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.

Fireworks Light Trail

Apologies for not posting this this morning, we had a man out to install some insulation, and while he was here he touched one of our lights and blew a fuse - which of course meant no internet.

Fireworks on 2010's RiverFire:

I haven't much to say about today's photograph, so I'll just get on with it.

This is one of the photographs I snapped at 2010's RiverFire using the Fireworks setting and my beloved tripod. I just love the way the beams of light splay out and up, and the clarity of the lines. This is of course part of my Fireworks series.

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.

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.

Just Waking Up

Good morning! I cheated; I wrote this post before bed and saved it ready to quickly post today. Shh, don't tell anyone!

Kitties sleep so sweetly:

Upon meeting this beautiful ginger girl who owns my friend, I immediately fell right in love. In lieu of bringing the kitty home with me, I had to settle for photographs. Snapping away merrily, I finally managed to get this one of her either going to or waking up from a short cat nap!

Abandoned

Alright, you're all in luck. I'm waiting for someone to get back to me about a word sprint, and I don't want to spoil my perfect count while I wait, so you do get a second photo today!

An old rusted car at DreamWorld (in the dingo enclosure):

On a bright day, trying for some over-exposed bright shots, I got this photo of a rusted car. No idea what setting I was using that day, unfortunately, but I did zoom in.

Beauty

The sky is grey, the clouds are heavy, and it's a day for curling up in bed with a movie and your comfort food. Not an option for me, but you should totally go and do it on my behalf!

My beautiful Rhi, at her favourite place in the world:

For a while now, I've wanted to try my hand at more portraiture. I'm not generally that good at telling people what to do, or where to be, so there's a pretty big barrier to that style of photography. However, when Rhi asked me if I would try and get some photos for a project she was doing at the time, it was the perfect opportunity to both help out a friend, and to get some practice. I warned her ahead of time that I could not guarantee I would get anything decent, but with a bit of luck and a lot of photographs taken, there were quite a few she was very happy with. This is one of my favourites of the day, and it is part of several series'.

I took this on general settings but in colour, and when I got home I edited it into black & white with coloured sections.

Turn Up The Heat

Busy busy busy! I've been out most of the day at a NaNoWriMo kick-off party, and I spent this morning frantically getting into costume, hence no post. I'll try to get back on track with morning posts tomorrow, but as I need to be on the 7am bus into the city, that might not happen.

Lighting a barbecue at Daisy Hill:

Mmm, fire's gorgeous. General settings but with the macro setting turned on. This one's a bit of a rough shot, but it still manages to get my attention.

Light Bursts

Good morning! An early post today: the birds are chirping, the sun is quite possibly shining and I can smell my mother's breakfast toast. None of that bears any resemblance to today's photo, but there you have it.

Some of the September 2010 Riverfire fireworks:

I love fireworks, truly. Sometimes the bangs get to me, but the beautiful colours in the sky are so worth it all. Trying to take photographs of fireworks, on the other hand, sometimes annoys me; especially as I have tendencies towards what is arguably the worst case of camera shake in history - oftentimes, even with the use of a tripod. Every now and then I get a shot that I feel is worth it; during Riverfire this year I even managed to get a couple. This was taken at night (obviously) using my beloved tripod and the "fireworks" setting, and is part of my "fireworks" series.