A day of extremes

This weekend Karyn and I went down to the south coast of NSW.  Mainly, we went there to see two of our horses run at Bega, but we decided to spend the night there and visit the coastal town of Eden as well.

We didn't have much luck with the horses - Stake Knife ran second and Diamond Jay ran eighth.  But it was a nice day at the races anyway, and we had a bit of luck with the betting.

After the races on Sunday, we stayed overnight at Merimbula (about 30 minutes drive away).  We stayed at a really nice place opposite the golf course, and decided to go to the golf club for dinner.  The food was nice, but unfortunately there was a jazz festival on, and they decided to torture us all evening with jazz.  I hesitate to call it music. If only the musicians would all play the same tune at the same time!

On Monday morning we drove to Eden, about another half hour south of Merimbula.  Unfortunately it was cold, cloudy, with a fine drizzle.  We had breakfast there and had a quick look around, but it's the sort of place you need to experience on a nice sunny morning.

We headed back to Canberra, and when we climbed back up to the Southern Highlands we came across a nice little fire.  Either someone was burning off some grass, or there was a very productive fire-bug in action.  All the following photos were taken from the same spot using my big zoom lens.

Somehow it was amusing to see one lone person with a backpack fire-extinguisher - just in case the fire got out of control.

I was glad I had my 18-270mm zoom lens on me.

Diving with the seals

Matt and I went diving in a marine sanctuary at Montague Island which is about 40 minutes off the coast of Narooma.  Unfortunately I've got a lot to learn about taking photos underwater - it's quite different from taking them on dry land, and seals are tricky things to take pictures of because they just shoot through the water.  I have lots of good pictures of their tail fins.

Anyway, I was glad the camera's movie mode worked.

Easter with the sharks

This Easter we went up to Port Stephens for a few days to visit my mother-in-law.

The highlight of the trip was that Matt and I got to spend a day diving out at Broughton Island which is about 40 minutes off the coast in a marine park.  We had a great day, starting off at Feet First Dive at 7am.

The boat took us to the Looking Glass which is a fissure between two halves of a small island where we planned to traverse from one side to the other - but unfortunately the swell was too strong, so we had to move to the protected side and just stay on that side.  Even on the sheltered side we got swept around quite a lot - it was a bit like being in a washing machine with the swell moving us 6 feet backwards and forwards with each surge.

We have a new underwater camera housing, but it will take a while to work out how to take good photos underwater.  The camera certainly takes a lot longer to focus.  There's also a green cast to most of the images that I'll have to try and correct for -  but the reality is that the water tends to make everything a blue-green colour.

We weren't there long before a few of the locals came to see what we were doing.

Here the flash reflected off some of the sediment kicked-up by the surge.  Fortunately the sharks don't react to an electronic flash.

 Waiting at the decompression stop to bleed off some more Nitrogen from our bloodstream ....

You can see the opening in the rockface where we went in just behind Matt.

 This is the quiet spot that we pulled into after the first dive and decided to stay here for a second dive.

Matt and I having a break between dives.

 Underwater at the second dive site.

 Matt exploring.

 Matt leading the way.

 There was a lot of seaweed around, so I decided to go to ground level and have a look around.

Under the seaweed

 Matt discovered this moray eel.  You can see why it's a good idea to keep your hand away from its mouth.

 Coloured soft corals.  Under the water they just look a dull grey colour until you use a torch or flash to return some red light to the spectrum.

 Matt

Returning to Nelson Bay after the dive.

Scuba diving at Bateman's Bay

Over the past few weeks, Matt and I have been going down the coast to go scuba diving.

Matt recently learnt to dive, and is keen to get some experience under his belt.  It's been interesting for me to take up diving again because I haven't dived for probably 20 years.  I gradually stopped diving when we moved to Canberra because it really isn't convenient to dive when you live 2 hours from the coast compared with living in Sydney.  Before coming to Canberra I'd been a scuba instructor for 5 or 6 years, but getting into the water again after so long was surprisingly easy - it's like riding a bike. Personally I'm pleased to see that I finish the dive with more air in my tank than anyone else, which reflects a degree of relaxation under the water coupled with efficient movement through the water - the lack of either of which causes you to breathe heavier.

