Quizzical

Meet Meeka, the little dog I have been fostering. She is a(n approximately) 2 year old Mini Foxie x Jack Russell, with a lovely nature. She is incredibly smart and has the heart of a Rottweiler, determined to protect 'her' people.

At the moment she's having some specialist training to help her adjust from a previous home where she wasn't cared for (and hence saw herself as top dog, responsible for the family's welfare), but this little girl is still looking for her forever home. (If by any chance someone in Australia reading this has a place in their family for miss Meeka, please let me know so I can tell the rescue!)

Meeka's rescue is based in Queensland, but her specialist traniing is in NSW, and it may be possible to transport to other areas of Australia for the right forever home for this precious little girl.

Miss Meeka:

I sat on the verandah with Meeka, drying her off after her bath, to get this shot. I got a few nice ones that day (9 Feb, 2013), but this was my favourite, with her little quizzical expression.

Camera settings are below -
Shutter Speed: 1/318 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 11 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Pawfection

So, since my last update, I've puppy-sat looking after a young staffy x bull arab -- beautiful, beautiful dog -- and now taken on a little foster dog. You can expect a photo of her next week, most likely!

Sleepy Paws-es:

These big feet belong to the staffy x bull arab pup mentioned above. He was a 'found' dog whose owners hadn't been in contact yet, so he came to stay overnight. I named him 'Captain Jack' (Harkness, of course) while I cared for him because he was such a sweetheart he's bound to be a heartbreaker, though his name actually turned out to be 'Charger'.

The photo itself I took by sprawling across the concrete on the verandah. (Do you get the feeling I do that a lot for a photo? I know I seem to write it a lot!)

Camera settings are below -
Shutter Speed: 1/79 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 4 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Curiosity

I bet you thought I forgot about FAA again, didn't you? I didn't, I was just waiting for the right day to come along and it's here! Welcome to Photo Friday!

It was just too much to come up with photos I liked enough to post *every* day of the week, so instead I've decided to compromise it to once a week. That seems more doable. :)



I can see this one taking on a cat and winning, can't you?:

My partner and I took some bread to the park to feed the ducks, and we were joined by a crow and several magpies. Though the crow was quite tame, the magpies were even more so - deigning to take a morsel of bread right out of my partner's hand!

To be honest, since we shared the camera, I can't tell you whether this photo was taken by my partner or not. Despite the small amount of blur to his head, I really want to claim it, but I can't definitively do so in good conscience. It may be my work or it might be Bumface's! ;)

Bones

A new year, a new chance to get this back on its feet and running properly again! I don't do resolutions these days, but it's always important to have and set goals, and one of my 2013 goals is to get back to creativity & blogging.



Boat Ribs:

My partner and I wandered along the beach in Caloundra and discovered this old wreck. While it might once have been quite magical, all that remains is the barest skeleton of a ship, rotting and rusting away. I fiddled with the zoom and used a bunch of different settings that day so I don't know exactly how I came about this shot, but it was an enjoyable play.

Show Horse

Sorry this is so late! I was exhausted after Jazzercise yesterday and wound up going to bed to read very early, then this morning completely forgot I hadn't written up a post the night before. I will get this sorted out eventually. ;)

Anyway, today was Melbourne Cup Day, which probably means very little to most people reading this. In Australia, once a year on the first Tuesday in November, we have what we call "the race that stops the nation". Pretty much everything stops for the Melbourne Cup: in Melbourne itself they even get a public holiday, but even up here a lot of workplaces have functions and/or close early and wind up at the pub for celebratory or commiseratory drinks.

A show horse at Brisbane's 2010 Ekka:

I figured since today's all about horse racing, I'd throw in a photo of a show horse. (Having only actually been to the races once, I don't have any racing photographs to share.) I took this photo using zoom but not macro - the horse was in the arena and I was on the stands. Not much else to say today.

Fireworks Light Trail #2

Today I have only an appointment to go to and the rest of the day is free, hooray! Unfortunately my appointment is timed so that gym will not be possible, so I'll need to go for my walk at about 4 o'clock. Other than that, I intend to be fairly productive today with some more craft cupboard (re)sorting, some bathroom sorting and hopefully some scrapbooking and/or card-making. In the kitchen I am hoping I'll have time to make up some fruit salad and some banana bread. What does your Friday look set to include?

Fireworks making light trails in the evening sky:

I snapped this with my camera set up on its tripod for steadiness at the 2009 RiverFire celebrations. I used a combination of the fireworks settings and the night settings to grab photos all night and I think this one was set to "night".

