A Wiggly Pole

Good morning! Today is an exciting day for me! For ages now, one of my favourite things has been the British show "QI" which is hosted by Stephen Fry and, even more importantly, always has the adorable Alan Davies on it. Well, QI has come out to Australia and I've scored myself tickets to see them live *tonight*! So, since I'm in a celebratory kind of mood, I've decided you can all have a funky cheerful picture for the day.

Shiny:

I saw this pole in Wiggles World at DreamWorld on the Gold Coast and it was just so cheerful and zany I knew I wanted to photograph it. It took a little bit of physical wrangling (of myself!) and my camera's zoom & macro functions, but I'm really pleased with how bright and cheery it came out - exactly the mood I was hoping for.

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.

Machinery #2: Ready To Pounce

Ha! Grand plans will always be foiled by circumstance, I think. Day one of my new idea and a storm hits while I'm in the middle of scrapbooking. My mother pulled the plug on the internet long before I was done enough to contemplate my post, and went to bed before I could ask her if I could put the internet back on. Oh well, there's always tonight! ;)

Old-fashioned farm machinery at Brisbane's Exhibition:

One of the sections of 2009's Ekka (what we call the Brisbane Exhibition) included some examples of old-fashioned farm machinery. I just loved the shapes and lines the machines created, especially when viewed from some of the more unorthodox angles. Unfortunately because it was the Ekka, I was laden down with a bit of stuff and couldn't quite try for all of the angles I'd normally use!

Another for the Edges, Angles and Lines series, I snapped this as-is, after mildly adjusting the usual settings (yup, another one for the macro!) and changing my camera's colouring to sepia.

Right There

I've been thinking about how I was going to write these posts every morning, and it's just not working so well. I keep having things to do in the mornings, or places to be, and things are generally too crazy to get this posted up at the same time so I think I'm going to make it that I write these up the night before and schedule them to post in the mornings, like I mostly have been doing. It seems to be working so far, anyway!

Soldier statue pointing at memorial:

Brisbane's ANZAC Square is filled with statues devoted to the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps. Sometimes, if you move around to view them from a different angle, it really changes things a lot.

A friend and I used to meet up in ANZAC Square occasionally, and I took this on one of those days, as I waited for her to arrive. I love that moving just a few feet around from where one sits to view this statue makes it look as though he is pointing to the monument above (with the always burning flame in rememberance).

I adjusted the focal length and the exposure time on this, zoomed in a fair bit, then crouched with my camera balanced upon the edge of a seat-back in order to capture this.

Budding

Phew, I've been on the go all day today! I did manage to get a few things accomplished though: several loads of washing done and already put away properly, gym and a walk (despite managing to somehow crunch my hip and put it out a bit at the gym), banana bread baked and the bathroom cupboard totally cleaned out and sorted! (This last one took several *hours* of work.)

Budding pink flowers on a clear day:

Now that's what I call a clear day - not a single cloud in sight. I don't remember much about the taking of this particular photograph - not even what day it was taken or where, unfortunately. I do know that I had to use my camera's zoom rather than the macro setting, and that I played around with the focal length a fair bit.

I like the way the colours pop on this one; the blue of the sky manages to accentuate the pink and the green.

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.