In the true spirit of “Macro Madness” there won’t be any pictures of the park itself…not because I don’t want to…but because I only brought the macro lens that day…and not a measly 55mm macro but a 180mm one…which is pretty much a dedicated macro lens and nothing else.   Now I can also go back to take some macros of the sunflower field! 

Of course the Brow needed to stretch her lil leggies so she came along for an impromptu portrait session.

By the way those are her legs…shes so furry her hands (as in front legs) tuck into it and dissapear when she sits like that. Her hands looks like this:

If you leave her on the ground long enough she’ll start planning her escape route…

…so we put her somewhere where she can’t run

Just kidding, haha…shes awesome…doesn’t run away unless shes at home where shes familiar with the floor…ask Linzhi, every few minutes we give a a good tickle under the chin…

Oh, right…Macro Madness Day!

Sorry…

Sorry…

I tend to digress when I ramble…

In all honesty the park was pretty down in the dumps. It wasn’t dirty or anything it just wasn’t maintained very well. However, the flowers were absolutely perfect and down at a macro level its easy to ignore the rest of the place.

Isn’t that just beautiful rose? Hows this next one for a good contrast?

Same flower, different colour…but it just says something different…the red one has that classy, elegant feel where as this one sort of brings words like “natural” and “pure” to mind…or am I crazy?

Don’t know what flower this is…any tips? I reckon I should’ve shot this closer though.

I didn’t really care for this one…but its a little weird. It looks like they are four smaller flowers inside the large outside petals…theres actually a picture that I shot dead on center which shows it in focus but composition wise this one looks better so deal with it.

Need to go shower now. Have to sleep early, tomorrows my driving test! *Eek!* Wish me luck!

Bummer.

No fret, we just thought we’d take a drive and see what else we could find…we thought of turning back over five times but God must’ve been driving because I just followed the road until we got to a railway crossing. Across the road way up in the countryside was something yellow.

“It couldn’t be”, I thought…”Let’s check it out anyway!”. Steph also didn’t think that it could’ve been a sunflower field. We turned the car around and tried to find a way in that direction. We hit a couple of dead ends but eventually we were greeted with a huge sunflower field!

I’m talking BIG. It extends all the way to the horizon. Here’s a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

That not enough for you? hmm..OK, imagine this: You are now seeing the image above in reality. Now turn 90 degrees to your left and you’re looking down the field from an elevated position…and this is what you see:

Yup. Thats a heck of a lot of sunflowers. Just as I was getting my gear out of the car the owner of the field happened to walk by with his dog. I greeted him and he let me go crazy so I had myself a photo-frenzy. I didn’t have my camera out yet so I didn’t get a shot of him. Next time I’ll be sure to bring the polaroid so I can give him a little something for his generosity.

Oh, by the way, be prepared to have your screen blasted with all sorts of shades of yellow. I love composing shots by colour. However, something funny happened while I was taking pictures of the sunflowers. Check out the image below and tell me whether or not its edited…

Am I seeing things or does it look like an HDR image? (for the noobs out there who do not know HDR is High Dynamic Range. What is it? Google is your friend). It looked the same way on the camera screen which I thought was weird. This is actually straight from camera. No post processing, no photoshop, no nothing! Even looking at it now I can’t help but think how “edited” it looks…am I right?

Also, this wasn’t a one off thing. Check out the following six images which were all taken straight from camera with no post processing whatsoever. Only adjustments made (if any) are to crop and/or straighten the horizon.

Is that weird or what? Those of you who follow me know that I like to get the shot right in camera but even I’m amazed at this! In the interest of full disclosure I will share some of my settings with those who are interested. Camera on variable aperture/shutter speeds depending on the shot (Duh!). All shot on “more vivid” picture mode, cloudy WB, and with a 0.9 (3x) Graduated Neutral Density filter (cheapo Tian Ya brand but works great!). Obviously a wide angle was used – in this case a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 mostly at 10mm. Any explaination people?!

Moving on, we also brought along our little guinea pig, Shybrow who kind of got high from all that fresh vegetation.

Shybrow is no little piggie, shes a big fat piggie and shes still growing but at around six months old and almost too big to hold her comfortable in one hand, shes no match for the sheer monstrosity that is a sunflower. I mean that thing could literally eat her up!

