One light among billions

A field day with the Toowoomba Photographic Society a couple of months ago.

About 30km outside Toowoomba (which is the light you can see on the horizon there.



30 second exposure, wide open, wide angle lens, and a good powerful flashlight.

Kalgoorlie's Super Pit

Kalgoorlie celebrates the big hole that it has put in the ground...
I am here this week for work.
Travel time to get here seems ridiculous given that I never leave the country!

Not a broken finger...

When you still have a sore knuckle 8 weeks after doing something silly at while doing some exercise... you expect that hand to at least have the decency to show up something interesting in an X ray.....

Yeah.... no.
It all looks perfectly normal!

I can only assume that means that it is completely psychosomatic.

Hiding from myself

One I have been meaning to do for a while...
The topic for the photography competition this month at TPS is "Selfie"... so I thought, why not?!


Photogeeking:  This photo took several years of planning... 4 or 5 years ago, I started developing a clone of myself (he is the one in the red shirt)...  he is not much good for most things, but was useful for this.  He sees things fairly simply and spends a lot of time cranky, so convincing him to do this was not hard.  A flash through an umbrella was used for the blue me... a direct flash for the red me, with another one filling in some of the detail.

Windows to the soul

Filed under:  things you do when you are bored in your hotel room with 2 flashes, a camera and photoshop.

Yesterday's morning activities...

Here in Miluo,
out the back of my hotel...
after spending some time ferretting around randomly with my camera and flash...  I worked up the courage to ask the guy I wanted to photograph if I could shoot him while he was working....

He had no problems with it.... and this was the result.  He was shovelling coal from a big pile outside to a smaller pile inside and then from that pile into the boiler that was giving me hot water in my hotel - so I definitely appreciated his efforts!

Walking around Miluo

In order to make sure that I did not spend too much time wallowing in my hotel room on the last Sunday in Miluo... I went for a walk in the rain.  All very lovely (and a weird combination of a little hot and bitterly cold)...

my intention was to walk to where all the rice fields started.... I did not quite make it, but found some interesting things on the way.

First one, normal photo run through a vintage process in Silver EFEX.
Second shot... A mum and her child were walking along, at some distance away I pointed to my camera and gestured to ask if I could take a shot...  She nodded and this is what came out...  A little bit of oversharpening to get some detail out of a VERY dreary day...

Down side of an older car...

So, there are all these things you take for granted when you have them....
and when you make a decision to go back to an older model, they are no longer there....

In this case, in every car I have owned for the last 2 decades I have had a little thing that tells me "distance to empty".  I no longer have that - and it turns out that I use that a lot...

My car decided to stop working on the highway on the way home.
I pulled off to the side, called Ruth, who soon arrived, (laughing the whole way) with a fuel can.

Luckily I had a camera to record the whole experience...

Lighting experiment

playing in a dark room.
just using an iphone as the light source.

For some reason, it is difficult to convince other people to be your models for these types of experiments...

Great Wall Shenanigans

Went to the Great Wall today.  Ended up looking around with an American Gentlemen who was working on his Executive MBA for the day.  (he was working on the MBA for more than a day... we were just hanging out with him for a day... just thought I would clear that up!)  All good fun.

the Chairman and I....

Beijing today.... had a bit of a walk around....

The traditional "get a photo with a Westerner" thing was alive and well.... 10 seconds after this shot I got nabbed for a shot with a random nearby local

your thoughts..?...

Spent the day cutting down trees at my sister's place today... great fun, hard work separated by trying to work out how to drop trees on her little block and not on the houses next door!... a little tired...  but I have a question....

I am thinking that while I am spending months and months away in China this year, that I should use the time a little productively and do and MBA at the time....

what do you think?

Too much SUN!!!

Starting to be Autumny here... so just starting to get a little cooler...
I am at my favourite position outside my favourite coffee shop, and have been working pretty well...  just completed a document I have been working on.....
BUT - because of the change in season, the sun has changed position...  so now it is hitting me full in the face...

I know that it might conceivably be possible for me to sit in another position... but gosh darn it.. this is my spot!!!

I am forced to conclude that despite what I might think, this is absolute proof that the universe does not revolve around me.... who woulda thunk it?

Now - if you will excuse me.. I think I need to go and have a headache now.

Myky got a boo-boo.

and a lovely little Tigger band-aid for it!

Photogeeking: 10mm lens, Flash with a shoot through umbrella above, a flash with a snoot (a light funnel) made out of junk mail pointing at my leg...

Still justifying....

Last night I worked my way through all the digitial entries... today I took a vacation day to get some things done including the judging of all the actual prints....  Well over 100 shots in all.

Presenting "my findings" tonight... hoping I get out alive!

not quite so heavenly.

I was walking around...
Might have been a tiny bit chilly....
You would not have thought it was cold enough that people were coming
up and grabbing my arms to check I was warm... and then giving me a
thumbs up symbol.... bit uncomfotable really.... despite popular
opinion I am very picky about the people I want touching me!!!


Camera Geek:
Camera is sitting on my camera bag (that is the "tripod" I have with me all the time), using a little (just bought at the markets 1 hour before this) $4 IR remote control.  The on camera flash is up and is on slow sync just to give a little flash at me (if your camera can do this it is INCREDIBLY useful....{slow sync or rear curtain just mean that it take the picture the way that it would if there was no flash... but then it will throw a bit of flash in either at the beginning or end of the shot [really good for giving a bit of extra light on people's faces when you are outdoors]})

Starbucks... the place to...

> Go when you need a sleep....
> Or when you and your puppy need a bit of exercise....
> 2 different days..2 different cities. first in Changsha, second in Beijing...

Police visit

Been sitting waiting for a police officer to take my fingerprints. I
hope I have not been bad in my sleep cause this search will show it
up....
I remember doing similar waiting to get my photograph at the Louisiana
State Police....
Ahhh good times!

Good night

Pleasant dreams....

Incidental Masticatory Yelp

Ok... so for the past 2 years I have been busily grinding my teeth down to tiny little nubs while I sleep....

Doing something about that at the moment with a special recipe... add one dentist, a whole heap of time and liberal servings of bank account....

My last visit involved the dentist stepping on my head to keep my mouth open for 90 minutes as ground what was left of some of my teeth down, made castings and then temporary crowns.  The real ones will be made and installed in the next few weeks  ( and this is the bottom left so far... I still have the other three sides to get done....)....  Afterwards I should be able to bite cable cars and things like a James Bond villain.

Anyway a temporary crown that I have on one of my teeth has just come off.. (while eating cheese out at a photo meeting of all things...).. and the lovely little exposed nerves underneath are declaring themselves to me quite mercilessly. And now that I am back home, I am finding I have to drink my burbon and coke with my head tilted to the side....