New Years Eve

Tonight is the night of fireworks and I intend to try and shoot a few using my Olympus 500E. With this in mind I had a little practice at getting settings that worked for fireworks - but in daylight. To do this I made up a sort of "studio" on the veranda using the black barbecue cover as a background and a brick wall as shelter. A sparkler was stuck into a piece of florist's "oasis" foam and Colin was my pyro-technician with the flame thrower!
For this shot I was using my 40-150mm lens and I set the shutter speed to 1/20 second and the aperture at F11
To begin with I went to the scene mode on the camera to see what the settings were in that. That is where I found out to use F11, however I knew that the speed was wrong. The speed in Scene mode was four seconds. I actually had a try with that setting and of course the captured picture was just completely blown out. Far to long! Even if it hadn't over exposed the picture would have been a white blur where the sparks are in this image.
I will try the settings I tried - F11 with a variety of shutter speeds ranging from 1/15 to 1/30 second - all of which gave good results. Of course the camera was locked on a tripod or there would have been blur.
Next blog hopefully will contain a shot of the fireworks!
AJ

Climbing Frangipani

As I sit on my veranda to have breakfast or lunch I can see the changing colours of the creepers that swarm over a tall tree stump. My veranda is not on ground level, it is on the first floor of the house, over the flat used by our travelling son when he eventually comes home for a break. So the tree stump is quite large - the original tree was enormous and we had it lopped for safety reasons when we built the extensions that include the flat, unfortunately the shock of the severe pruning killed the tree so the five metre tall tree stump was left to support three different creepers.

At the moment it is the climbing Frangipani that is in flower, when it has finished the pink Jasmine will take over the display. The strands of the Jasmine are completely hidden at the moment and house a huge collection of finch nests. The sweet little Double Bar Finches know when they are onto a good thing and have made homes close to where there is a regular supply of seeds! As you can see the Frangipani is quite vigorous and has continued past the tree stump and up and into the African Tulip Tree! That tree is not ready to flower yet so it was looking rather boring until this happened!

Not many people have come across the Climbing Frangipani and I am constantly asked what it is. I have included a close up picture of the flowers so you can see how much they resemble the familiar tree Frangipani with the number of petals, the way they are slightly overlapped and the subtle yellow and white colouring. They are also quite different - the petals are thin and fragile and they do not drop off the vine and fall as perfect flowers to the ground. Often the flowers look rather a mess. It is thanks to our recent rains that there is a fresh flush of flowers today and they looks so good.

The birds are not interested in the nectar of the Climbing Frangipani. Either they have very little nectar or it is not sweet enough for the lorikeets.

AJ

and still it rains . . .

The rain is still falling, it was only light through the night but when daylight broke the clouds did too and as I write it is still "pelting it down". I have just looked out down our back yard - we have an acre of land - and it looks a little damp. So far it is not flooding. Our next door neighbour's land is lower next to the billabong and it is already covered with water as is his neighbour on the other side. The horse paddock in that yard is non existent now and the horse has been moved up near to the house.
I took my car to be serviced this morning and tossed a large white umbrella in the front seat so that I would not get wet going into the office at the workshop. Just before I arrived the rain started to come down even heavier and even with the wipers going I could barely see out of the windscreen. Pulling up at the workshop I manoeuvred my umbrella through a crack in the open door and tried to open it so that I didn't get too wet - but the stupid thing turned inside out! There is not much shelter under a "brolly" that is inverted! I had to make a dash for it. To close the umbrella I had to stomp on the thing to make the wires turn over. When I got inside the office there were three fellows splitting their sides with laughter. The walls of the office are glass and they had witnessed the whole drama!
AJ

More wet weather

An night of steady rain has brought several changes to our immediate environment. The old Eucalypt has burst into flower and the billabong - a horse-shoe loop in a creek that has been by-passed by the main creek - is full and is overflowing its banks. Our home is on this small billabong and as it is not recognised as a waterway by the "powers that be" we can pump water to our gardens from it without needing a license.
The lorikeets that screech and make so much noise in the mornings demanding a sugary treat are now biding their time doing what lorikeets should be doing - taking nectar from the blossom. After the rain that fell through the night the nectar is a bit dilute and this is why they will come in even greater numbers to the feed dish in the wet.
The land the house resides on was once part of a dairy farm and only had two Eucalypts on it when we first bought it. I now have a small forest of native trees that were purchased primarily for the fruit and flowers that attract birds. One of these trees has masses of purple plums on it and so far I have not seen one bird eat any of them! The tree is the Davison Plum - I presume that it might be food for possums since the birds are not interested. Or maybe tree kangaroos - but they are a creature of far north Queensland, not the Gold Coast!
AJ