Man, I could almost see this shot advertising for something…for example:

How’s that? haha…fortunately that not the extent of my graphic design abilities but thats all I could think of in two minutes. Ideally, the sky would be a gorgeous deep blue but I’ll have to go back again in the near future to get that shot. More about revisiting this place at the end of the post.

Heres a shot that was inspired by another photo I saw somewhere on the internet but I can’t remember where. If I find it I’ll credit it.

Sunflowers are one of the few “photogenic” flowers. I say so because of their beautiful texture. Not to say that other flowers aren’t great but a macro lens and a sunflower would really produce some amazing results. I didn’t bring one along as it was a cloudy day and I knew it would be too windy to take macro shots (maybe next time I can steal a flower and photograph it at home?) For now, the crappy Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 will have to do.

Heres a great little pano I shot:

Altogether we were there for over an hour. Brandon called me and said that it was raining in Toowoomba so we packed up and left. Looking up there was a flock of birds. I had my telephoto lens on so I took a couple of shots of them. Nothing impressive but I sort of like this picture:

Would have loved to stay til sunset…but that was hours away. Perhaps next time. For now I can only imagine…

As I previously mentioned, I will be going back there to get some shots with blue sky instead of a cloudy one. If you don’t already know, this area has been in a 6 year drought and having clouds is a rarity so I took the opportunity to make the most of it. I will be going back on a nice clear summer day to get some different perspectives. I’ll probably go down again in a week or so. Anyone interested in joining me? let me know in the comments!

Til next time, good bye and God bless!

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Its a beautiful place that started as family owned wildlife reserve that led to the birth of arguably the greatest Australian that ever lived – the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. Today, his legacy lives on in his wife and daughter, Terry and Bindi Irwin respectively. If you do get a chance, visit the place! Today I’ll be posting some animal portraits I took at the zoo. I promised I’d blog this otherwise I’m pretty psyched about another strobist photoshoot I did last Sunday. Actually, I did two shoots but the first one was for church and I wasn’t given much creative control. The latter I’m psyched about because I absolutely love shooting this style and am getting very comfortable with it. Also, I rarely get to shoot like this because I don’t have any models willing to pose for me …but that all changed last Sunday when we had Jun’s farewell photoshoot. There were about +-8 people so I really had fun shooting some group photos which I rarely get to do. I’ve finished editing and the results are amazing! You have to see it! Stay tuned and let me get this out of the way first!

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If you’ve been to my flickr page at any time recently these images will be nothing new. I already put them up quite a while ago I just haven’t gotten around to blogging about it…until now.

First, we ventured into the reptile pit where you can see and read about various types of Australian snakes, lizards, etc. This guy was in such a beautiful pose I couldn’t have posed it any better myself!

Ooh, ooh! This next guy is my favourite! WOMBATS! I absolutely love love love wombats!!! They’re soooooooo cute! …and they look so funny when they do stuff…one of them was rubbings its butt against a tree trunk to scratch it I guess…another was trying to climb a tree and failed miserably. Anyway, Wombats are awesome!

As most of these places do, they have performances and shows where they showcase the animals abilities. The difference is that this zoo doesn’t force their animals to do anything. Everything is done “hands-on” style which means the animal doesn’t do anything it doesn’t want to do. While the performances are rather boring compared to a lot of other places it really does show how much they care for the well-being and treatment of the animals at the zoo. For example, even this elephant which used to be a circus elephant has grown quite “manja” (malay word for suck up). In the end I went for a tight portrait of the behemoth.

Of course theres the regular array of other widelife, some you can touch and others you can’t. Heres one you can:

Heres one you can’t:

One cool thing you’ll notice is how the animals themselves love the place. They get daily walks and runs outside their cages in huge habitats so they stay fit and healthy and capable of surviving in the wild should they be released. Some of the birds aren’t even caged and are allowed to wonder around. Why? Because they ALWAYS come back.

One more thing is you’ll find is these little lizard things crawling all over the place. They’re harmless but look a little intimidating nonetheless.

You’ll notice I forgot the most important element of the Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter – the crocodiles. The reason being is that during the show I was too far away and couldn’t crop tight enough. Okay I just went into my hard disk and pulled out a picture with a croc in it. Now we can end the post…happy?

PS. I realize the pic is slightly out of focus but it the best action shot I could find!

If you enjoyed the post please please please leave a comment! I thrive on them! …and it really makes my day when you do! Cheers and God bless!

Before I get ahead of myself let me introduce you to the family.

