So a little while ago I lent Brandon my macro lens. I didn’t need it so I said he could return it whenever he wanted. However, last week he made some last minute plans to go back to Malaysia. I figured I might need to lens for the wedding I’m shooting next week so we dropped it off at my place before he left. Yesterday, we got bored at home so we wanted to look for a park to visit…my housemate, Warren, recommended we head to Newtown Park. I’ve never been there before so I thought why not.
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!
I don’t exactly know where to classify this place as. Some call it the Toowoomba Sunflower Field, some call it the Cambooya Sunflower patch, Either one is fine by me. Technically, we (as in Steph and I) found the sunflower field in a little place called Nobby, which is further down the road from Cambooya. There used to be loads in Cambooya but I was told by a friend who has to travel via that area to go to work that they didn’t plant them this year.
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!
Yup, Toowoomba has its own motocross club! I’ve driven past it on a few occasions but never thought to take a look…until now.
I dropped off Aaron at home (which is just outside the race track) and heard such a racket that we just had to be a busybody. So, off we were straight from church with Steph still in her high heels walking down a gravel road to see what all the commotion was about.
We were greeted by this sign:
I guess having a race is an exception then?
You can see Steph struggling in her high heels (notice the appropriate footwear in the picture above?)
I guess you can’t really tell after all…by the way, Coca Cola and 100 Plus is not endorsing us, lol. Moving on, the road to the track is quite a steep drop which gives quite a nice vantage point for photogs. Me being my lazy self when not being paid couldn’t be bothered to change lenses so you can only see the starting line and a bit of the track.
One of the first shots I got was my personal favourite. Its the one thats in the slideshow at the top of the page (if you have the patience to wait long enough because its the last picture before it loops again.
The one thing I didn’t like was the guy that happened to be standing there right behind the bike as I took the picture. “Don’t worry, you’re not blind…you can’t see him there coz I did what any good photographer would do – photoshop”. Sometimes I amaze even myself. If you know me and have followed my work you’ll know I like to get the shot right in camera. Having said that, if an object in the frame doesn’t add to the composition, its taking away from it. Heres the original before my half hour of photoshop magic:
Yes, I know – applaud my genius.
After taking some shots where the crowd was I went scouting for a better angle. I found a place right at the edge of the fence where I was up close and personal with the riders. There was even a conveniently places hole in the fence for me to stick my lens through. It was a tight corner as the came zooming up a slight incline before taking this sharp left turn where the proceeded downhill.
Check out all the dirt being kicked up!
I’ll bet theres a motivational quote somewhere in there. This next one are of two riders fighting for the championship:
I was happy with the shots from that sharp right and decided I needed to practice some panning action. I didn’t do so well. As a matter of fact, this is the only one I dare show you. The rest are garbage.
When one race finishes, another begins. Thats great as you get to see the jump in a group.
BIG AIR!
By this time the annoying pestering of both a best friend and a girlfriend to ditch this joint had pushed me to my limit so I gave in and went home…but not before taking one last jump!
Side note: Aaron (the dude in the picture), just arrived back in Australia after visiting the UK for holidays. While he was there, he and his family visited the TATE musuem where you can record a short video clip and send it to a friend. Little did he know he was going to share it with the world!
