Oh yes. 9 stops!

“Whats that mean?”

It means that it has an attenuation factor of 400!

…

nothing?

…it means it only lets 0.5% of light through it!!!

…

still nothing?!?!?!

…it means that a picture that you normally take at a shutter speed of 1/400 now needs 1 second to expose correctly!!!

***hears birds squaking noises***

…it means that you can take a 15 second shot in the middle of the day! Thats about as practical as I can explain it. I guess its good that this is a photoblog because a picture says a 1000 words, right?

Ok, right off the top I’m going to admit that that first pic isn’t Queen Mary Falls. Its actually Brown Falls but I have a very good explanation for that. Also, if you’ve been following my blog for some time then you’ll know that this isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I blogged about it and you can read all about it by clicking HERE.

This time however was a little different. Instead of a measly eight this time we had over 30 people join!!! Thats 6 vehicles  full! I was supposed to be leading everyone (because I was the most familiar with the location) but I was so  eager to try out the filter that soon wound up right at the end of the line. No worries.

First stop: Queen Mary Falls.

A quick hike from the picnic spot opposite the Caravan Park and we were at the viewing platform. We’ve had heavy rain for the past 3 weeks or so so the fall was intense. Here’s the kicker. The best view is from below. Unfortunately, a boulder had fallen and it had been deemed too risky to allow people to go down so I wasn’t able to get a picture from there. After a good amount of picture taking we headed back to the picnic spot via an alternate route which had a collection of streams which were too beautiful not to photograph.

This stream might look peaceful but that horizon where the water stops is the Queen Mary Falls drop! In the picture of Queen Mary Falls, this stream leads to the edge of the section closest to the camera!

Turn a good 180 degrees and you’re greeted with this:

OK, heres the problem with the ND400 filter. Technically, its the same as having really dark sunglasses. REALLY  dark sunglasses. REALLY REALLY DARK SUNGLASSES. (sorry, caps lock turrets acting up gain) So dark that its almost impossible to see through…this is where the limitations kick in. In order to utilise the filter successfully you’re supposed to

1) compose you photo

2) put the filter on

3) take the shot

4) remove filter

5) repeat step 1.

Being myself I got tired of this after about the first shot… so I just left it on and made an educated guess as to the best probable angle. Granted these won’t be the best shots…in all honesty, I’m quite dissapointed with the overall results…but when I want to go on a proper photo  outing, I’ll be going in a small group so I can take my time to compose and adjust.

Here are some of the people that came along.

After we got back to the picnic spot we had lunch before heading off to see the birds. My friend, Min, in all his wisdom bought enough bird seeds to feed a small country to pass out rather than letting us buy them from the shop for $1/bag.

The birds will land on your hand/shoulders/head for you to feed them. Its great fun and everyone enjoyed it. I’ve posted some of the shots from the past visit which you can view by clicking HERE. I’ve been assigned to post the ones from this trip on the ANS Facebook page so I’m not going to bother having duplicates here.

After the novelty wore off we headed up to Carrs Lookout, a nice little spot with a gorgeous view. Here is where the filter really shone! You can blur water with a small aperture. You can blur water in broad daylight with a Cokin P filter. But only with something like an 9-stop ND400 filter can you actually blur clouds!

This following picture was taken with the ND400 filter + Tiffen 0.6 soft Graduated ND + Sigma 10-20mm at the wide end. Exposure time: 30 seconds in the middle of the day. Screw all the photoshop vignettes out there this is what real vignetting looks like:

Beautiful day, nice breeze, green grass and a heard of cows lazing under a tree in the distance.

After this we headed off to an unofficial border between Queensland and New South Wales before heading down to Brown Falls. We skipped Daggs falls because we were behind schedule.

This is Brown Falls:

This next shot literally caused me hours of grief. You see I wanted to get close into the rocks and shoot the fall from below. The wind blew all this water vapour into the lens. I had to clean the filter, put it back on the lens, take the shot, and get out of there with the filter all dirty again. I didn’t know this before but Hoya HMC filters are a pain to clean! I mean I spent hours trying to get all the crap off but there are still streak marks on it. I feel like sending it back and getting the non-coated B+W version.

…all for this lousy pic so I’m obligated to post it.

You can still see the vapour screwing up the top part of the picture. All in all a good day. Still need a dedicated day just for shooting but was fun none-the-less. Some guys had a dip in the fall, most didn’t. We headed back to the Toowoomba after an exhausting day and most of them didn’t go to church the next day.

Oops.

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Here is a photo of the entire group that joined.

I you came here looking for the photos of people that joined, follow this link to the gallery: Facebook Gallery

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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!