Ok, Genius…so Linzhi wasn’t there with the rest of us…shes busy finishing her dissertation…but for the sake of the introduction lets just assume she was there.

Far Left is my dad, the big man, the boss, Mr. Lau Nai Kwong…2nd is the lil guy, the cutest boy genius aka the “uleee”/ooh-man, its Mr. Jiaxen Lau. The “subtle” copy/paste job is my “can’t live with her/can’t live without her” sister, Linzhi. She came to visit me earlier this month and I’ll get around to blogging that soon…in the meantime last but not least is the perfectionist, the financial accountant of the family, the Queen Bee – Mrs. Khoo Khau Tze.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way lets get on with it shall we…

We headed off to Stradbroke Island to let them experience first hand the scenery that Australia has to offer…

On the way there we took the Calypso Catamaran ferry to take us to the island itself. My lil bro really enjoyed the wind blowing on his face…

We took the North Gorge bushwalk along the coast of the island where my parents especially enjoyed the fresh air…

See how touristy my dad looks? Cap. check. trainers. check. shorts. check.  sunglasses. check. camera around neck. check. T-shirt with more than one colour. check. Yup! Tourists alright! The funniest part is I told him that Toowoomba is pretty cold even though Australia was beginning to warm up so he didn’t bother bringing any shorts! The one in the picture was the only pair which he bought a couple of hours earlier at a shopping mall on the way to the ferry port.

A good 10 minutes walk and we arrived at a “Footpath Closed” sign. We backtracked and took the other entrance to the bushwalk (its a circuit) and 20 minutes later we arrived at the best lookout on the island. Here you can see sting rays swimming below as well as dolphins, turtles, and if you’re lucky – whales! They particularly enjoyed the sound of the waves hitting the rocks below.

There were also some friends sitting at the edge of a cliff that I thought would make a nice B&W.

As I had already been there before, I didn’t take that many photos. Pop made me hold his cam so I was using that instead. Good coz I can make the post a little shorter

We stayed til sunset before taking the ferry back to the mainland. I love sunset!

We sure had a good time! The following days we went to Warner Bros Movie World and the Wet ‘n’ Wild Water theme park! My old timers went to Movie World but not the waterpark…

This was an interesting roller coaster…it accelerates like a drag race car from the start even going uphill! Very different from your usual coasters. My fave was the Lethal Weapon one though but I was too busy enjoying myself to take pics! For obvious reasons I didn’t bring my camera to the waterpark so we’ll end it here.

This next pic is especially for my sister, Linzhi. Pop wanted to show her how long he’d grown his beard before he’d have to shave it off for my graduation…(oh yeah, the reason they came was for my graduation which took place after they got back from their “around-the-east-coast-of-australia” trip. In their absence Steph’s mum and cousin came and we brought them to the Australia Zoo at the Sunshine Coast! Check it out when I blog about it next!

Last Saturday…well, last LAST Saturday was the 2nd annual Worldwide Photo Walk. We didn’t know about the first one…Although I have a bunch of photos from Sydney, blue mountains, Hillsong and all that I’ll talk about this walk first simply because I’ve finished with photos…the only reason I’m finished with them is I had to make my submissions by Saturday midnight. Even so, I was actually late and submitted my entries on Sunday morning.

You know the great thing? ..because Australian time is so far ahead I could submit it late and still have it counted because the deadline is a US time zone…

If you don’t already know what a photowalk is let me explain:

All over the world people sign up and create little groups with a max capacity of 50 people. On Saturday, 18th July 2009, all those people met up at a designated time and place. Since I was in Toowoomba, one of the Toowoomba flickr group members started a toowoomba walk and so I decided to join! We’ve (some of the photographers in Toowoomba) been meaning to do this for some time but its difficult to take initiative if you know what I mean…especially since we didn’t know one another personally. This was a wonderful opportunity to meet up with local photographers and break the ice with them. In retrospect, I’m sure we’ll be able to organize regular “Toowoomba Photo walks” or something similiar…ask the creative team to come up with something catchy!

If you wanna know more about the worldwide photowalk, click HERE. Perhaps you can organize one for next year! Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets talk photography!

