Dust storm

One of the most unusual days we had last week was on Wednesday 23rd September when the air filled with dust and the view changed from tropical to eirie.I am not a watcher of the news and weather so the atmosphere that day took me completely by surprise. To begin with I assumed that we were smothered with the smoke from bush fires because the sky was orange but there was no smell of smoke.
Colin came to the rescue with an explanation that this was a dust storm that had worked its way up the eastern coastline of Australia from Sydney and was still moving north.
The picture I have included was taken when the sky was at its most colourful and the visibility at its lowest (which wasn't really as bad as dust storms I had experienced in the Mallee). The shot was taken from my back veranda looking north and the edge of the roof would be about half a kilometer away. From the news that night it appeared that the visibility was far worse closer to the coast and in the city of Brisbane.
AJ

Trains for the boys

Today I took my house guests to the industrial area of Labrador - not to look at industry of any kind but to attend an open day for a model railway club.
We climbed the metal stairs to the upper floor of a building and were met with an array of scenery displays and metres and metres of mini railway tracks.Some of the scenery was really well done - like in the first photo I have attached. The trees and the buildings were almost mini replicas of the real thing, but in other areas the scenery was far more amateurish with unnatural looking trees and buildings that were mass produced plastic buildings that would have suited a child's railway set-up.
The men and the boys who were leaning over their personal trains and carriages were all taking their hobby very seriously. I am not sure if the creation of their trains was what really interested them or the playing with them on the miles of track!Some of the trains were very intricate - such as the two I have included here, and some of them were models of much more modern trains with umpteen carriages towed along behind them.
No one seemed to mind me taking photographs - well actually no one seemed to mind if we were there or not! They were all far too busy with their toys!
Graham set up his tripod and video camera and the enthusiasts he approached to do stuff for him were only too happy to oblige. Graham had a ball! Maybe its a "girl thing" but I really found it very difficult to be excited about the trains! Five minutes and I had the shots I wanted and was ready to go home! Give me the real thing any day! I love BIG trains and BIG steam engines!
AJ

Stitching pictures to make a larger scenario

While looking through my collection of photos to find a picture for a particular purpose I came across my photos taken in the South Island of New Zealand. There were four pictures in particular that made me stop and take a closer look and they were photographs of this modest home only a short distance from the rail track on which runs the "Kingston Flyer". (I suggest you do a Google search for the "Kingston Flyer NZ") Only someone who is a photography enthusiast would stop to take several shots of an unusual fence! And! Of course! I am one of those!
Anyway. Looking at the pictures I realised that two of them were taken in such a way that they could be joined. I will show you the two separate pictures:-
As you can see they do not match perfectly so a fair bit of manipulation had to be done. I actually overlapped the left hand image over the right after reducing the size of it. If you look at the largest wheel that makes up the gatepost on the right of the gate in both pictures, it is positioned over a different part of the house - in the left picture it is over the stone chimney and in the right picture it is over part of a window.
I selected the fence (wheels!) and the lawn from the right picture and made another layer from that selection and pulled it to the top of the pile.
A bit of twisting and turning was necessary to line the house up correctly and the mountains behind were way out of line too so that required a bit of license. (sorry, Mother Nature!). So finally I came up with the picture at the top of this story.
AJ

Toowoomba colour

I was looking through the photographs I took when touring some of the lovely gardens in Toowoomba on Tuesday and picked on this one to share with you. It was taken in the Botanical Gardens - I thought the name of the garden was Queens Park but our coach driver called it the Botanical Gardens. Whatever! As my son would say!
Anyway, the shot, taken from knee height to give the tulips pride of place in the fore-ground, is enhanced slightly in Photoshop to give that cerise colour even more impact.
At the bottom of the Layers Palette in Photoshop is a round button that is cut in half diagonally and one half of the circle is black the other white.
Click on this button and a list of options is given. I clicked on "Selective Color".
At the top of the box that now opens it is possible to choose any individual colour and modify it.
I selected Green first and moved the black slider to the right a llile. This made the leaves of the tulips darker.
Next Yellow was selected and again the black slider was moved to the right a little and this took the brightness off the pale coloured lawn.
The layer was flattened and the beautiful tulips really stand out so much better even though the changes were only modest.
Sometimes a little change makes all the difference.
AJ

Recovered photos

Not only have I recovered from all the driving and exploring done during the past 14 days but I have also recovered my lost photos!
Thanks to a malfunction of the laptop as I was about to download my photos from one of my 4G Compact Flash memory cards, I thought I had lost all of my photographs taken over the previous three days,. Many had already been copied to the laptop so were not lost at all but the pictures that I regretted losing were the shots I had taken inside the Jenolan Caves and in the Blue Mountains Botanical Gardens.
I had downloaded a couple of programs from the 'net and resolved to wait until I was back on my big computer to do anything with them. Of course the programs searched for the files and they did find them but it was impossible to save them without first purchasing the program. Very clever! Of course I could not turn away and let this opportunity go! I had to purchase one of them - so I went for the one that worked the fasted and was really simple to use. It is called, very simply, "CardRecovery" from www.cardrecovery.com and costs less than $50 - using PayPal.
This is one of the many photos I recovered - and "yes" the photos are the full pixel count and include the RAW files too.
The pictures I took in the Jenolan Caves were taken without a flash so they were taken using a very slow shutter speed. I do not have a steady hand at any time and after clambering up and down the 950 steps I was definitely not able to keep my hands from shaking! So I used a bendy Gorilla-pod. I would wrap the legs around the handrail and I prayed that it would provide the stability I needed. The Handrail was highly polished after years of hands using it so I would try to get to where the handrail and upright met so that I could utilize that post too.
I have a few blurred shots but I have several very good shots too so I felt that recovering my photos was well worth the money I spent on the recovery Program.
AJ

