlighting


Since I knew this strongly backlit view would sufferer from such a problem I turned on my flash. My Olympus has a Slow flash setting. It works like the back curtain/shutter mode setting you can get on some up market SLR camera. The picture is exposed normally then just before the shutter is close a single flash burst illuminates the subject. Without the flash renata might have been a black cut-out, rather than an angel.

Better Than Flickr, Better Than Picasa... it Just Doesn't Exist Yet, Photohawk

I came across this blog posting and thought it perfectly sumarized how I see a lot of people becoming overwhelded with lots of digital photos and looking for something to manage them, something that doesn't exist yet!

Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Better Than Flickr, Better Than Picasa... it Just Doesn't Exist Yet, Photohawk

Actually I pretty much just use picassa all the time now. for everything to do with collating cropping, rotating and uploading all my photos to blogger.

Digital Photography Authority on the Net/BlogSphere

There are way too many sites on the net to just pick few of the best links and offer them as the definite source of truth and all things knowledgeable. yet I suspect personal blogs are much better sources of insight that many of the commercial and supplier websites. how do you find such places? I'd use a search engine, like google, and add blog as a keyword. Remember the information is not all of the same authority

There are however a few magazines/ezines like Digital Photography Now, that have External Links to good places, that will have probably have been selected because they are well informed, but in some sites they may just be those that pay to advertise.

The places I think are best are the many photo sharing forum poping up, and I am a memeber of Sharing Digital Photography Worldwide forum. Here you can interact with other photographers, and look through their forums, beacuse most of the things you are looking for are sure to have been worried about by someone else.

What I'm saying is it is hard to establish Aurthorative sites about didgital photography on the net, so beware. In any event you can expect to see a few more links from here to other bloggers, because they are also at the coal face, and a lot more up to date and therefore relevant

Slowing to the Rural Pace

Near Screw Creek

Near Cape Liptrap


I know I haven't posted here much lately, its not that I'm lacking photographic inspiration. I love the country around Venus Bay, and I am taking photos of it all the time. I've even moved up to broadband, and its great. The problems is I have been busy on other things when I'm at the keyboard.

A mirage at sea


You may need to click on this image to view it at a higher resolution to see the mirage. It is close to the horizon and most visible in front of the headland (Cape Pattersom)

Old Lime Kiln Ruins

I liked the backlit tea-tree through this doorway, but to keep the photo interesting I spent some time framing the door off center in my view finder, and letting the light through the doorway lead your eye up to the opening.



Old ruins can make great subjects, but experiment with composition, move in close and take the detail, or find an "unusual" view, from below above or the side. Find the photo that describes the place.

The old Lime Kilns are situtated just of the beach at South Walkerville, Victoria

venus bay beach

Sea & Sky

Towards Wilson's Prom

Waves at Cape Liptrap


I have selected these for their strong almost abstart compositions. I lowered the horizon to emphasize the clouds and lost it entirely to focus on the patterns of the white water.

The horizon in the center of a landscape can really reduce the drama

Available Light Outdoors

Avaialable light, is a term usually applied to intimate indoor and/or artificially lit subjects. Normally you have to open up the aperture and extend the time of exposure. However digital cameras are pretty notorious for not doing well in low light, the long exposure usually introduces a lot of "noise" into the photos and strange colour casts.

Squall in available light


Some cameras (like my Olympus) do have preprogrammed settings, usually called a night scene mode, that try to get the best reults with extended exposure times. This mode normally turns on white balance filtering and noise reduction and adjust the cameras effective ASA rating, to give best sensitivity in low light.

Using this night scene mode, I've found I can get some very usual landscapes (and seacapes) by using this mode just after it turns dark. The resulting photos usually have very rich, but slighty artificial colours.

The above image was actually taken in the dark with only just a slight after glow in the sky, but it looks like an errie twilight. The other amazing thing about this photo is how the lines of breakers have merged into a contious boiling mass of foam. That is because the waves were moving and must have covered the distance between each line of breakers within the 4 seconds of the exposure.

Get My Drift