The main meetup was scheduled for 9.30am – 12 noon. However, our leader told us that there would be a dawn shoot for anyone interested. I WAS interested. Only problem is I’ve been sleeping very irregular patterns since I’ve finished uni…(OH YEAH, BTW, I’VE GRADUATED!!! I FINISHED UNI!!! NOW I’M…I’m…un…em..ployed…! D’oh!) Whoops, digressing there…where was I…ah, so I wasn’t sleepy at midnight…I wasn’t sleepy at 1.30am…heck I wasn’t even sleepy at 3.45am! …so, logically I just didn’t bother to sleep! Took a shower at 5.30am and rushed to meet the rest of ‘em.

Being in the land down under, it was a cold winter day and being so, it was still dark, gloomy, and cold. Unfortunately, what wasn’t there was any mist/fog which we were hoping to capture. We met up at Queens Park and there were four of us. I went to get my tripod and realised that I’d left my quick release plate at home! D’oh! Oh well, it didn’t matter though ‘coz there wasn’t anything nice to take. Luckily, Greg, our walk leader got a call from another shooter who was at a mountain cliff shooting first light. We scrambled back to the cars and headed for his spot.

Now there were 5 of us.

WOOT!

We got there and the others got to talking…I saw a beautiful sunrise and couldn’t NOT take it!

After that we stood there chatting around before we went onto explore the surroundings…

So off we went to shoot some other stuff…this is what I took:

Keep exercising

Go Green!

Then, we decided to hang around and chat some more…

We’re pretty good at that.

Now that we were done with that, the sun was out and we headed back to the park for some more photo opportunities. Now theres one thing that puzzles me…one thing that I cannot seem to able to capture. You know when you in a forest with trees all around? You face towards the sun and the light rays come streaming through the trees? I love it when that happens but I’ve never been able to actually capture it. I don’t know why? I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried…if you know how do teach! There was some light haze (probably something burning) and it was all around…smelt like crap though but pretty to behold. I tried and tried but couldn’t seem to capture anything! ARRGH!!!

So I did what all great photographers do: I quit.

I went to shoot stuff I DID know how to shoot…

A Winter Morning

Windmills

Running Water

Ok, it was now around 8.09:22am (taken from EXIF info) so we decided to warm up and have some breakfast…I tried for the first time an egg benedict with bacon. It was delicious! …nope I wasn’t gonna be Asian and whip out my camera to take a picture of it…although presentation was pretty decent.

9.20 ish in the AM and its time to head to the rendezvous point which was the war memorial next to Queens Park. We waited and finally decided to get a move on. By now we had 8 photographers! yeah!

One of the churches in Toowoomba

An interesting view of the Empire Theatre

Another interesting perspective of the Ticket counter at the Empire Theatre

Free Masons Masonic Hall

This is a list of all the soldiers from Toowoomba that gave their life in WWI. One of the photographers had a contact which let us go into the RSL (Retired Services League) building to tour the place.

After our visit to the RSL, we headed off the main road and buildings into some small back alleys…

Okay, this is a little weird? abstract art in a back alley?

Simple building, Simple geometry

Lonely alley

One of the last things we past during the walk was a walk that was full of graffiti. I took a couple of shots because I liked the colour but it was only when I came to the end of the wall was there a small car park and it took a couple of shots to get it how I wanted it to look.

After a little cropping the frame looks evenly split into thirds and it looks like the graffiti Indian is coming out of the car! haha!

…and thats about it for the day! We had a blast! No group pic…its with Greg in his medium format 120 fuji camera so I guess we’ll have to wait. You can view some of the other photogs pics at the Toowoomba Flickr Group. Alternatively, check out http://worldwidephotowalk.com/toowoomba-ql-au/ to see some of the entries from our walk.

My submissions for consideration were the first and 7th pic, “First Light” and “A Winters Morning“.

For those of you who don’t know, Urqhart Castle is situated along Loch Ness, the famous lake which is home to the Loch Ness Monster.

Linzhi and I went to 1 tourist destination while I was in Scotland…as you can imagine, we went to see the Loch Ness. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold that day and Nessie didn’t make an appearance. However, we made the most of it and got some good shots throughout the day.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Linzhi is better than me at portraits.

Its annoying…but its true…take a look at the shots below (by the way, these following shots are straight from camera only threw in the border):

I was trying to re-enact the Nicholas Cage pose in National Treasure. Credit to Linzhi for taking the photo.