Drizzle after Christmas

Sad to see the festive season over, mother nature has turned on the tears. Much of the country is now in flood but here on the Gold Coast the rain is lighter and soaking into the ground. We had a gentle fall of rain through the night and when I went out this morning to feed the lorikeets I found them all over the chairs and the table trying to keep out of the weather. They looked all drab and miserable!
Feeling a bit sorry for them I gave them twice as much breakfast - they get raw sugar mixed with water. I only give them a tablespoon of sugar to a litre of water so the mix is quite thin. I have also found that the birds are not interested in the juice unless there is bread to sop it up! They like to hold the bread between their beaks and suck the juice out!
Anyway, the birds shoved and pushed their way into the sugared bread mix and gobbled it all down in the same amount of time they normally do - So I have resolved not to give in to their pleadings and give them as much as they crave, I do not want them to become dependent on being hand fed. The trees are loaded with flowers and they must work for their meals! Nectar is their main source of food but they do enjoy a few seeds too - especially sunflower seeds.Here are the wet lorikeets scrambling through the wire cage over their feed dishes. The terracotta dish contains the seeds. The cage is to keep out the large cockatoos, it does not restrict any of the other smaller birds. They do not see it as a barricade. They treat it as if it were a climbing frame.
As you can see from the colour of the birds the emerald green of the feathers has become a drab bottle green and the brilliant orange on their chests a muted red colour. After feeding the birds scattered to the trees in pairs and spent the next half hour preening - the rain stopped while they were dining.
AJ

Christmas Day

For me the celebrations of Christmas Day are almost over. I haver returned home from a wonderful day with the family. Here is a picture of my daughter in law, Donna with her two beautiful daughters, Kayla aged five and Chantelle, three. They are all excited and ready to open their presents. And what a lot of presents they got! Christmas is very much a time for children and our day was no exception to that rule! It was the children that received the most presents including the most noisy and the most fun! Although I took lots of photos I switched the camera to movie mode and took half a dozen little movies as well. They are fun to watch. The children got a fun game that was a set of tunnels and toys for two mechanical guinea pigs! The guinea pigs made all sorts of noises and ran backwards and forwards in a most realistic way through all their obstacles. They were really fun to watch - and to take movie of!
So Christmas is now over for yet another year. I have set my reindeer and Santa on the dining room table and have just taken a shot of them because the little Santa seems to be waving "good bye". Since he will be back in the North Pole working on his next assignment - Christmas 2010, this photo is an appropriate one to end this day's blog. I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did.
AJ

Christmas Lights

This white display was created by one woman on her own. She even clambered onto the roof by using her wheelie bin as a ladder to put the lights up there! She was telling us that no one in the hardware store was able to advise her on how to anchor the lights to the tiles so she worked out a method herself.

Although very simple and not a winner in the Christmas lights competition, I liked the way this house was picked out with lights - it created a sort of light painting!

These two pictures are of the overall winner of the lights competition. It really was amazing how much had been created, snowmen, reindeer, ten drummers drumming on the garage roof and lots of little animated Christmas toys in the garage display too. It certainly deserved to win.

These are just a few pictures of the lights that decorated some of the homes on the Gold Coast for Christmas. I took lots of pictures but will only share a few!

