I'm trying to get back into my "photo a day" routine that I started (quite) a while back. (You can see past ones over at my photo blog.) I don't know how well I'll stick to this, but I'll try my best to pick up the camera as often as I can and find something to take a photo of. With our new view I'm sure that won't be too hard :)
First up, yesterday's: Believe it or not, this was shot with the lens on backwards. This has the strange effect of turning a zoom lens into a macro lens, meaning super close up photos. I can actually get closer than this to the subject, but didn't want to get the lens too close to the flame. I'll probably post a few more like this in the coming weeks as I play with this technique.
And now today's: Nothing too special about this - just a plain old shot of the sunset from the balcony. I missed a great sunset a few days ago, but today wasn't too shabby. Again, I'll likely post more photos like this. I'll try to find different things to shoot, but I'm sure it will be tough to resist.
It's been good to pick up the camera again after neglecting it for the last few months. The achilles really put the brakes on all my photography work as I couldn't get out and about to do it.
Oh, speaking of the achilles, Monday was the 1 year anniversary of the injury. I can't believe how quick the last 6 months have gone compared to the first 6 months!
Dave and Rhiannon both went on holidays to Europe for 5-6 weeks just recently. Seeing as it was close to Christmas and some of us ran out of work to finish before the holidays, we decided to play some pranks on them :)
I'll upload some photos of Rhi's desk later, but here's the final result of David's:
He didn't get back until Jan 8th, so his desk was waiting for him like that for 2 weeks. The crazy part was that it was becoming normal to have an alfoiled desk!
On Jan 8th I made sure to have my video camera with me to capture the moment. Here's the result, starting off with an overview of the desk before he arrived:
Not much going on at the moment. I've had a few quiet-ish days of late, just hanging out around the house and working on a video project I'd committed myself to.
I haven't even been taking many photos so I had to start making an effort for my "photo a day" promise I made to myself. There's a couple of days missing, but here's the days I did take stuff:
After some very last-minute arrangements yesterday afternoon, a few mates and I went out to Willowbank Raceway for a Test n Tune night. At these nights for $36 you can have as many goes at the quarter mile as you want. Seeing as it was $18 just to spectate I decided to have a crack, but limited myself to only 3 runs so I didn't break anything in the car (especially the clutch and/or gearbox).
All three of my runs were sub-15s, with the fastest a 14.533s @ 156km/h (97mph). Pretty happy with that, seeing as my only real mod is running about 3psi more than factory boost. The car survived, as did all my mates cars, so good times were had by all (no pun intended).
As promised, here's my photo-a-day's from the last two days:
I picked up a new camera on Saturday - a Canon 30D. As much as I liked my old 300D, this camera is just that bit more of a joy to use, and has a bit more control over some of the settings.
A photography forum I'm on has a "one photograph per day" challenge that I'm going to try to contribute to daily, just to try and extend my range of abilities. Here's what I have so far:
Sunday, Oct 15th
Monday, Oct 16th
I actually have a few good shots from Sunday. I submitted this one: But I also took these, too:
Tuesday, Oct 17th
I may not post here every day, but I'll try to post as often as I can, just for something to put on the site. Enjoy! :D
That's how long it took us for the return trip up Mt Warning yesterday. We took it fairly casually, stopping to rest and check out the view or the flora & fauna at regular intervals.
The chain was worse than I'd remembered, but being not so good with heights I think I'd repressed those memories. After having a couple of "what the hell am I doing?" moments I finished the scramble to the top, narrowly avoiding freezing up completely a couple of times.
Once at the top I took some photos while we had some lunch (and, for a couple of the guys, a few beers). The packet of chips that Marc is holding was a reminder of how high up we were.
When we had regained our composure again and had repressed enough of the memories of the trip up, we began the descent. I used the camera a bit on the way down - the trip up was hard enough without having the camera in one hand - however it doesn't really do it much justice:
So I now have 3 climbs under my belt, and am already thinking it would be nice to do a fourth one day. It is one of the most terrifying and exhausting things I've ever done in my life, but finding I have the determination and strength to complete it, coupled with the feeling of being at the top (which is a mixture of the view, the serenity, and I think the lack of oxygen), it is a very rewarding experience.
After thinking I might get some free time to myself again now that work on the track day photos has died down, I still seem to be flat out either taking photos, or working on something somewhat photo related.
I got a last-minute offer to go to the Bullets game last night to take photos. So after getting home from work I madly checked battery charge and emptied off flash cards to be at the game at 7:30pm. The night went fairly well, although my camera is too slow and my knees are too old. I haven't had a chance to go through all the photos yet, but here's a few:
Then this morning was the Broncos ticker tape parade in the city to celebrate their premiership victory. So, of course, I took my camera gear to work to get some photos. In my rush to get to work early enough for the parade I left my wallet at home so had to be let into the office each time I came and went. In four and a half years in my current job I think that's the first time I've left my wallet at home.
Anyway, here's the photos from the parade:
Again, I was fighting against my camera to try and fire off enough shots in rapid succession, so I spent the rest of the day thinking budgets etc to work out how long I have to wait before I can afford a 30D. I'm also hoping to upgrade my 70-200 f/4 L lens to a 70-200 f/2.8 L in the next month or so as well.