Of course, it could simply be the striking self pose made by yours truly…or more likely the camera recognized that it was in the presence of pure awesomeness. In any case, its a lot better than mine which is below:

Then again, Linzhi didn’t go all the way to the top where the composition is at its most awesome perspective. Yeah, I guess I could argue until the cows come home but at the end of the day the result shows.

Dissapointed?

yes.

Sorry?

no.

Why?

…because there are other areas where I ooze awesomeness and Linzhi is hopeless…behold Linzhi’s attempt to take a picture of me jumping in mid-air (once again straight from camera):

Epic fail. If I took more photos at the spot above I’d have made at least one nice one as well!

I, on the other hand took a single shot:

Behold, awesomeness requires no post processing whatsoever!

Ok, enough about that, we’ll leave our sibling rivalry to another post (and by the way I’m on the path the pure awesome portraiture! What’s with me and awesomeness today?! …must be craving my unwatched How I Met Your Mother episodes…which by the way if you readers have yet to see please start. Its LEGENDARY!

Ok, moving onto the purpose of this post – Loch Ness.

Behold Urqhart Castle. Once a marvellous inpenetrable stronghold, now a ruin of torn down stones and rubble.

It does however overlook the Loch Ness. The lake by the way, is huge! Its like a small ocean because it just spans til forever…it goes all the way to North England…back in the day the Engligh and Scots were enemies…and so the English regularly came up the river to attack the Scots via the lake.

The Castle itself was beautiful. Actually the post although it says Loch Ness and Urqhart Castle is more about me and Linzhi taking pictures of whatever!

This is Linzhi’s proud as heck shot using the wide angle lens after my lecture on how difficult it is to compose a shot at 10mm (15mm Full Frame equiv.)

An old school slingshot that was used to defend the castle.

After much ado, Linzhi finally nailed a shot of me in mid air!

Linzhi shadow play.

Space Conscious Stairs.

Oh, this next pic is cool…as we were exploring the castle I saw a teeny tiny hole in the wall…it looked like this:

Pinhole photography? READ THE POST TO FIND OUT!

So, I slapped on my wide angle lens and poked it out of the hole at the side of the castle risking scratching the lens. I took another shot and what came out amazed me. I threw on the Cokin P 0.6 soft edge Grad ND filter and took a couple of shots to get the composition I wanted.

What resulted is a beautiful view of Loch Ness.

Behold, the Famous Loch Ness.

On our way out there was a rather interesting wall which had what I assume to be farewell in manu languages…my assumption is based on the “Selamat Jalan” that was written…

Selamat Jalan

We finished our little exploration day early and didn’t want to wait for the bus so we walked half an hour back to Drumnadochit Village…along the way we saw a sign with black and white arrow points. I told Linzhi to stick her head to the point so it looked as if it was pointing to her head! …as we were taking the picture a car drove by and the occupants must’ve been thinking what Asian weirdos we were…

It was so funny at the time we couldn’t stop laughing about it!

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/24/loch-ness-urqhart-castle-inverness-scotland/feed/ 5 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:35:53 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=376

On Chinese New Year Eve my family and I went on a road trip to Marken, North Holland. Its a little plot of land surrounded by water and is almost an island if it wasnt for the piece of land that stretches all the way out to the mainland which is how motor vehicles access the place.

As asians we always have to make numerous pit stops before we reach our destination. These are some of the shots that were taken along the way…

Mummy obviously enjoying herself…

This is really one of the best places to put in a windmill…its SUPER windy!

On the left is the road, right is the bicycle path.

When we finally arrived we were greeted with beautiful seascapes, vintage houses and some very cozy restaurant/cafes…

Of course no dutch tourist spot is complete without a bar serving its legendary beer!

Mum and Dad

As you can imagine it didn’t take us very long to get lost…

This is cool! Jiaxen noticed this dude riding on a bike and so I quickly burst off a few shots in his direction…This is the only one I could salvage. What was so interesting you might ask? …he’s wearing CLOGS! -you know, those wooden shoes! They actually still wear them! (thats why the watermark had to be moved away from blocking it).

I noticed these clothes hanging outside one of the houses. I think this adequately represents their lifestyle and culture. Also, it was a B&W scene just asking to be taken…

I think I’m getting better at seeing things in black and white…Before I would never “see” the world in B&W but I’m slowly noticing some things which is wonderful! I have a great appreciation for black and white photographers because its one of the two main areas of photography that I feel I could really push the envelope with if I just practice a little more – the other one is portraiture.