AJ

Christmas and birthday

The decorating just never ends!
I have just put the finishing touches to yet another Christmas cake. This time I have been rather radical - I cut the cake in two and as my husband has his birthday on December 24th I made one half a birthday cake and the other the Christmas cake! That way we have a new cake for each occasion and if we decide not to cut the chrissy cake it will stay moist in its icing wrapper! When racing the shopping crowd this morning to get a few fresh vegies I called in to the bakery to get my favourite "Tiger bread" and spotted some fabulous gingerbread houses on display. I asked if I might take a photo of them and was given permission so I am sharing them with you. They are lovely - it would be a shame to cut into them. I think gingerbread houses might be more of a German tradition because I have not come across them for Christmas before. I believe the baker is either Austrian or German.
On Monday I took a few photos of some of the Christmas decorated houses and will show a couple of shots in another blog.
AJ

Stitching a panorama

Having decided to show the members of Visions how to use Photoshop to stitch a series of photographs together to make one panorama, I decided to take a cruise through the free programs offered on Google. The first one I downloaded is actually a program developed by Microsoft and after using it I have given up looking at any of the other programs or stitching photos in Photoshop. Take a look at this panorama.

It was created from four photos while I was on a holiday in September to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.
When I looked at the photos I could not work out how to stitch them together, the overlaps were not clear and the colour of the foreground and of the sky differed in every shot. I had put that collection of shots on the back burner - you can tell that because I told you they were taken in September!
I converted each of the four photos from RAW to jpg and saved them in a separate folder before opening all of them together in Microsoft ICE. less than 30 seconds later the shot I have shown here was the result. There is no obvious join anywhere. I magnified the image and really looked for joins but found none.
If you would like to get hold of this program Google search for Microsoft ICE and download and save the program, then install it. AJ

More handmade decorations

Many years ago I used to play with clay. I was a reasonably successful potter but I would amuse myself - and everyone else - by modelling with clay.
In a moment of madness I decided to make a Nativity scene. Every "famous" artist has painted the Nativity and since I was hoping that one day I too would be famous (!!!) I too created my version. I think I went a bit overboard with the sheep though! I enjoyed pushing the clay through a garlic press to make the shaggy wool so the shepherds ended up with a very large flock! I did enjoy creating the camel for one of the wise men. In fact it is the best piece in the collection! The little figures were all covered with white glaze and fired to 1200 degrees.
For many years the Nativity scene has been stowed away in a suitcase but this year has been unwrapped and is on display in my lounge.
We have the reason for our celebrations on display alongside the pagan Christmas Tree with all its lights and decorations.
I have a crazy mixed up home!
Thats the way I like it!
AJ

Decorating for Christmas

My house guests were out for the day so I hastily stole a few moments to finish decorating my reindeer. I have a bit of a collection of Christmas confetti - the stuff you sprinkle over tables to make them look pretty - as well as pieces of felt and a few beads so with a glue gun and a bit of peace and quiet I applied the glue and glittery bits. (I managed to singe the tips of my fingers twice before I learned not to do it again!) After lunch I decorated the Christmas tree and set out the reindeer on a set of cupboards in the dining room.
A few weeks ago I had sent away for some fibre optic lights (Ebay) and after searching for AA batteries I set them amongst the reindeer for a rather fun look. I know this is a bit "over the top" but I am not going to string streamers around the house nor make a big fuss with other decorations so in the dining room "This is it"!
The little Santa with the sack is made of pottery and was made by me twenty years ago now! Boy it doesn't feel as if it was that long ago!
The sleigh I found in a store on sale one year after Christmas when all left over decorations are sold for half price. I like a bargain!
The funny stuffed reindeer were once used as gifts beside each plate one Christmas - some of the adults didn't take them home so I have four to play with! Some of them you can squeeze and they sing!
I have taken a photo of the decorations in the lounge and will share those with you another time.
AJ

Christmas is coming

While everyone else is out shopping or doing sensible things what does AJ do with her time? Paint reindeer of course!
For my family the decorating for the festive time is done two weeks before Christmas so the week leading up to that time of decorating HAS to be the preparation of those decorations! I had bought some papier mache small reindeer and they are a most uninteresting brown cardboard colour so I had to set too and change them. I used Ceiling white paint because it is water washable and I am not the cleanest of painters! I also wanted something that would dry reasonably quickly. I don't want the reindeer to be tacky at Christmas!!!! (sorry! wierd sense of humour!) Besides which, I need to stick all sorts of ribbons and sparkles on them so they look smart and special. So they need to be dry by tomorrow.
I did surprise my daughter in law when she rang me in the middle of the painting job and she wanted to talk to someone sensible - and proceeded to ask me what I was doing. Gulp! At least I made her laugh! I guess there are not too many people who admit to painting reindeer on a hot summer's day!