In the meantime I need to submit my tax return before the end of the month, which I unfortunately owe $500 on. This was due to me advising work that I had private health care at the start of the financial year, but then forgetting to actually get it till almost the end of the year. Hello 1% surcharge :(
Tonight I've been doing some coding on a new gallery that David and I are working on out of frustration at the lack of anything out there that suits our needs. So it's 12:26am and I just finished upgrading fulllockphotos.com to be the first site in the world to use the new Soora engine. I think it's a sign of my current sleep patterns that instead of deciding to go to bed once the upgrade was finished, I felt I needed to blog about it. Hmmm...
Saturday is shaping up to be a great day. A group of us are going to climb Mt Warning, just across the border. At over 1100m (3700ft) it's a fair hike, so it's going to take the better part of the day. The forecast is looking good and I'm really looking forward to reaching the summit for the third time. The camera will (of course) be travelling with me, so I'm sure I'll post photos of it sometime next week.
I guess I should actually get some sleep at some stage between now and then. Oh, we have some 10-minute massage people coming in to work tomorrow. That is going to be sooo good.
Been a while since I've posted anything here, so it's about time I said something.
I've been flat out for a couple of weeks now, and it's really starting to catch up to me.
First up was an impromptu front mount intercooler install on my car. I was too busy to be able to do it on weekends, so I did it all over 3 weeknights, getting about 12 hours sleep over those 3 nights. But I got there in the end with help from a handfull of mates, and none of my neighbours made any complaints about the ear-piercing sounds of tortured metal emmanating from my garage at 10pm.
That Saturday night was Riverfire, so Emily and I went and watched that from the top of the Toowong Towers car park. Of course, I took heaps of photos, and there's even some video that I've yet to rip from the camera.
Over the last month or two I've been setting up a business so I can sell prints of my car photos online. I spent about a week or so setting up a website for it and putting some of my past photos on there so it wasn't so empty. Check it out at fulllockphotos.com.
Then last Tuesday I went out to another Time Attack track day at Queensland Raceway, but this time as the "official photographer". I spent most of the day before preparing for the event, and then the entire day Tuesday wandering the track taking photos of every car. It was actually quite fun, tho extremely exhausting as I think I walked the equivalent of twice around the track, spent 90% of the day on my feet, and had to jump several fences. I think the photos made it all worth it tho, and I've already had a few people interested in ordering prints.
As we were leaving the track at the end of the day a friends' car lost a wheel completely. This is a scary enough event, but it sent a chill down your spine to think what could have happened had it come off while he was on the track. We spent an hour or so trying to work out how to get a jack under the car (myself and one of the other guys ended up lifting it ourselves) before assessing the damage to see if the car was driveable. It was, but the tyre had suffered a severe gash, so the decision was made to drive it to the nearest service station and sort out a spare. A suitable spare couldn't be found, and after 3 hours of waiting, it was finally towed home for the handsome price of $240 :/
Wednesday was dedicated entirely to sifting through the thousand photos from Tuesday looking for the best ones, and then preparing and uploading them to the site. It was around 2:30 am when I finally got the selected 181 photos on the site.
Then after a very bleary-eyed workday on Thursday, I packed for a weekend in Cairns and Port Douglas with Emily.
I left home at 5am for a 7:30 flight. I was on the ground in Cairns at 10am, after an aborted first approach thanks to a brief downpour of rain just as we came in to land. 30 minutes later we were on the Skyrail heading up to Kuranda. After a relaxing lunch, we checked out Birdworld and the Butterfly Sanctuary, which were both much better than we'd expected. We then headed back to Cairns via the Kuranda Scenic Railway before driving on through to Port Douglas.
Saturday was a full day trip out to Low Isles on the Sailaway III. The trip was a bit rough, but doing it by sailboat was definitely worth it. The island was so picturesque and there were so many turtles there that it was sad to have to head back. The trip back was even more rough than the trip over, but I think everyone made it back with their lunch still intact.
Sunday I finally got to sleep in a little bit before a late checkout and a casual drive back down the Cairns. After lunch in Cairns it was back to the airport for our flights home.
So it's now Monday morning, I'm tired, very sunburnt, and wishing I could have just had a few more hours sleep this morning :(
I think it has all been worth the lost sleep, though.
July 4 might be Independence Day in the US, but for me it was another Track Day at Queensland Raceway.
Again it was a lot of fun and the car went really well. I took 3 seconds off my previous best time thanks to a combination of better front tyres and more experience.
One of the first-timers in our group put his 180sx into a tyre barrier, which put a dampener on the day. Luckily it's all cosmetic damage so the repair bill isn't too high. He's already talking about going out again next time!
I had a few minor excursions off the black stuff myself:
Most of them don't look like too much, but any amount of sideways movement at upwards of 100km/h makes you wish you wore brown pants ;P
Next track day isn't till Sept 12, but at the moment I'm planning on playing a strictly media role out there. Ultimately I'd like to get enough video to make a 45-60min docco-style DVD, as well as get some good photos of every car out on track. Not sure yet how I'll film and take photos at the same time, but I have 2 months to work out the logistics of it. If I can pull it off I may think about selling some of the results.
My next visit to QR will be in a little over 2 weeks time when I go to watch the V8 Supercars. That should be fun :D
On Sunday I went to round 2 of the Drift Australia championships with a couple of friends. It was quite a good day, and I got heaps of photos and video (as usual).