Mummy and the lil guy! …in front of a green house!

As you can clearly see we had to ZIP UP coz its was freezing! …so we decided to go to a nearby cafe to warm up and eat some POFFERTJES!!! Poffertjes (pronounced [pɔfəɹcəs]) is a dutch pancake thats delicious! Unfortunately I’m not one of those who like to take pictures of my food…perhaps I should start? I did however take a portrait of my mum…

Mummy enjoying her coffee…

My favourite shot of the day is below…just before we went into the cafe we headed out to the coastline where the wind is strongest! I used a Hitech 0.6 soft edge graduated neutral density filter to get this shot…Should’ve used the Tian Ya 0.9 one but was too lazy once I zipped up my bag.

Here it is:

I went with the square framing not because I liked it but because of the cars on the upper left hand side which distracted from the composition. Thats the annoying thing about ultra wide angle lenses!

After that we headed home because we had a Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner that we had to attend…I took just two group shots of the two tables which are below. (Sorry I can’t remember all the names so I just didn’t bother)

women and childrens table.

Men’s table. I was on this table. I’m a man. – true story

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/03/15/marken-north-holland-what-i-did-on-cny-eve/feed/ 0 http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/01/08/queen-mary-falls-killarney-se-qld/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/01/08/queen-mary-falls-killarney-se-qld/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:47:14 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=89 Hey everyone, Merry Christmas and Happy NEW YEAR!!!

I’m late again (whats new eh?) and have decided to stop apologizing everytime it takes me so long to update…coz its only gonna make it worse, lol..

I’ve been busy and have been extremely enjoying this holiday…unfortunately, my brother went back to school today and my sister went back to Scotland so I’ve got plenty of time now…btw, this is going to be a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post.

“why?”

“…well, because I have to update on everything that happened in December so I can hurry up and start on this new year…this post is playing catch up.”

The Queen Mary Falls will be the main thingie but I’ll also throw in some pictures of our pre-christmas party (long overdue) and whatever I find in my December folder.

Queen Mary Falls

Ok, so Queen Mary Falls is located in South East Queensland – very very close to the border between QLD and NSW. The story goes something like this:

Queen Mary of England herself rode a horse through the waterfalls and loved the place. This was long ago when she was still a child. Well…either it was her or Queen Elizabeth but its called Queen Mary Falls so I guess the former would be correct. I’m about 10% sure.

I actually went twice. The first was to scout the place out as all good photogs do. The second was to pinpoint the good spots. (By first I meant my friendship parent took me there and by second, I meant I told my friends about it ad ended up planning another trip there!

Didn’t take many pics the first time as there were just the three of us: Me, Steph, and Mark (friednship parent). The upside is that I can some good pictures with steph!

Yes, I’ve cut my hair since then…

Oh, one thing cool about the first trip was that I got to test out my ND and ND grad filters…but me being me I forgot to bring my tripod AND filter holder that day!. Darn. For those of you who don’t know (which I’m guessing are most of you) an ND is a Neutral Density filter. Basically its like sunglasses for your camera so you can take slower shots in broad daylight. A graduated ND filter is the same thing but only the top half is darkened…anyway, you get this sort of effect:

You can see my finger holding the filter on the bottom right hand corner there! Anyway, the second time around the clouds weren’t as beautiful but I brought my tripod so got some nice shots.

Now I’m gonna stop blabbering and throw a bunch of photos so I can get to the next topic. The following pictures were taken on the second trip:

Perhaps this is a good time to explain that the Queen Mary Falls National Park is a nature reserve that consists of three main waterfalls and small streams. The main one is of course Queen Mary Falls followed by Brown Falls and the smallest one being Daggs Falls.

The walk to Daggs falls is amazing. Stop and appreciate Gods work.

…and its 1am…forget it, I’m done for the night…Will continue later…below is a gallery of the shots above and more. 91 pics altogether. Click for a 640×480 picture and feel free to request the pics u want forwarded to you. See ya soon!

However, first things first – family priority requires that I respond to my sister’s blog post in which she posted this picture:

According to some absurd cult ritual in the Scottard part of uncivilized UK, November is the month of Movember where you wear a moustache for charity…(I think my dad should be their spokesperson)…anyway, the point is that they wanna see what we ALL look like with moustaches…so…after countless seconds…

VOILA!

