Its show time!

The advantage to being a granny means that you can have the children for fun times and give them back when you want some "me" time! So it was this weekend. I was able to take the children to the local country show - of course there are not too many opportunities to take photos when you are keeping your eye on two tiny girls with eyes like saucers! But I managed to take a few shots that I can share here - the photos of the girls having the time of their lives I cannot show, their mother would not like it, but those I can print out big and show them off to all my visitors!

Perhaps we arrived early but the first photo I took shows very few of the crowds that were at the show! The camel rides were very popular and there was always a stream of people waiting for their turn on the ships of the desert.

Of course there are plenty of horses at a country show - not too many cattle, didn't see any sheep and I did not see any big bulls or Clydesdale horses either. But I did see the judging of some very small horses - these tiny horses are not much bigger than my dogs! They really surprised me - I did not know there were horses this size that were so fine boned like the thoroughbreds that are the pride of the horse arenas, I thought that the mini horses were more sturdy - more like the tubby Shetland ponies!

My two charges were the right age to enjoy a puppet show so we timed our wander around the stalls and arenas so that we arrived at "show time". So engrossed and believing in this "make-believe" world were they that they leaped out of their places when a cloud of stage smoke billowed from the bottom of the striped stage indicating a dragon hidden inside! It was fun to hear them try and tell the story they had watched to their mother when they got home! "... and the duck tried to play the piano but a spider was inside and then a dragon came and tried to eat the duck but we shouted and saved him"!

What is a show without rides? Our local show is not as big as the show that is in Brisbane but there are still lots of rides and games and ways to spend your money! Since my girls are not big enough or old enough to go on these rides I had to snatch a photo while on the run! Its just a matter of getting the camera settings ready then pausing, aiming and shooting! It is so much fun having a camera that is so easy to use!
As we walked back to where we were to meet the shuttle bus - we had taken the Show Society's advice and parked at one of the collection points and taken the free shuttle bus to the show, it delivered us right to the entrance and when we returned to the car, dropped us right at our vehicle! as I started to say, walking back to the main gate we passed some highly polished and painted vehicles. This was an excuse for a few more photographs!         

I think this is the first time I have managed to take car photos without getting the back of men of all ages gazing down at the engines (what are they trying to see, I wonder!) I like to see the paintwork and the interior finish and the mag-wheels! I guess that means I am not really a car buff!
The show is over for another year - and this year the weather was absolutely perfect and I am sure that the organizers would have been very happy with the crowds that attended and the money they would have brought in.
There will be another Show on the Gold Coast - this one was organized in one of the smaller suburbs, the next show is for the entire Gold Coast and is much bigger (but not necessarily much better!) I haven't been to the Mudgeeraba Show (this one) in several years so it was fun to do it with my two little granddaughters - you tend to see things in a different light when you have young children with you.
AJ

Australia Day on the Gold Coast

On January 26th Australians celebrate "being" Australian in many different ways. The date is believed to have been that of the first raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove in 1788, symbolising white settlement, when the first convicts from England were landed.
These days the people of Australia tend to use the day to show their patriotism. This fervour is shown by some in the way they dress.

The national flag is used to decorate cars, stalls and people

This is a day of "feel good" and friendliness.
On the Gold Coast we always have a fun "free" day in the grounds of the Council Chambers where performers entertain and hobbyists of heritage crafts demonstrate their skills to the public.

The Wood chop competition is a tradition for Australia Day and the handicaps put on the champion wood choppers seem to put them at a huge disadvantage. For this bout, one of the men had to wait for the count of 30 before he could start. A small crowd gathered around a man and his working sheep dog as he demonstrated how a series of whistles would tell the dog what he wanted it to do.

In another park I was drawn to where there were loud cheers and laughter. Yet another holiday tradition is back-yard cricket. This park was at the edge of the beach and everywhere there were groups of picnickers but in a good sized clearing a bunch of lads were belting a ball - with absolutely no style at all! The cheering became louder and my shot shows why, the "boys in blue" had been persuaded to join in and one of them struck out at the ball sending it almost into the sea!

Australia Day is also a rather special day for some people - This country is made up of people from every country in the world and there are Citizenship ceremonies many times through the year but for some lucky people their day is Australia Day. How special that must feel.
AJ

An Art Treasure

While searching for a few pieces of artwork in my home (to take photographs for an assignment) I came across a carved emu egg that had been given to me quite a few years ago.
Carving emu eggs is not an easy thing to do in spite of the fact that the eggs are really very thick and strong. When the emu eggs are fresh they are a vivid emerald green but as time goes by they darken and we have an egg that is very old that is now gray. All the colour has gone from it.
This photo shows the two sides of my carved egg. It was carved by an aboriginal woman in 1980 and given to me as a gift by a young man that Colin and I took in as an orphaned 14 year old only days after we got married. The gift was given when he was 26, married and with two little girls!