A Hand To Hold

Quick write-up for Thursday's picture, done on Wednesday (this is starting to become the norm!) as I'm out early again on Thursday. So ready to have a quiet day at home, wish I could!

Evie and Kendall holding hands:

Rhi and I took an outing one day to the Botanic Gardens at Mt Cootha with Evie and Kendall. I managed to get several shots of Kendall in various outfits, and a couple of the two bears together.

After posing the bears how I wanted them, I used my macro setting and zoom lens to snap just the bears hands 'held' together.

A Mother's Love

Another big day looms for me - I'm ready for things to stop happening every day every week, now! Too bad I'll have to put up with it a while longer. I've two appointments today and I think after that I might hit up the op shops. Almost all of my clothes no longer suit me or fit right at the moment, so I'm pretty well replacing my entire wardrobe!


A mother koala cuddles with her joey:

I spotted this koala cuddling her joey at DreamWorld a few years back, and I knew I wanted to capture that. It took a bit of patience to try and get the photograph the way I wanted it - it was a wet day and I had to do a bit of a balancing act! Still, I'm happy with what I ended up with.

In the end, I stood back a ways and zoomed in, making a few adjustments to the focus and light settings and there you have it. Simple settings, a bit of zoom and a lot of patience.

Jacaranda Blossoms

Good morning! Today my mother and I are going for a picnic in ithe park with my older brother and the three children. It should be a lot of fun, and there may be the opportunity for some nice photography.

Jacaranda blossoms on a clear day:

Ahh, I love Jacaranda trees so much, and of course now that it's proper Springtime, they're all starting to bloom, and the grass around each tree is gradually becoming a sort of lilac purple as it is covered in fallen blossoms. The original reason for taking this photo, back in 2008, was to show my purple-loving friend how gorgeous the Jacarandas are since she had never seen one.

A definite with the macro, I would also have fiddled slightly with the aperture and shutter settings on this one.

City Slant #2

Yesterday's photograph turned out to be quite appropriate since I saw two Eastern Water Dragons while I was on a walk between the gym and my doctor's surgery. Very pleased! And it did, if you were wondering, include the gym and a pumpkin scone. Sadly, there was not enough time for a Lush bath. Perhaps next week?

As for today... it was a very productive and interesting day, but I am absolutely exhausted tonight! And I have a brilliant tattoo that took an hour and a half. :p

Sliding over the edge of the world:

As a postcard, this would be an absolutely shocking photo... but as an interest photo, I love the way it feels like the world's sliding off the edge of the image, carried along by the gently flowing waters of the Brisbane River.

I can't recall what settings I had the camera on this day, probably semi-automatic with small adjustments to the focal distance. I love how clear it all is, and how bright and vivid the colours came out in this set.

This photograph, like the others in the set, is part of the Angles/Edges series, as well as my Suburban Life series.

Eastern Water Dragon

I cheated and wrote this one up on Wednesday night, thinking I was going to be out and about early on Thursday. I figured it would be better to write it early and schedule it for a 7am posting than to write it late... but as it turned out, it was unnecessary!

Anyway, my Thursday intends to involve a trip to the gym, a Lush bath, and possibly a pumpkin scone, how about yours?


Leapin' lizards, it's an Eastern Water Dragon!:

I was wandering through Southbank one day when I spotted this little poser sunning himself on the wall beneath the pink flowers. Not sure where mum and dad were, but he was quite small.

There's something about skinks and lizards that just calls to me. They're generally fairly harmless and they always seem so friendly and *smart*. I mean, look at him there, watching me! What a sweety.

I snapped this using my lovely Kodak; not sure on most of the settings as I played around with a few that day. I'm fairly certain I used the Macro option, and crept as close as I could without scaring him away. Happily he was not very timid and allowed me to get quite close indeed, as you can see!

Fragile Beauty

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Rememberance Day, a day that has a lot of meaning for me. Today and always I honour the children in our hearts and never (or too briefly in) our arms.

What better symbol to represent our lost babies than the fragile beauty of a butterfly who stands also for rebirth and transformation? In the spirit of that, and acknowledgement of the transience of life, today's image is a butterfly I photographed while in the UK.

A butterfly rests upon her lunch:

I caught this image while at the British Natural History museum, at the butterfly exhibit they had running at the time. I managed to get a couple of nice photos that day, despite the notorious difficulty of capturing these fluttering beauties, this is one of my favourites.

To get this, I set my camera to Manual but with Macro set to on, then adjusted the aperture and shutter speed settings. I believe this one was taken at an ISO of 100, but I fiddled with the aperture and shutter speed so much on the different butterfly photos I was trying to take that I've not a clue what I settled on with this particular shot.