AJ

Pink in the garden

It isn't deliberate and it is not my favourite colour but somehow my garden has more pink flowers than any other colour! I think that there should be a garden competition for December - that is when my sub tropical garden is at its best. The amazingly intensely coloured flowers of the Poinciana are setting the tree tops ablaze at the moment. There seem to be two varieties, orange and red. My one is orange and I haven't seen it quite as showy as it is this year. Maybe the long dry leading up to the flowering time has made a difference. Very often trees produce more flowers when they are under stress.
A flowering gum I bought a few years ago and planted in the main, centre garden in front of the house has grown to about two metres tall and it is in full flower at the moment - pink!
Almost adjacent to it is a young crepe myrtle planted as a cutting - it too is flowering - pink again! Surrounding these two trees are many varieties of the bromiliad family and one very tall and lethal variety is in flower at the moment too. The flower head reaches up over a metre above the thorn edged leaves and guess what . . . they are pink too!
Oh yes, one more flowering plant shared the same garden. Several pink flowering geraniums are dotted around the garden! I think I need to shop for some white flowering plants!
AJ

The Silly Season

This time of year has been called the "silly Season" for all sorts of reasons - usually because of the quantity of alcohol that is consumed. Yesterday I found examples of three people who took the name very seriously and I am unable to show you a photo of any of them because I was driving the car at the time.
The first was a man who must have been building his own home because stretched from the back seat and out through the passenger window were at least ten dark stained planks of wood of various lengths.
The next was also a driver with something reaching through the front window, this time a roll of carpet. The only thing is that as the car moved forward the pressure of the air pushed the extension almost to right angles beside the passenger window. The extension would have been over a metre long.
But everything comes in threes and the third driver stupidity came as I neared home and turned left on a feeder lane to be confronted with a car in the other lane with a passenger leaning body length out of his window guiding two (TWO) inter - linked shopping trolleys beside the car..
He let go the trolleys with one hand to frantically gesture for us to go past faster and by doing so lost direction with the trolleys and they swung into the car (his not ours), in the rear view mirror I could see them pulling into the side to see the damage!
So now I think I have seen everything! Pity the camera was in my bag on the back seat! I would have loved to have shared those with you - especially the last!
AJ

Amazing skies

The sky can be really beautiful and here in South East Queensland there is so much sunshine that very often there are no clouds in the sky at all. Blue skies are great when you want to take a single blossom on a tree with a vivid blue background but when taking scenery the monotone of the sky seems a little uninteresting. Being in it is wonderful, don't get me wrong! But in a photograph a few clouds counter the entertaining foreground. Knowing this I have created dozens of cloud "brushes" so that I can add all kinds of clouds of many different shapes and opacity - however when I saw the sky in the photograph that I have included here, the sky was definitely the focus of interest. I could NEVER have created a sky like this in Photoshop!
This was one of those occasions when I had the camera when the opportunity presented itself. How many times have you wished you had a camera at a particular moment? So a lucky shot! Lucky too that I went outside and actually saw it!
AJ

King parrot once again

We had a pleasant surprise the other day, a king parrot flew onto the rail of the veranda and showed no fear of our proximity at all. Having a collection of seeds for the lorikeets and finches who regularly visit, I decided to tempt our brave visitor with some sunflower seeds.
To begin with I held my had on the rail about a metre away so see if he would come any closer. He didn't. I then edged my hand along the rail until I was actually touching the bird. He didn't attempt to fly away or even lean away from my approaching hand. Once my handful of sunflower seeds was under his beak he started to eat from my hand.
It is more than possible that this bird has been caged for some reason or other and has become very accustomed to being near humans. it is not normal for a king parrot to be this trusting.
Only a few hundred metres from our home is a property where injured birds are rescued and then released once they are whole again. Maybe this bird has been looked after over there. I haven't asked!
After a good feed of seeds our new found friend flew off - we were hoping he would visit again but so far we have neither heard nor seen him. Maybe he is visiting someone else with a seed supply!
AJ