The egg has already lost its green look, it has been placed on a green cloth deliberately to show this colour loss.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.
I hope you can see why I class it as an artwork.
AJ

A busy kitchen

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" is a phrase my mother liked to quote, Its just as well there are other ways too or I would never have got married! My cooking prowess came later!
The sun turned on its strength today and while the mercury outside climbed every upwards past 30 degrees until it changed direction after reaching 35, I was busy indoors with the air-conditioner keeping me cool as I prepared for an on-slaught of visitors tomorrow.

A batch of mini pavlovas were made first, the work is all done with a mixer so they are easy! Tomorrow I will whip the cream to dollop on the top and crown that with some fruit salad. Pavlovas are different to meringues, they have a little cornflour in the mix which keeps them soft inside, meringues are crispy all the way through.

Then it was into the serious cake making! I have a collection of great little recipe books which have been purchased as fund raisers for church ladies or schools or kindergartens and they have real recipes that work in their pages. At Christmas I make a sponge slice that has fruit mince in it. Fruit mince is incredibly sickly sweet, usually, so I add sultanas that have had a sprinkle of lemon juice and microwaved for a minute, to the fruit mince.

The sponge is rolled out like a pastry but it is lovely and soft to handle.

The fruit is spread on the first layer and the other half of the sponge rolled out and quickly plonked onto the top - it is so soft that if I am slow it just rips and falls in a heap as I turn the rolling mat over!

The oven does the rest. All that has to be done now is cut it into slices. (And eat it!)
I hope I have made you hungry!

Colin and I had a sample slice with a cup of tea once it had cooled down, so I know that it is a success!
On Saturday we are having the last meeting day of our photo/video group "Visions" and we are making it a little bit special.

Our Guest of Honour is the bewhiskered gent himself - so I have also invited a few parents with children to come along to meet him. That will give the photographers something to do!
Incidentally, in the afternoon thunder heralded a change in the weather. You aught to have seen the rain come down! We had 30mm in ten minutes. Then it stopped, just like that! Crazy stuff!
AJ

Underground wonders

Today Colin and I learned what opal mining was all about. We first went on a tour of an opal mine after first watching a very good movie that told the story of how opal was created and how this area of opal field was found before being taken on a walk through the mine that is part of the show-room, owners home as well as the caves in which our accommodation is set.

Each of the homes dug into the hillsides started out as opal mines and once the opal was removed and there was a smart burrow left behind it was converted into living quarters.

Colin and I donned hard hats and went into 'Old Timer's Mine” which is an original mine cut with pick and shovel back in the 1920s and has been made interesting for tourists with plaques and dummy miners showing the various activities that were done and the hardships that were endured.

Behind a sheet of perspex was opal that was still in the rock wall, I used the flash and expected a big flash-back from the perspex but am pleasantly surprised at how well the picture came out. Can you see the opal?

When we emerged after 40 minutes of taking ourselves around the mine we walked into the shop where we had started our tour. My eye was drawn to a couple of carvings into the rock wall.

Yes, even the shop has rock as three of its walls, the fourth wall is the front of the shop and it is made of man made materials. I am not really all that enamoured of opal and although I gazed into the show cases and made all the right sounds of admiration, I had no interest in buying any! So I took my photo of the camel in the wall!

Another interesting place we visited was the “Catacomb Church” (there are actually several churches that are underground). We were fortunate in that a tour group had entered the church ahead of us and we were invited to stay while the local guide told everyone stories about how opal was found when the churches were created and that this Catholic church was unlucky in that no opal was found here – other churches struck it rich!

After the group had gone I was able to take my photo of the altar without using a flash.

A trip out to the Underground Pottery proved a waste of time – it was closed!
As I was writing this blog a familiar person walked towards me (I was sitting outside the dugout that is our home for three nights), it was Steven and with him, his co-pilot Sabine. It was lovely to chat with them both and we were invited across to have dinner with them and to meet the "group". What a treat! Everyone was so thrilled to be able to talk about what they had seen and done that we felt very comfortable in their presence.
Just maybe we shall meet up with them all again tomorrow - they, and we, are going out to the Breakaways.
That would be fun!
AJ

A strawberry treat

One of the not so well known delights of this holiday destination, the Gold Coast, is the "Strawberry Farm". When we first moved here to live it really was a strawberry farm with a small shed from which visitors could purchase a "strawberry cone" or they could pay to pick themselves a few strawberries. Today the strawberry fields have gone and the shed has expanded to provide not only the delicious and quite decadent "Strawberry cone" but hot snacks and the usual chocolate bars and things.

When Colin and I explored the district two Sundays ago we ended our excursion by stopping here at Pimpama (the name of the district) to remind ourselves of how these ice-creams tasted! It has been a long while since we were here.