Best Of Friends

Good morning world. The sun is shining, the clouds of yesterday have wandered off and I don't have time to do my washing as I have a morning appointment every Friday! Oh well, such is life, hopefully tomorrow will be clear instead of stormy.

Kendall shows Evie the sights:

A friend and I both got Build-a-Bears at the same time, Kendall's mine and Evie is hers. I wanted to get these two kneeling and looking somewhere interesting, but they wouldn't have stayed up so I got the next best thing - kneeling together and cuddling on a park bench.

This photograph was taken using generic settings, no flash and some amount of zoom, and is part of the Teddies series.

Facing Down Fear

As someone who is quite afraid of spiders, I'm including a warning for today's photo. The image you are about to view is that of a spider! I believe that it's actually a St Andrew's Cross (harmless and quite pretty), but it's nice to know what you're getting yourself into.

Rain rain, if you're going to stick around, make it good! The local roads are beginning to be affected by the flooding, the water in my swan pond is now up as high as the gazebo, and my front yard resembled a swimming pool. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to have a small play in the mud; if the waters continue to rise the creek near me may flood over the road.

Tiny little blossoms:

While at Alma Park Zoo one day with my family, I managed to snap this shot using mum's friend's Canon PowerShot S3 IS; pretty sure I used the super macro to get this one.

Surprise Goanna

Good evening! Time's just flying away from me today; instead of being productive I've been watching old NCIS episodes and playing silly games. I decided I'd join in on Project 365 again, even though I'm a couple of days late. Here's hoping that at least one of my P365 photos ends up worthy of posting here. ;)

Goanna sneaking out of his hidey-hole:

I snapped this one at Alma Park Zoo in 2008, after a little bit of climbing(all the best shots require a little creative repositioning). If you don't recognise it, it's an Australian goanna - they're quite large and if you stand too still around them, you're in danger of being mistaken for a tree. (A mistake that would prove rather painful for you as the goanna has very sharp claws.)

When I took this I was using my mother's friend's Canon PowerShot S3 IS, and I don't think I could tell you much else - it was my first time having a play with the camera and my mother's friend couldn't even remember how to zoom on it! I eventually worked that much out. ;)

Dusk Bloom

I've spent the better part of the last three hours trying to work out which photo to post for Monday's. I have a billion things un-done and a billion more half-done, but oh well. Too late now!

A yellow flower after some rain, as dusk settled in:

When I stayed in Sydney, my friends took me to a few different places. One of those was an outdoors shopping complex that had some lovely big flowers in the garden there, and this is one of the photos I got of them. As always, any hints on what type of flower this is are welcome!

Night Lights

It's been a busy day! We celebrated my niece's birthday early as it falls on December 24th and she'll be with her mother (plus that whole, "it's right on top of Christmas" thing); so that meant heading up to my brother's place -- and, wouldn't you know it, it bucketed down today!

Lights on the Noosa river in Noosaville:

After a day spent having fun, my English friend and I went for a walk along the Noosa River so I could practice taking some night time shots. In between a couple of failed experiments (including one where I laid my tripod down and took unsuccessful photos outside the railing), I snapped this one of a couple of boats in the darkness. I was using the night setting, a two second timer and my camera on its tripod to minimise camera shake. This seems to be my best bet re camera shake, as an external button isn't available for my model (boo!) and anything less than this tends to result in very blurred images.

Snow Slide

Damn, missed yesterday's post, sorry. I got distracted with some craft-work.

Maxie enjoyed the snow in Canberra as well:

Until this year, when I took a trip down to Canberra and visited Selwyn Snowfields, I had never in my life seen snow. While I was there I got to experience sledding, making a snow angel and I saw my first snowman; but I was so busy doing these things that most of my snow pictures are taken out the car windows. I did, however, get a couple of pictures of Maxie enjoying herself on the embankment afterwards.

I zoomed the camera in and got down nice and low to grab this particular shot.

Flower Child

Managed to procrastinate my morning away today, then needed to rush for an appointment, so you're getting today's image tonight instead. Fingers crossed tomorrow goes better, but as I need to be out of the house by half 6 (just over 3 hours earlier than today) or 7, I don't like the chances. ;)

Kids and flowers are a combo made for cute-dom:

For those who don't know, this shot is of my nephew, L. I love my little monkey dearly, but he can be a right cheeky thing when the camera comes out! This particular day I was trying to get a decent photo of him - any decent photo of him - and all he was interested in doing was playing hidey from the camera... at high speed. I managed to snap this one when he threw himself onto the couch to avoid being photographed. ;)