you can love your iPod (or Android...)

but it doesn't keep you warm.......

Have I mentioned how cold it is?

Down here in the real South... it is cold....
                a few days it has been very cold.

So, no photos of beach volley ball games as the sun goes down or wandering around wearing very little, ready for a swim....

In fact even pouring boiling water for a cup of tea or coffee is hard.....

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.

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...

Issues Stymie Leaving Yesterday

Well,
Leaving China involved a domestic flight and then a boring 6 hour wait for our international flight... but we took care of that.  The domestic flight was very nearly 6 hours late, so after a couple of phone calls from inside the plane while we were sitting waiting to (eventually take off) we stayed in Beijing for an extra night...

All worked out ok.

It would have been good to have a guardian angel to look at what the flights were doing.  Just someone watching and seeing I had got in safely... I used to have one of those, but since then the flights have not been quite as trouble free.


this is the plane leaving Hong Kong the following day.

Couple Shots Taken Of Underneath

Chinese Subway

 Chinese Walkway....

Chinese Forbidden City Grounds

Products from Chinese Machines...

On the way home.

Panoramas

A bit of Great Wall...

A bit of Forbidden City....

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.

puppy

My work

for those of you who have wondered before what exactly it is that I do...
I decided to include a technical diagram of one of the machines I am working on right now.

I have included a lot of technical annotation on the photo....
(This is now the sum total of what I know!)

Wedding Wishes

Starting at about 4am there were more fireworks this morning.
This time the biggest, longest bangs were for a wedding that is happening here...
Here are some of the remains!

I am not sure how I would feel about having my photo all over something that people where going to blow up!

Water Writing

Writing on the tiles of the Town Square with water....

street....

People playing instruments for change at the side of the road...
They are invariably blind...

This guy was really quite good

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