These very large ice-creams have chopped strawberries in the bottom then a squirt of fresh cream then heaps of ice-cream that has had fresh chopped strawberries mixed through. Topped with more fresh cream and half a strawberry.

Come with us on one of our trips and I will 'shout' you one!

AJ

Characters of Australia

F6.3 shutter speed 1/500 taken at 200mm with 18 - 200 mm Tamron.

There are wonderful shots to be taken when people are not posing. Somehow the naturalness of a turned head or slumped shoulders conveys such a lot about the person.

Two of the pictures included today are of men busy at the Australia Day event.

The first is of an axeman preparing his blade for the competition. He was seated in the shade with the sun just catching his hat and his shoulders but as the shot was taken in RAW I was able to pull up the dark shadows in ACR without blowing out the highlights. The fact that you cannot see this man's eyes does not worry me, the body language shows the concentration that would be in the eyes. The success of a woodchop depends very much on the keenness of the blade. This axe is a lethal weapon!

F 6.3 Shutter speed 1/500 also taken at 200mm with 18-200mm Tamron lens.

My second character is a smithy, he was working at an old forge so the heat must have been quite unbearable. He looks exhausted and he also looks quite typical of the men of the bush. A true outback character. I caught this shot of him as he turned from winding the handle of the mechanical bellows that blew air under the burning coals to heat the metal he was working on.

Finally a fun shot of a collection of mini characters who were only 30cm tall ....

F 6.3 Shutter speed 1/400 at the full tele end of the 18-200mm Tamron lens.

The piglets were all dressed up in their racing finery for a very special race that they ran once every hour. A dish of milk was placed at the end of the run which was arranged in the same way as the run we have to take to check in at the airport before flying anywhere! The piglets would be released from a small fenced off end of the run and since they had done this a few times already they knew there was a reward at the end of the trail so off they would trot with the audience calling out to their chosen pig but occasionally they would all turn around and head back the way they came! Everyone, including the piglets, enjoyed the fun!

AJ

More from Australia Day

I had such a wonderful time with the camera at the Australia Day festivities that I just have to share some of the shots I took! OK, So I am a show off!

My first picture is of a real Scottish Piper. F 6.3 at 1/320 sec 28mm ISO 200

I heard the sound of bagpipes playing and went off in search of the source of the sound. I didn't have far to look as he was just around the corner of the main building having what he thought was a quiet practice! Bagpipes, quiet? Anyway, I greeted him and remarked that the tune he just played wasn't very Scottish. He asked me which one and I said "Marching to Georgia" and wasn't that an American tune? He agreed but went on to tell me that the tune was used with Scottish words "Hey, the Billy boy" (I think that is what he said!) and gave me the interesting story about the song. Having befriended this uniformed man I asked him if I could take a picture of him at the top of the steps and he willingly obliged. Just as well because I had to ask him to move twice because I didn't want the building behind him, I wanted to get the sky as his background. I think the shot shows his strength of character and his stance conveys that defiance that I always associate with the Scottish attitude to the over-lord approach by the English.

Yesterday I showed the flags lined up waiting to be raised at the start of the Australian Citizenship ceremony. The flags were to be raised by four people who had been given special awards for their contribution and work with the community. Before the raising of the flags the MC told all the people waiting to swear their oath as Australian Citizens to turn to the people on either side of them and shake their hand and say "G'day". My next shot is of two of the people who had been awarded Citizen of the Year for the Gold Coast.

F6.3 at 1/320 sec 65mm ISO 200

The 17 year old had been awarded Young Gold Coast Citizen for his work as a member of the Junior Council program and the man with the wonderful whiskers was awarded Gold Coast Citizen of the Year for his work with trouble youth.

The third shot in this collection is of an Axeman. The Woodchop has been an Australian event since the beginning of settlement. There are three different sorts of events with the timber (in this event it is Ironbark) held upright as in this shot, horizontal and the axeman stands on the timber and at the top of a three metre pole where the axeman has to cut chips into the pole, put a plank in the chip, stand on the short plank and cut the next chip and put a plank in and so on until he is high enough to be able to cut the block of wood at the top of the pole.

This shot was also shot with the same Aperture of 6.3 but a higher speed (it was so bright!) 1/500 sec and using the telephoto end of the lens - 120mm and the same ISO 200.

I wanted to be able to freeze the chips of wood as they flew from the axe - this is why I used such a high shutter speed.