Homeward bound

Tomakin is a long way south of the Gold Coast so two overnight stops are needed to get us back home safely - without the principal driver (me) getting too tired. Our first day took us via Canberra without actually going into the city to Cowra. After two hours of driving we stopped for morning tea at a small town called Boorowa. There were lots of very old buildings in the town and I couldn't resist taking a few photos before we left. This town apparently has a "running of the sheep" in October! The poster I saw pasted on various walls showed a flock of sheep running down the main street with a crowd of people following - you would hardly have them the other way around as with the running of the bulls!We arrived in Cowra in plenty of time for Graham and Nola to see the Japanese Gardens and for Graham to take video of the place. They had seen my photos of the gardens on my web album and were eager to see the gardens for themselves.Less than half an hour after we had arrived at the Gardens Graham asked if we could return in the morning. Asking "Why" he confessed that he had left his spare battery in the motel room (we had booked in as soon as we had arrived in Cowra). Colin manfully accepted my request to drive back to the motel to get the battery. Nola went with him and did not return, she took the opportunity to grab a quick shut-eye!

As I had taken a camera full of still photos on my last visit to the Japanese Gardens earlier in the year I dragged out my little Panasonic video camera and tripod and took enough shots to be able to make a short movie. It will be interesting to compare my video with Grahams!

After all that driving and then concentrating on taking reasonable shots for my video I was feeling far too tired to even unpack the laptop which is why I am covering two days in one! I would not recommend dining at the Cowra Services Club, it took a full thirty minutes to actually get from the end of the queue to to the front to order and then the food was unappealing- my Chicken schnitzel was as hard as boot leather and anyone ordering from the bain-marie would have half cold dried up food!

It was a very long trip today and I learned a serious lesson! Study a map before you accept the guidance of a GPS! We were taken along gravel roads and up country lanes that were so rough that I think I have damaged the suspension on the car. When we go over even a small bump there is an ominous bang as the car feels as if it is bottoming out!

Along one of the country roads I noticed a flock of sheep that looked rather different from the all white merinos we used to breed. The car was turned around so that Graham could take a shot through the window without getting out of the car but I hopped out with my camera so of course he climbed out too! It didn't matter, we took our shots of the lazy sheep with black faces and soon moved on. The property looked very neat and attractive but we did not trespass and nor did we disturb the sheep.

This evening we are at Armidale. It would be good to stay here and take some photos - the place is full of interesting buildings. Maybe I will return another day.

AJ

Central Tilba homes and gardens

Today we drove to Tilba - Central Tilba and Tilba Tilba. Central Tilba is an unspoiled little village that is made up of so many old buildings that the entire village has been classified by the National Trust and the village is protected by a National Heritage Listing. Arriving at the village at eight thirty meant that we were there before the coach tours started rolling in and I was able to wander around with my camera and get lots of photos without a soul on the road or too many vehicles parked in front of buildings. In spite of the early hour there were people about and many of the shops owners had already put a few things out on the pavement so there was plenty of interest.

One thing that really made the place look wonderful was the colour of all the shrubs and flowers on narrow nature strips in front of the buildings.

I do wonder how the people who actually own these building manage to keep the weather out of them - one thing that makes the town look so old is the unique rusting tin of the bull nosed verandas and the irregular battered look of the old roofing iron - but how weather proof is that roofing iron? What happens when the rain comes in, are the residents allowed to re-clad the roof? Can the roofs be painted to seal them? They are not painted so I assume this is NOT allowed.

From a tourist brochure I found that there was a garden behind a nursery that is open to the public. This garden is called Foxglove Spires. We drove through Tilba Tilba and found it right on the outskirts of this smaller sister village to Central Tilba.

An hour was spent wandering through the rather unkempt but fragrant and colourful gardens that spread over three acres of land. Apparently the garden was created from grazing farm land in 1984 so when that is taken into consideration one cannot help but be full of admiration for a place that feels as if it was established a hundred years ago! There is a woodland with bluebells and forget-me-nots, arched arbours of espaliered fruit trees and arches draped with glorious blue and white wisteria and lots of old fashioned rose bushes and so much more! I loved it!

I think I must be a frustrated gardener! I enjoy my own garden but it is quite a simple thing when I see something like Foxglove Spires. my garden is a couple of years older and is no where near as full of interest. But I think it would be a much easier garden to care for!
AJ