There have been some improvements to dive equipment, but not as much as I expected.  None of my old equipment is really any good now - too much of the rubber has perished.  My wetsuit also seems to have shrunk.  Surprisingly, people at the dive shops keep saying that the equipment now is so much better than in the past - they assume that ours were very primitve - but I don't find them any better.  I think that there is an incorrect assumption that newer=better.

We've joined a dive club and so far have had several shore dives at Bawley Point, about 20 minutes north of Bateman's Bay.

This is a popular spot where we've seen sharks, stingrays, cuttlefish, moray eels, octopus, and many, many, types of fish.  So many types of fish that I've had to pull out one of my old fish-identification books to help remember which is which.

We've been driving down to the coast on Friday afternoon and staying overnight; having a couple of dives on Saturday, and then driving home on Saturday afternoon.  Then spending Sunday recovering.

We are going up to Port Stephens in a few weeks, so we'll do some diving up there as well.

Fashions on the Field - a photographic experience

I went to the races by myself today because Karyn wasn't well.  There were 2 reasons, firstly because we'd already committed to going to a Women in Racing event there, and also because one of our horses was running in the last race.

The WiR lunch was OK, but a bit boring because I was sitting at a table with strangers with no-one to talk to.  Everyone else were couples.  So I decided to walk around outside and take some photos.  As luck would have it, there was a "fashions on the field" competition just outside the function room, so I thought to myself that it would be interesting to try and take photos of the girls on the stage and see what I learnt from the process. I learnt quite a bit: some things at the time and others after the event when processing the photos at home.

The first thing I learnt was that amateur models don't pose for the cameras.  The girls were maybe concentrating on not falling off the stage or trying to remember how models walk.  Too often I waited for the right shot that never came as the girls just swept past the point where they were supposed to stop.

Next, it's hard to get the whole girl in the photograph without becoming distant.  You have to be content with getting half of maybe two thirds of her in the frame.  This was certainly complicated by models who rarely stood in the same position on the stage, so it was difficult to frame a whole-body shot. This must be an important issue for fashion photographers who want to get both the hat and the shoes in the same shot.  Maybe it's a matter of what type of photograph you want, and I prefer portraiture to fashion. It certainly seemed that the facial expressions were important to me.  And pleasant expressions at that.

From this distance you do tend to notice the clothes more than the person.

Lesson - hats can make it difficult to capture the face.  It would have been good to use a flash, but I was standing back and using a zoom.

Lesson - bad luck with someone in the background.  In both this and the previous, the girls not yet on stage didn't have their modelling face in gear.

Lesson - expect to catch the blink. I seemed to have caught a lot of girls blinking.  I probably should have used rapid fire mode.

Here are some of the photos that turned out OK.

This is the girl that I think will win. She smiled at the crowd, she smiled at the judges, and most importantly, she smiled at the photographers.

 

Oh, and as for the horse racing.... Diamond Jay came 6th.

A weekend at Merimbula

Last weekend we had a trip down to Merimbula, which is about 3.5 hours drive away.  Merimbula is on the south coast of NSW just above Eden, near the border with Victoria.

We were going to drive down on the Friday, and then spend 2 nights there, but there was so much rain we decided to go on the Saturday instead.

So on Saturday, we drove down early and visited Mogo Zoo.  Unfortunately it was unbearably hot, about 36 degrees and 90% humidity. While we were walking around the sweat was running down our backs and also down our legs.  The weather seemed to suck all the energy from us.

We'll have to go to this zoo again, but perhaps in winter when it will be a lot more pleasant and the animals more active.  On this day most of them were hiding under trees and bushes,  trying to avoid the heat of the day.

That night we stayed at a great guest-house in Merimbula. Rated 5 stars.  Here was our view.

On the way in I saw a small pond or lake that offered some photo opportunities. So after unpacking our bags in our nicely air-conditioned room, I walked down to the lake. When I got there, there was a great scene of a few ducks getting ready to take flight, but when I took off the lens cap, the lens fogged up completely.  I realised that this was because I'd had my lenses out in the cold bedroom, and the lens canp insulated the lens from the heat outdoors, so when I took it off, it was like taking an icy cold can of beer outside on a hot day - the condensation started immediately.  So that photo never eventuated.  I had to wait about 10 minutes before the condensation evaporated again.

We were a bit disappointed at the races on Sunday where one horse came 3rd and the other 5th.