AJ

Australia Day 2010

Today is a very important day for Australians, it is a day of unashamed exhibitions of patriotism and pride. There are celebrations the country over and many of us make these celebrations a not-to-be-missed occasion.
My photo was taken from behind a crowd of people waiting to make their promise of allegiance to the country at a Citizenship ceremony.
The flags in front of the crowd are all Australian flags, the one on the left is the Australian flag, the centre one is the Queensland flag (The Gold Coast is in the state of Queensland) and the flag on the right is the Aboriginal flag. The Australian aboriginals do not consider themselves “Australians” so they march under their own flag. (Something that I do not condone – but even if politicians did not like it they are unable to say so for fear of being labelled racist)

I watched as the flags were raised and a volley of shots was fired by six men dressed in the uniforms of military forces that are now no longer in existence and singing of the National Anthem before moving away to see some of the other activities on show - more pictures and stories about the day tomorrow!

AJ

Summer, endless summer

I have just come back from a drive to one of the beach suburbs not far from home and, of course, my trusty camera came along too. It has been a beautiful day with lots of sunshine. The temperature reached 33C and the water in the ocean a very enticing 23C. So it was no surprise to find that every beach side carpark was filled to capacity and lots of cars illegally parked on the sides of the roads straddling the solid yellow lines. (Aren't they lucky there are not too many parking inspectors working on a Sunday?) It was quite difficult to negotiate the two narrow lanes of road that were left clear - they were only wide enough for small cars so when a truck, van or bus came along it was "everyone breathe in!" and squeeze over against the parked vehicles!

Using Microsoft ICE I have stitched together a panorama of the beach and the view of Surfers Paradise in the background - so you might be able to gather that I was standing on Burleigh headland with the camera.

I have cropped a part of the panorama to show part of the crowd on the beach. Those surf lifesavers would have to be very alert to keep an eye on all these swimmers. To see a larger version try this link ....click me

If you are observant you will see where the stitching program has encountered a problem with the joining of the photos. The crashing waves are a different pattern every time you press the shutter so for the waves to be even this good is impressive - I could do some cloning to make this less obvious but I have not done that so you can see that even with such a clever program there are problems.

This CAN be corrected once the pictures have been stitched (five photos make up the main panorama) and brought into Photoshop. Again, for a larger picture .... Click here

My pictures today are just for interest to show you how on January 9th 2010 the people who are holidaying here on the Gold Coast are spending their Sunday.

AJ

New Years Eve

The year has ended, long live the year - or words to that effect. When the televisions chanels give a potted view of the happenings of 2009 it brings home all the amazing, wonderful, frightening and magnificent things that have happened in one short year. It is so sad that yet another Australian town should be destroyed by bush fire right at the end of the year. Will the population rally to help this community of WA like they did for the people of Victoria? I don't think so. The millions raised for Victoria has not been shared equally among the people who lost homes in Victoria - people with home insurance got nothing but the no-hopers who lost caravans and shacks got $200,000 and now drive around in flash cars - but still do not have a house. This knowledge tends to make those of us who donate money less willing to do so next time - and there will always be a next time.

Last night I took my camera and tripod to our local shopping centre at Robina where once again they were to hold a firework display. For the past two years it has not been held because of the building of new extensions to the centre. Colin and I chose a place not far from the car park next to a stout pillar and just under shelter - because it was raining when we arrived. The pillar meant that the tripod would not be a problem for anyone walking past. Colin stood beside the one leg of the tripod that extended to my right so every leg was protected.

A security guy came over and gave me a few ground rules about not shooting buildings. He was very good, not aggressive or rude at all and was merely passing on information from his "boss" who, from his lookout, obviously had noticed the tripod and large camera and assumed I was a professional photographer. (Fame at last!) The security guard had a receiver plugged in his ear and was receiving instructions on what to say as he stood in front of me. Anyway, after receiving assurances from me that I was just setting my focus by using the lights of the building in readiness for the fireworks I was left alone and treated to a grin or a wave each time he walked past through the evening.

As the first firework was fired the rain stopped and everyone was able to move out from under shelter and lean against the fence on the opposite side of the road - which meant that I had no one in front of me and very few people behind me and a clear view of the fireworks as they exploded. Not long after the security guard had left me another fellow approached me and he was the trigger man for the fireworks and he was able to tell me where the explosions would happen. Because the area was not large he explained that the fireworks would not be large either. So thanks to him I knew that I was in the right place for the action.

The fireworks were fun - but as warned, nothing spectacular. There were only the standard exploding rockets and a short burst of other rockets that spray out with golden lights. Its a bit difficult to explain so here is a picture of one of the sprays.

I basically used the settings on the camera that I had experimented with earlier in the day, using the sparkler. I tried slower speeds but ended up with too much white blur in the nucleus of the explosions so dialed the speed back to 1/20 sec.

The firework display lasted only ten minutes and I managed to take 35 pictures during that time. Not all of them are impressive and in another blog I will explain how to put two or more images together to make a more impressive display. The camera may not lie but the "Photoshopper" certainly can!

AJ