Down in Melbourne this week.

At least it was a beautiful morning to travel!

Decommission

20 years ago, we built a machine  (actually we built three machines - but this one was first among equals.)  The particular machine's name was "Audrey", named after the man eating plant from the Little Shop of Horrors.  She had tried (and failed) to eat a number of us during the commissioning.

Now after making in the order of 20000000 products for the company, it has now been decommissioned.

As the original engineers who thought her up, built her and made her run, it was a bittersweet moment for Ian and me.

Backyard Milkyway

"And it's something quite peculiar,

Something that's shimmering and white...

Leaves you here, despite your destination,

Under the Milky Way tonight"

Playing around in the backyard tonight, before the moon came up.
One of the wonderful things about the southern hemisphere - so much less light! (although you can see the light from Toowoomba in the bottom right of the sky).
Anyway, a pleasant experiment.

unclear...

The view from one of the lookouts I drive past every morning...

Not so much view this time.

View from my hotel room Queenstown

This was a couple of hours ago tonight...
Spectacular!

Tomorrow we are going to be coming down a zip line from the top of the mountain in Queenstown.  Should be huge!

Between a sunset like this, and what we saw today jetboating.... it is completely understandable that they would chose this area for the back drop for Lord of the the Rings.

View from my hotel room....

a little different this time.
We are vacationing in New Zealand.
For anyone who has a chance to do it, I recommend it whole heartedly!!

This was the view from inside the motel in Wanaka in the South Island.

Of course - when i actually took the time to go down to Lake Wanaka and take a photo or two.... this was the result.....  An amazingly picturesque place.

Windows to the soul

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

PSAM

If anyone is interested... here is the mindmap I used in a talk a couple of months ago....
Asked to do some sort of "for people new to photography" talk...

So I talked on the modes of the camera....

It is summarised in this diagram:  I am not sure if it means anything without me talking about it as well..... but there could be something in there that is useful?

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...

Riding to work

My hands

Couple of photos from this week.
One - playing with a couple of flashes and a punching bag (and Xander - whose timing was impeccable on these shots!) 

Some of the outtakes from the bag punching shots will never see the light of day.... lets just say that skin is not meant to be seen at highspeed under impact.


Photogeeking: punching the bag.  A flash well behind the bag as a rim light (also gets my face), another at the bottom of the back pointing up where my arm will hit....  then I dipped my hand in some flour to get the dust.

Second one - flash on the table raking across my hands to get all sorts of texture, and a much less powerful one above spotlighting down on it...

Not on a plane....

I am meant to be on a plane to China in 4 hours time....
But there is some confusion with some paperwork.... (at least I think it is just paperwork...)
and so I am not flying off anywhere for the moment.

I do not need any flight angels making sure I get to my destination ok today.  Maybe I will need one again in a week or so....

So instead of packing this afternoon... we went to a shopping center.  I got to have a play with a bungy-trampoline!!  I was a little bigger than most of their clientele.  This is me in the middle of a backward somersault.  My double somersault did not work so well.... but luckily I do not have a photo of the result of that!!

Me at the conference

Me presenting at the PSQ conference..


I am exceedingly difficult to photograph on stage, because I spend very little time where I am meant to be.... I tend to wander around all over the place, doing cartwheels and handstands to try to make a point.

With this in mind, thanks to Bob Britcher from Ipswich Photographic Society for managing the difficult task as committing me to a still image!

Worked Well..

Well the talk I did for the Photographic Society of Queensland must have been vaguely ok, cause I have been asked if I would do a talk for next year's conference which will be held in Mackay...

I of course said that I would love to (cause I do really enjoy doing this sort of thing).

There we all sorts of interesting conversations going on in groups after my presentation, so I felt pretty happy.

Putting things off...

In 5.5 days time, I will be presenting a lecture in front of (possibly) a couple of hundred people.

The lecture will be on how our perception and memory are inherently flawed and how photos influence our memories (no really - it will be interesting I am sure!).

Reading through the biographies for the other speakers is funny...   All of them have photographed professionally for all sorts of publications, they have reported on wars, have their own art galleries and all sorts of qualifications.  My bio says "Mykl has taken a photo before".

A little intimidating actually.

So needless to say, instead of actually working on my lecture, I am writing a blog post that no-one will read...
I am procrastinating so badly that I just spent the last hour sending work emails!!

So with no further ado... and no relevance at all...  here a photo Blythe took of me photographing the China TV building during the last trip to Beijing.

Minutes away...

From doing a little talk at the University here.... I am convincing young engineering students that they have done the right thing by choosing engineering by telling them about my exciting career......
.
.
.
I might need to leave out some bits..
Wish me luck.

Its a NEW CAR!!!!!

Well, maybe not....

Because I am spending too much time in China at the moment, having my leased car is no longer an option....

So I am moving out of my auto-everything, insanely comfortable, quite fast car into.....

this.....

It will have its 20th birthday next year.....
To think that when I first moved to the US I was complaining about driving a mini-van!

One thing I discovered as I drove it back home from Maryborough (about 400kms)... modern cars make it soooo much easier to drive long distances... the week before I did the same drive in Ruth's car without stopping.  Arrived perfectly comfortable...
On driving back my new steed, I stopped three times, and enjoyed every stop.  Not having airconditioning, comfortable seats, cruise control... all those little things I have taken for granted for quite a few years!