A different way of sharpening your images

I sometimes cringe when I see how photos have been sharpened. It is just so easy to overdo a good thing! Most images, no, all images benefit from a little sharpening. Sharpening is the very last thing that is to be done after working on any colour correction or even major manipulation such as cloning. Photoshop has all sorts of ways in which you can sharpen your images but I am going to show you with pictures one of the lesser used methods that actually does an amazing job. Another great thing is that it is so easy to do.
First make a duplicate layer of the picture by holding the Ctrl key down and hitting the letter J.
In the Layers Palette change the blending mode (top left) to Overlay. The results look absolutely horrific, but don't panic yet!From the menu (along the top of the screen) select FILTER scroll down to the bottom of the mail list and hover over OTHER and click on High Pass.In the preview window your image looks rather like embossed pewter. Move the slider around to see what happens. For my image I chose a number a little over 9 pixels. If the Preview radio button has a tick in it you will see the actual results on your mail image.
Click OKIn the layers palette click the eye beside the layer off and on so that you can see the before and after results. When you feel that this is what you really want, flatten the image.
The reason I like this method of sharpening is because you do not get the halo effect that happens with the Smart Sharpen or the other Sharpen methods. Take a look at this detail of the same picture done two ways.The one on the left was done using High Pass and the background is smooth as well as there being no dark halos around the pink petals. In the image on the right you might be able to see the dark line all around the petal and curly stamens - the centre enlargement is from the image on the right. In that you can clearly see the "noisy" background and the dark edge all around the bit of flower. For me that is all I need to see to encourage me to use the High Pass method of sharpening.
AJ

King Parrots make a visit

As I have written in previous posts, I am visited daily by a collection of birds - lorikeets and finches. We have noticed that whenever we (Colin and I) sit down at our outdoor table for coffee or for lunch, the birds take that as a signal to fly in to feed too. Maybe the finches assume that with our presence at the table that no large aggressor will swoop down and disturb them. Perhaps they do because we can observe that they will feed in ones and twos when we are indoors spying on them through the windows but they are in large numbers when we move outside and sit down at the table.

This afternoon we had an unexpected treat.

It was the distinctive whistle that made us look up. Colin started to imitate the call and into a nearby tree flew a male King Parrot. Hoping that we could persuade him to come closer I removed the wire cage over the feed dish - this keeps the larger birds, such as cockatoos, away.

I added a handful of sunflower seeds to the dish and unleashed the camera.

We didn't have to wait long. First the King Parrot landed on a tree right beside the veranda and I took this shot of him.

Showing no fear of us at all he then flew onto the feed dish and really enjoyed himself among the sunflower and small budgie seeds. Wifey flew down to join him and she too tried to eat from the dish but the lorikeets must have realised they were missing out on something and two of them flew down and chased the timid female off the dish. She attempted to return a few times but her courage failed her and she flew over to the creeper covered stump, allowed me to take her picture and then flew away followed soon after by her handsome mate.

We may not see this pair again so I really made the most of this photo opportunity!

AJ

Fireworks in Broadbeach

Last night I went out with the express intention of discovering how effective the Camera preset for Fireworks actually was. So far I have been trying to use manual controls for my shots but this time I decided it was time for play. (I often make this same decision, so I shouldn't even mention it!) While I was eating my evening meal I prepared the camera and just to see what would happen I set the camera on its little tripod - a gorilla pod - and fired off a shot inside the Neicon Plaza of the statue to the Man from Snowy River. Apart from needing a little colour correction the result was not at all bad. Since I had not changed the WB from daylight, it isn't surprising that the picture was very orange before I worked on it.Inspired by the success of the setting I attached the legs of the Gorilla pod around a handrail out in the Mall and took a shot of the coloured lights, not too far away.
Again the results looked acceptable. Yes, the picture is dark but the colours are accurate and the people who were moving around in front of the camera are a blur and add a little foreground interest! Some people were standing quite still for the duration of the shot and they are quite sharp, even though they are silhouettes.
My next attempt with this setting was once I had found a suitable post to attach my gorilla pod to for when the fireworks began. I hoped that I would not end up with a crowd of people standing in front of me - and was lucky. They didn't! So I took a picture of the people who had arrived while the lights were still on and managed to get myself an "establishing shot" for the firework display.Now I felt confident that the camera was steady on the post and all I had to do was press the trigger and aim the camera in the right direction! I set the focus to a light that was some distance from me in approximately the distance I expected the fireworks to be and I was ready.
I took many shots of the fireworks and was quite excited at the results - they are very different to shots I have taken in the past and on another occasion I might try a shutter speed that is not quite as long and see how different they are. More pictures from this night can be seen here
AJ

Street parade in Surfers Paradise

Super GP is a series of car races and track events from October 23 - 26 and the rev heads have spent their days alongside the track watching the cars speed by. In the evenings there are other activities and I went along on the Friday evening to see a carnivale in the style of the brilliant ones held in Rio de Janiero with girls in skimpy costumes and lavish head dresses gyrate as they parade along the streets.