About a month ago, we headed off to Sydney for the Hillsong Conference. Altogether there were about 20 of us which was pretty cool…unfortunately, we didn’t all travel together (nor did we all stay together). I headed a group of 11, nine of which were gonna fly to and from Brisbane together, while one of them took the flight before and the other came from Singapore! Here’s our group of 9 after we disembarked from the plane:

Okay, that creepy non-Asian white guy in the back is a advert poster…Will isn’t in the shot coz we were on the horizontal escalator where as he wasn’t…of course I was behind the camera…
After countless hours (yes, literally HOURS) or arguing which would be the best transport to get to our accommodation we finally decided on a big shuttle bus which brought us on a 40 minute drive to Parramatta, which is located to the West of Sydney. We happily unpacked our bags and was out the door! We took the train down to the city where we were just in time for dinner before heading toward the Harbour to meet up with Christoph.

Meet Christoph:

Christoph was our housemate back in Toowoomba for a year. He’s currently somewhere between Thailand and Singapore on his holiday before heading back to Germany where he comes from. He moved out by this time and happened to be in Sydney that night so we planned to meet up…being Asians, we had to take a lot of group pics…

How many people can you spot? One of us had relatives in Sydney so he didn’t join us…thats why there’s only 10 ppl. *EDIT* Actually theres less coz I cropped Edna out of the frame…Sorry Edna! I didn’t have my tripod and so I had to improvise…this next shot is heavily cropped so the lamp post I used wouldn’t get in the picture of the Eye of Sydney.

I think its funny how every major city now has an “Eye”…

We walked along the harbour past the Sydney Aquarium and other attractions which were almost closing as it was rather late by this time…We checked the schedule for the ferry and saw that we would be able to make the last one so while we waited for the ferry we walked back to the Sydney Aquarium where they had a nice backlit billboard of Spongebob Squarepants. I noticed it on the way to the ferry and went back for one purpose and one purpose only: to get this shot:

That’s my friend Patrick (which also happens to be from Miri). This picture is titled, “Patrick & Patrick”.

Anyway, we then headed to a place called the Rocks to have some sort of famous pancake. Indeed it was a pancake house franchise which had been sort of springing up all over the place. We went in for dessert. Now, let me make it clear that I do NOT take pictures of the food I eat…its sooooooooooooooooooooo cliche doncha think? …but they insisted so I took a happy snap of my chocolate strawberry pancake…YUM!

Hmm…I’m really sorry but my timeline of the events that occured after this pitstop seems to have screwed itself up in my brain so I can’t remember what we did when we did…All I remember is that along the… (this crossed out paragraph corresponds to the “Patrick & Patrick” picture and the paragraph above it…)

Although I took a bunch of pics after that I’m not going to share anymore simply because I still have a lot to cover…by the way, the current time now is exactly 5.13am. I don’t plan to sleep and I want to finish by dawn-ish so we can go to the Sunday Market before church Who’s “we” you ask? That’s me and Steph…I’m not sleeping tonight because I slept this arvo…what’s “arvo” you ask? its Aussie for “afternoon”. What’s “Aussie”? It’s short for “Australia”. What’s “Australia” you ask? A big island surrounded with water which has a severe water problem. Go figure.

Fast forward through the night and early the next morning…

Yours truly together with his team of intrepid explorers, Patrick and Stephanie, went to pit their strength against the wrath of the mighty Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains is one of Australia’s biggest tourist destination. It is a collection of mountains that expand across the landscape that when looked at appear to be blue in colour. Its blue haze is of a different hue and deeper than anywhere else in the world. This is caused primarily by Eucalyptus trees emitting oil vapour into the atmosphere which along with fine dust particles and droplets of water vapour scatter the blue light (blue light is short wave light) more than any other colour in the spectrum. (That last sentence was taken from the guide book. If you’re interested, look for it on wikipedia.)

Also the home to the Three Sisters, a natural rock formation which is sort of difficult to explain so I’ll show you a picture:

You can see the Blue Mountains in the background. I’ve already warmed up the tones to make the Three Sisters more prominent in the frame of this picture and even so the mountains appear so blue so you can imagine how blue it actually was!

We took the ExplorerBus to Scenic World, home to the steepest railway which has a maximum gradient of 52 degrees!  It feels like its almost 90 degrees!

See how the trees are straight? If I left my bag on the empty seat im front it would’ve ended up right at the front! When we got to the bottom Partrick helped me take a picture of me and Steph and the three sisters…thx Pat!