@Linzhi, sorry your moustache looks retarded – who ask u not to pose properly…

having said that…lets move on to the next thing on the agenda – Flying.

Before I begin I hope you (whoever reads this) understands that this blog is more of a Plog (word created by yours truly – remember you saw it here first!). This means its a picture-log. What THAT means is that I don’t really care what I write and don’t expect you to read it…its just a way to fill in gaps in between pictures.

Pictures themselves come in two flavours:-

• watermarked
• unsigned

Watermarked ones are those that are worthy of flickr and I actually bothered to put them into photoshop even if I don’t do anything except for adding the watermark, saving a backup of the original and uploading reduced file size version.

Unsigned ones are crap shots/ happy snaps that people in them should enjoy but aren’t something that I’d put up on flickr (eg. group photos).

…glad we got that sorted out.

so where were we…ah! who attended:

• Jiaren
• Aaron
• Yew Meng
• Elena
• Wilson
• Sabrina

From closest to furthest: front row: Wilson, Yew Meng. back row: Sabrina, Elena

can see the guys heads getting distorted from the wide angle…heres a better shot:

heres one with less distortion...

Sabrina surprised this on Wilson as a belated birthday present…apparently his dream is to become a pilot…hes achieving that somehow by studying multimedia at USQ…ironic huh?

If you look closely you can see Aaron being a moron in the background

Aaron and I waited this one out…they went first and we went up for the next flight…

In the meantime we just chit chatted and took photos of random things, and various parts of the plane such as this:

Aaron told me but I cant remember what this is for...all I remember is that its something like a dipstick thingie and theres some liquid inside...

shutter speed: 1/1250 (plane wasn't on full throttle though)

of course we also took them about to take off...

...before returing to taking pictures of various components...behold - the Engine!

Lycoming - best aviation engine manufacturer?

no idea what this is...

instrument for calculating altitude, speed, etc...so don't forgetto take it off before flight!

nostrils?

Aaron.

This is a Piper. A piper is different from a Cessena in that its wing is under the body instead of on top.

When they landed it was our turn and because we were paying by the hour we couldn’t afford to waste time so I didn’t take any snaps during this transition…

up up and away!

Ps. Yew Meng; ex-Singapore air force - from cockpit to pulpit.

ooh...many buttons...must...resist...temptation...

view from the heavens!

You can see the runway in the above picture…wind was really strong that day and we barely used a quarter for both take off and landing!

click on the image to see where I live!

This was the second time I’ve been up here but the first time I had my dSLR with me…so a quick tip for wannabe aerial photogs with no experience:

1. First time enjoy the view. Forget the camera because you’ll get air sick and feel like vomitting. Looking through a viewfinder doesn’t make it better.
2. Second time up stick to the telephoto lens. In this case it was a clear day so aperture wasn’t a problem. I used a 70-300mm VR lens which is very flexible.
3. forget the lens hood. It’ll just make it harder to shoot.
4. Hold the lens at its furthest point with a finger extended against the glass to suppress vibration.
5. A monopod may come in handy but I didn’t have one.
6. At that distance everything is infinity. Use manual focus with shutter priority or manual. Most shots taken at 1/4000 so ISO had to be bumped up.
7. Take a picture. Check histogram levels. Adjust accordingly. then take another hundred or so pictures before checking again. DONT waste your time reviewing pictures on the plane. Plenty of time on the ground for that later on.
8. most importantly, HAVE FUN!

First try at doing a tilt-shift miniature fake

Being in an elavated position I figured it was an ideal time to try out some shots for making tilt-shift miniature fakes. Basically what this does is it makes large images appear smaller so that the images produced appear to be a model instead of a real life scene. What do you think? Any comments?

Here’s another one of my university:

University of Southern Queensland as a miniature model.

The university was probably too big to look good as a miniature but it looked better like this than a regular aerial photography shot so I left it as it is.

After we landed Uncle Yew Meng wanted some pictures and since the sky was so beautiful I took advantage of the wide angle lens:

...and my favourite one to finish it off...also printed one of these on A3 for them.

Done. Next I’ll be blogging about a recent mother son photoshoot I did…I’ll admit its not my best work but I was crap tired that day and it had been a while since my last portraiture session. Either way, they loved the pics and I got to brush up on my photoshoot techniques. Ultimately, it was huge fun both for them and myself – and thats whats important!

sneak preview:

Auntie Ivy and Gabriel.

till then…chao!