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.