We continued by foot through the forest to the bottom where we would take one cablecar up to the main platform and another back to the place the bus dropped us. We managed to sneek in a strobist shot while walking through the forest. After a few attempts we got it right…credit to Steph for taking the picture and Patrick for holding the flash:

Heres Steph in the cable car enjoying herself on one of the cablecar rides:

Oh, by the way, this is our ExplorerBus…the hop-on hop-off tour bus we used to get between places…the bus driver was kind enough to let us take a picture before he zoomed off to the next stop:

The driver was very friendly. There are actually two busses but this one seemed to always be the next one up! We walked through the cold forest to Leura Cascades. Its a beautiful stream of water falling all the way to the bottom. Be warned that I LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOOVVVEEE waterfalls. If I see a waterfall I MUST take a picture of it…that means I have to take out my ND filters and spend a good 15 minutes taking the fall from almost every conceivable angle. These are my three favourite shots:

How convenient the series is actually in order of how I shot them and its going from top down so you can actually sort of visualize the waterfall as it slowly cascades down to the bottom where you can see the pool in the last pic…

After this we continued our jungle trek for another hour or so until we finally reached the end and waited for the bus to pick us up. These were the last few shots I took during the day because I was too tired by the time we were out of the forest.

A view from one of the many many lookout points.

Patrick at the bus pick up point to head back to the main town.

The rest of the group actually asked us to go back to the Sydney CBD after our trip to the Blue Mountains but we were just too tired to bother…otherwise we could have met up with Rachel who lives there… By the time we got back to the accommodation (which is 2hr + away from the Blue Mountains) it was about 9pm and I couldn’t wait to sleep!

Fast forward through the night and early the next morning…

Today we had big plans. Places to go, things to see, and stuff to do…unfortunately, we were late.

…sooooooooooooooooo we ended up going to see the Sydney Opera House and then went to some small town for lunch before we did some other things which I can’t remember…crap this is the second time in this post! Well, that doesn’t matter because I only want to share my pics of the Opera House and ask you a question.

This is a rather famous bridge. The Sydney Harbour Bridge. Now for the question. Which of the following two photos do you think is better? They are both the same picture just differently cropped.

Personally, I like the second one. That’s all I got. The day after this was the conference so I’ll get working on it right away! Til then, thanks for reading!

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/2009/01/20/north-stradbroke-island-qld/ http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/01/20/north-stradbroke-island-qld/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:54:56 +0000 Jiaren http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/?p=199 Ok, straight to the point.

Steph and I took a short getaway to the Gold Coast to celebrate a special occasion. I planned a cool day of enjoying the Gold Coast and a day trip to North Stradbroke Island, an Island just off the Brisbane Coast. We didn’t take many photos in the Gold Coast as that wasn’t the purpose but we did head up to Q1, the worlds tallest residential tower. As a matter of fact, its the tallest building in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. I just found out like 10+ seconds ago that Q1 stands for Queensland Number 1. Below is the view from the Obsevation Deck creatively known as QDeck. It is on the 77 and 78th floor. You have to pay to get up there. It cost a fair bit and you get into an elevator that whisks you up to the 77th floor in 40 seconds flat.

This is the view from the Observation Deck.

It was late by the time we got down so sorry for the crap shot but here it is from the bottom up:

Having been to the pinnacle of urban Australian, we headed to Stradbroke Island the very next day.

It was weird because we left the mainland at about midday…3/4 way into the water taxi trip we went straight into a fog and by the time we arrived at the port it was raining cas and dogs. I was dissapointed because I thought thr whole day would be wasted but the other half of the Island was completely dry! We got off the bus and had some lunch before heading to the nearest short walking trails…This was the first thing we saw:

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to stay around and wait for sunset because we had to take the bus back to the port, catch the water taxi to the mainland, and drive 2hrs back to Toowoomba…

Anyway, the short time we were there we were fortunate enough to encounter some beautiful scenery and wildlife. We weren’t even expecting most of it. We just stood there bathing in awe of  God’s glorious creation when sting rays, turtles, and even dolphins just swam close enough to the shore to see!

I’ll stop blabbering now and let the pictures speak for themselves…

ok, maybe no THAT close…pictures are cropped even with my telephoto lens…The dolphins would’ve been beautiful except I had my wide angle lens on at the time and didn’t have time to change. The sting ray was close enough but was underwater and was difficult to make out.

We followed the trail which is called the North Gorge Walk which tracks around the edge of a cliff at the tip of the island. According to the sign its a 20-30 minute hike. It took us 20 minutes to walk around the cliff and we stopped all along the way to take pictures but we had to catch the next bus back to the port so we turned around and headed back where we came from which was another 20 minutes. Only when we got back did we realised that the trail was actually a CIRCUIT!!! If we walked another 100m we would have got back to the same place and save 20 minutes! In the end we didn’t even get to touch the sand on the beach!

At least we managed to get some good shots while out there:

For those of you who don’t know – when swimming at a beach in Australia, lifeguards patrol the areas between the red and yellow flags.

Til next time, peace out!

…and by the way, this site is NOT dying. I’m just lazy.

]]> http://www.blog.jiarenlau.com/2009/01/20/north-stradbroke-island-qld/feed/ 11 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!