January down, 11 to go

Probably the longest new year's resolution I've held but somehow I've managed to take a photo every day for a whole month. As something to look forward to (and to milk all my "hard work") I figured I'd post a selection of favourites from the month to my neglected Flickr account and single out one snap which I'm particularly chuffed about.



We finally got around to using our Gold Class tickets earlier on in the month to watch Casino Royale at Garden City. Alison's snack food of choice was coloured popcorn which came in useful later on that day when I needed to snap a photo of something.

This was probably one of my more meticulously planned pictures as I thought it necessary to hand pick each and every single kernel and distribute them within the wine glass for maximum colour separation (OCD anyone?). I then retreated to our spare room and shut blinds and door to control lighting. Moving the glass as far away from the back wall (to take advantage of my new found understanding of the inverse square law), I then set up an elaborate "studio" lighting configuration which comprised of an emergency lamp and our two mobile phones. Alison was kind enough to hold one of the phones above the glass for a highlight.

Photo was taken free hand with my 50mm prime at f/4.0, 1/60 and ISO 800. The results aren't exactly technically brilliant but I'm still proud of how close the final picture is to my original vision.

Crumpler Whore

Went into the city yesterday to take snap some piccies and prowl the shops. First stop was into Ted's camera shop to see if they'd have a slim Hoya circular polarizer but all they had was the normal thick variety. Would have probably picked it up anyway if they had any step up rings in stock.

As seems to be tradition when I can't buy camera gear, I decided it was time to replace my chaffing freebie Canon camera bag with something of a little more quality. It's the perfect size for carrying the body with a lens mounted and an extra lens.



We waited till the noon sun came out before waltzing over to Brisbane Square to fire off a few shots. The architecture is rather gaudy but it was great fun to take pictures of.



I used my 18-55mm kit lens at widest to take everything in and corrected perspective in photoshop. First time I'd noticed how much chromatic aberration I get with that lens but thankfully that was simple to fix too.

Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Oy Oy Oy!

Happy Australia Day everyone. Still haven't gotten off my arse to apply for citizenship yet so Alison's telling me I should be at work as it's not my holiday. Nasty. :(

We're going to be heading out for a barbie with Alison's workmates which should be good fun. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't unpacked the BBQ set that I got for my birthday last year or we'd probably host something ourselves.

Thought I'd share some typical Aussie tucker with international visitors (looks over to the general Boston area). Here's some damper which we have for brekkie every Australia day with some golden syrup.

Happy Snapper

Not much time to post lately as I'm getting my spurt of internet communion through my daily pictures. I must admit that I didn't think I'd even last this long and it's surprising how the 'pressure' to come up with something new each day puts the squeeze on your creative glands. Immersing myself in taking photographs has also got me reading up more techniques and theory which is absolutely fascinating. Hard to believe that I once thought I knew enough about photography to get by.

Try as I might I haven't figured out how to display images from photoblog like I do with my flickr badge yet unfortunately. Yeah, I know that all you flickr pros out there would scoff and tell me I shouldn't have used photoblog in the first place. Hopefully someone will figure it out later but in the mean time I've just added an RSS feed to the side bar of The Rabbit

The rest of our spare time has been spent printing out and cutting up invitations for that big party in June. We'd invite more of you but I'm feeling faint at the thought of the amount of sticking, cutting, folding and printing we've got ahead of us already. Invites should hopefully be going out towards the end of the month... *sigh* snip, snip, paste

Reunited

It's been a painful separation but I've finally reclaimed Gemini from Toshiba Mobile Services. It turned out to be a broken display card after all but they just replaced the entire main board. So far so good, no artifacts or glitches on the screen from what I can tell. I'd almost forgotten how bright the darn thing is actually.

Spreading on the Net

Ever since starting this blog I've been delighted at how Google-able my name has become. Thought I'd give it another go today and found two new links of note.

The first one an update on my SSS BBQ Barn challenge that I did ages back. I guess they finally got around to putting my name on the website

Second link is from Alison's old school in Toowoomba. Just a little engagement announcement for alumni to keep track of.

Nothing like search hits to give a man that misguided feeling of self importance.

I believe I can fly

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to YOU!!!
Happy BIRTHDAY to Aliiiiisooooooooonn...
Happy Biiiirthdaaaay... tooooooo... yoooooouuuuuuuuuuu!
Well Alsie Walsie turned a quarter of a century old yesterday so we had to do something a little special to mark the occassion. Something she's always wanted to try, which I'm basing on all the 'hints' she's bludgeoned me with through the year, is to go for a hot air balloon ride.

I'd been warned that successfully scheduling a balloon ride for a specific day would really depend on fair weather conditions. I must have lost count of how many times I'd checked the weekly weather report on the lead up to Sunday hoping that the forecasted "Sunny and Fine" would hold true. Thankfully I didn't get a phone call from the pilot that morning to cancel the flight so we were dressed and off at 4:00AM to get to the park before sunrise.



Inflating the balloon was pretty nifty. They blow cold air through the throat of the balloon on it's side to fill most of it up and get some shape.



Then they heat up the air which causes the balloon to rise upright slowly. The balloon was big enough to carry nine people so we had to scramble in pretty quickly to prevent the pilot taking off on his own.

Once we were in the air though, the view was just marvelous. It's hard to believe how much control the pilot had over which direction he wanted to move in and rotate. All of it came down to reading the winds and burning at the right time to catch the right correction.



Needless to say we managed to get some pretty nifty views of the city that you wouldn't normally be able to see.



Being up at the crack of dawn before the city comes to life also presented a few rare shots.

After a little over an hour we returned to terra firma next to a creek near Kedron. The landing wasn't nearly as traumatic as we were lead to believe although we did get pretty close to making a splash in the water. All up a fantastic experience and one that we'd definitely like to try again somewher else in the world.

A brand new year

Happy 2007 to everyone! Als and I ushered in the new year with a night of fun and food at Kath and Andrew's; playing Wii and boardgames while sampling delightful delicacies with youthful abandon before retiring in a tipsy stupor at an embarassingly early hour (12:15 I believe). One day we'll learn to party as adults do.

As is customary at the start of the neo-annum I've drafted a few resolutions to attempt. Some of them of course are old favourites but let's hope that in writing them, albeit virtually, I'll be more inclined to stick to my guns.

• Eat healthier and exercise more (There's a big event coming up in June I hear which I might want to look good for)
• Save more money
• Find more time to play and actually finish some of my games (Hah)
• Spend more time working on my game projects (Double Hah)

My main resolution which I'd like to keep though is to try this whole Photo a Day craze which I've heard about. I figure that January 1st is a good time as any to start taking photos for a whole year and with luck come out with a nifty calendar at the end of it. Alison, with prior knowledge that I was planning on doing this, signed me up for a year long subscription to Australian Photography which will should help me keep the project going.



Here's the first photo of the year. Not a fantastic one, in fact I have a feeling that over the course of the year there will be more than a fair share of crappy and boring photos of miscellaneous household objects. Hopefully there will be a few good ones in there too though.

Rather than flooding my neglected Flickr account with random pictures I've signed up with Photoblog to host all of this. I particularly like the monthly view which they support.



Now here's the real reason why I haven't spent all that much time on today's photo. We've just got back from town with my new entertainment purchase BattleLore, which is actually the first boardgame I've bought in a fair while. Alison and I are both big fans of Memoir '44 which is based on the same game system used in this so I'm sure we'll like it. Once I make my way through the 80 page rulebook anyway... ^_^;