I had great fun with my camera attempting to get as many shots as I could of the gorgeous girls and the handful of men who were well and truly outnumbered!

There were several themes of costumes and I am showing only two of them.

Two of the males in the parade were dressed up as kangaroos and had springs on their feet to make them bounce along the road, they were hilarious and we all found them to be very entertaining.
I have many more pictures taken on that evening but I shall probably keep them to myself! They are not that brilliant - but fun all the same.

I learned something though and though I would pass it on because it will apply to point and shoot cameras as well as SLRs.

If the camera cannot find something to lock focus on the camera will not fire. With an SLR it is overcome by manually setting the focus.

With a point and shoot camera it is not easy to use manual focus so the solution is to aim the camera at something bright that the camera CAN see and lock the focus, then, while holding down the button turn back to the subject you want to take. With something as fast moving as theses two bouncing kangaroos it is going to be difficult to act fast enough. But that is the reason the camera will not fire in poor light; it cannot focus.

More shots from the Multicultural Day

Since today I have been tied to the computer in an attempt to learn a DVD authoring program called Adobe Encore - and slowly getting there! I have decided to brighten my day by sending three more pictures from the multicultural day. There were so many interesting cultures to learn about that I could have spent a lot of time going back and forth to the various displays because the program kept changing at each.
The first picture is of one of the Korean martial arts. Even small children were dressed up in this same fashion and were fighting with bamboo "swords" - trying to hit the opponent on the head. Many times they actually did hit but the headdress that is worn must cushion the blow. No one seemed to be distressed by the beating!
This pretty little girl is all dressed up in the national costume of her parent's homeland. I never managed to speak to the mother to find out where that was.I returned to the Japanese display after the musicians had gathered up their long harps and found a demonstration of the Geisha tea ceremony. It was all very dance-like, slow and deliberate and artistic too.
I find the customs and dress of people from different nations so fascinating and I really cannot get enough of learning about them.
What is interesting is that one of the groups will be putting on their own cultural day at the Southport Library in November so I will definitely be going along to that. I know absolutely nothing about Saudi Arabia so I will be "all ears" as well as full of questions. I hope that I will be allowed to take photographs because I really would like to do that.

What a difference a couple of days make

A few days ago I posted a picture of the new growth on the cycad plant in my back garden. Today when I went outside I noticed that there was a big difference.
Now we shall have to cut off all the old leaves so that when these new ones open out and drape down around the trunk they will look all fresh and green and not compete with the insect ravaged old leaves for attention.
These Cycads can be found growing wild among the trees of the forests of New South Wales and I have pictures of them among the natural bush of the north Queensland coast too. So they are very wide spread.
AJ

Another lighting effect

Once more I have been playing around in lighting effects, this time with "spotlight". Of course, with any effect it is possible to go "over the top" and get really bizarre effects but I am so conservative that I aim for the natural look!
We had a shower of rain this afternoon and I raced out to get a few shots of rain dampened flowers. A few spots of water on the petals always gives a great look! Rain does it so much better than a mist gun!
Anyway, with one of the shots - a rather gorgeous day lily - I thought I would have a play with the spotlight effect. The settings I used are shown above - I hope they are large enough that you can see the numbers I used? You can easily see how I pulled the ellipse about so that the bright effect was where I wanted it to be. If the ellipse is too narrow or too small the effect is much harsher.
I also clicked into the white colour picker squares and changed the colour to a light yellow to echo the colour of the flower. Stronger colours have a different effect so I recommend that you have a play!
Now take a look at the subtle difference I made to my picture. Maybe you feel it is too subtle? However every picture is created to the likes of the person in control of it - I work on my pictures so that I like them. Its a bonus if YOU like them too!