Fireworks

I had another go the other evening at taking photos of fireworks.  It's harder than most people think, because you need to anticipate the fireworks going off.  For me, I often only get perhaps 1 decent photo out of 20.

One of the problems this time was the lack of wind.  This meant that the fireworks left a lot of smoke lying around and this tended to be illuminated by the exploding fireworks, so many of the shots had a white mist effect.  It is much better to get a clean shot the the fireworks against a jet black background.

But as I mentioned earlier, the difficulty is that you need to use an exposure time of about 1.5 - 4 seconds.  To get a clean shot you therefore need a tripod and a shutter delay so that your finger pushing the shutter release doesn't bump the camera.

This means you have to watch out for fireworks going up in the air, so you can trigger the photo and have the firework blossom while the shutter is still open.  Often, though, you get the timing right, but the firework is out of the frame.

Early morning at the racecourse

It wasn't really early in terms of a normal racecourse day, but somehow it's harder to get up at 6:30am on a Saturday than it is during the week.

We went to the racecourse to look at a prospective new horse and watch it in a gallop.  It's still early days into its training so you only get an indication of performance.

It raced another horse down the straight.  But I wouldn't be surprised if it was allowed to win because we were watching.

Having a shower after training.

National Arboretum

Time seems to have flown.  I'm amazed that I haven't posted anything for a while.

Last weekend I went to the opening of the new National Arboretum.  I've been there before to look at how they were laying out the trees, but this time they were opening up the human-side of things such as the visitor's centre.

It seems that when they constructed the amphitheatre (see below)  they also created a big wind-tunnel that is great for flying kites.  Kids were encouraged to make their own kites and decorate them.  Surprisingly, they seemed to be made of some sort of un-tearable paper and metal sticks that survived multiple crashes into the ground.

The kids seemed to like it, but I don't know if they were a help or a hindrance at getting some of the kites in the air.

 A sculpture in the distance. It says "wide brown land".

Here's a panorama I took with my phone from what looks to be a restaurant under construction.  This is the view looking away from the Arboretum towards the lake.

A Day at the Coast

This weekend I had another leave-pass to go down to the coast to do some diving.  I stayed overnight at Bateman's Bay afterwoods because leaving at 5am start to get down there by 7:30am and then having several dives makes me really tired sometimes and it's not worth the risk of driving home on the same day.

Instead of a normal dive, we went on exploration dives to areas that haven't been dived before.    The thing about diving is that you don't travel far under the water and you can't see things until you get right up close to them.  So until you get down to the bottom you don't know what you'll find.

Colourful sponges

A moray eel peeking out

xxx

 A wobbegong shark having a rest on a rock ledge.  This is probably the largest one I've ever seen - maybe 2.5m long.

A boarfish

 Part of a shipwreck I found.  This piece of timber was sticking out of the sand an covered with crustaceans.  I cleared some of the sand away and took this photo.  My dive buddy had swum away and after I found him again I couldn't find the wreck.

I went for a drive down to Malua Bay.  The beach was pretty deserted except for one surfer and some folks with metal detectors looking for loose change, I presume.

Experiments with HDR

For a while I've been wanting to have a try at a High Dynamic Range photo.

This technique is used where if you set the exposure right for one part of the photo it's too dark or light in another part of the photo, and there is no adjustment that makes it acceptable.  I've seen it used where there is a large range between the brightest and darkest parts of a scene, such as strong sunlight and deep shadow.  If you adjust for the bright light, then then everything in shadow is just black, but if you adjust it so you can see what's in shadow, then the sunlit parts of the image are overexposed and maybe pure white.

HDR involves merging a series of images at different exposures and using the best parts from each.

Here I took 3 images at different exposure settings and then combined them into a fourth.  I put something white in the foreground to reflect the light back.

I tried another one with more of the image in shadow.

I was going to do some more, but the cloud came over and the bright sun disappeared.  Maybe I'll try it again when there's something more exciting to photograph.

Post-Christmas & Australia Day

Things have been a tad quiet after Christmas.

We went for a cruise around the lake which was nice and relaxing,  Then cycled around the lake, which was not.  It was the first time in about 10 years that I've been on a bike, so cycling for 24km in 2 hrs created a few tired muscles that I hadn't used for a while.

Here are some pictures from the lake cruise.

The Carillion.

The small posts by the side of the lake each have the name of an Australian of the Year.  With a 50 or so spare. Interestingly, they are positioned relative to 5 lines, and if treated as musical notes, they make up the National Anthem.

I still don't know why they have put up one flagpole here and a couple of trees to ruin the symmetry.  I bet the politicians decided this.  Or they decided to skimp  on the price of the second flagpole.








Coco learnt a new trick over Christmas.  He now drops a squeaky toy into the water and jumps in after it.  But only as far as the steps.  And of course most of the time it drifts away from him.

Ooops.  Too far away.

"Will you get it for me?"   His tail wags a million times a minute, so it's always blurry in photos.

On Australia Day, Karyn and I went to a friend's place for a bbq and a games afternoon.  It seems to be popular with the neighbours and relatives.  The kids especially love it, and compete for medals, bags of lollies, and the honour of standing on the winner's podium.

 There was a football-throwing competition.

 A gum-boot throwing competition.

 A golf pitching competition.

A ball-tossing competition.

An egg-and-spoon race (with the older kids having to run backwards).

A sack race.

Winners of the senior kids egg and spoon race.

Winners of the sack race.

Karyn managed to defeat the senior kids in the ball tossing competition decider.

But she did no good in the thong-tossing competition.

Kids tug-of-war competition.

Willo, the host.  Never to be seen without a can in his hand.