Cross-lighting
I've had a set of Cactus V4s for a while now and while I was initially stoked to be free of cables, I didn't end up using them much due to their unreliability and my sheer laziness.
So I finally decided to get out and try my hand at cross-lighting using the setting sun as one light source and a 430EX on a tripod, camera right. I dragged my significant other into it as both cat and dog would probably have turned tail and Bosley, the modelling teddy bear, just isn't tall enough. Needless to say, I think she did a great job, but she'd call me biased.
The pics didn't turn out that great. I don't have any brollies, which I think would help get that wrap-around effect that I'm aiming for, so I had to make do. The V4s frustrated me to no end. I was barely 5-10m away from my flash and it would quite frequently not fire, or worse, fire after the shutter had closed. I ended up dropping my shutter speed down to give it a larger time-frame to fire, but strangely enough I would sometimes get a different exposure even though I hadn't changed any settings.
On the upside, I've put through an order for a 580EX II, which should allow me to fall back to Canon's wireless E-TTL system.
Oh and just for fun, here's also some monkeys.
An absence of two wheels
You may be wondering why I haven't posted much about the Spada (or bikes in general for that matter).
The Spada has been a bit hit and miss the past month or so. Basically, I did an oil change a little while back and cross threaded the drain bolt. I've been having a mini-BP everywhere I go. Not only is it embarrassing to have little patches of oil everywhere I park, but as it's just in front of the rear tyre it's downright dangerous to ride on.
So I've been riding quite carefully and it wasn't until a day or two ago that I finally got the darn thing plugged up. I just got my new riding boots also and I haven't had a chance to go up Old Road in the longest time.
Here's the thing - I'm probably going to quit riding for a while. When my rego comes up for renewal, or even earlier, I'm going to try and sell her. When I factor in the cost of insurance and registration, it's more economical to take public transport, and while that is a nightmare for me, time are getting pretty tough. (Incidentally, if you want to help out, I do get paid a tiny fraction of a dollar for each advert that is clicked on this site.)
So all in all I am in a bit of a love/hate relationship with my bike. I need her to work so I can get to work, and of course riding is a lot of fun, but at the same time she's costing me more than I need to. I'd much rather be putting that money towards camera equipment or alleviating debt.
Given that pouring money into a bike (Spada or an upgrade) doesn't generate any income, but photography work does, logically the best thing to do is to invest in something that will actually generate some sort of income rather than being a money sink-hole.
Out and about (and a new look)
So I ended up at the Australian International Design Awards the other night for work. I really wonder how they came up with the idea of shooting lasers at a girl covered in mirrors, and dancing in fog. Either way, it was an interesting night.
I found my new garage of cars, including Bumblebee from Transformers, and saw a couple of other interesting designs that night.
To be honest, one of the reasons I'm actually talking about this is because I've changed the layout of my site and have been wondering whether this is the way to go. These images are from my Flickr account and I've been considering whether to go Pro and host all my images there rather than on my (rather expensive) web host. I've been using a combination of Flickr, Picasa, Sendspace and own private hosting to do this, but I think it's about time to get everything into a central location.
With Lightroom 3 adding support for publishing straight out of the box and into Flickr, it's making more sense than what I used to do with exporting to JPG, uploading to Picasa, uploading to Flickr, uploading to my own webspace, and in the case of high-resolution files for clients, re-exporting and uploading to a private file server or Sendspace. It's all a bit redundant and I'd rather be worrying more about shooting.
So, hopefully with this format you'll see a few more images in my blog, with a link out to the full album on Flickr. Let's see how it goes. It seems that I can get this working without even having to link out to Flickr. Interesting. A bit fidgety, but it'll do for now.
First Bike Accident
So I finally had my first accident on the bike today.
I was turning left from a "turn left at any time with care" lane and was the second vehicle in the queue. I saw a car approaching at a pretty fast speed from the right, followed by no other traffic, so both the car in front and I waited. Then she (the car in front) started to move after it had passed. I did a last check down the road and set off... into the back of the car in front of me.
She'd hit the brakes because the car behind me had suddenly swerved out to overtake us both. I ran into the back of her at low speed, my front tyre bouncing off the back of her bumper and sending my crotch painfully into the tank. Then knowing what happens after you suddenly stop and unsettle a bike, I planted my feet down and caught the bike before it went over.
The bastard behind overtook us both.
As I sat there for a moment, my crotch burning and still slightly in shock that the other car was just driving off, I wondered if the person in front had even realised I'd run into them.
When they got out afterward, she had a look at the damage, sort of shrugged and then grinned, saying don't worry about it. The only damage to her car was a bit of paint that was missing from my tyre having rubbed it off. My bike looked completely fine and neither of us were hurt. I was pretty amazed that she didn't care too much. The car looked almost new and if it were me, I might've demanded some sort of compensation. She didn't take my details and now that I think about it, at no point would she have even seen my plates.
So we both went on our way.
Graduation at Macquarie
I went out to Macquarie University for a friend of a friend's graduation today. The weather held up pretty nicely considering all the rain we've been having.
I wish I got a few more pictures of The Little Things - From weddings I usually try and get the little details that everyone forgets about, but people have put the effort into. It's those little flowers on the ends of the pews, matching nail polish, the little detail in shoes and the like.
A couple of small challenges today as it was overcast and then very sunny. Within a matter of minutes light quality would change from nice and soft to quite harsh.
For now, here's a few photos from today.
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- I was running a touch late to meet the couple I was shooting today, but looked back and quickly had a shot. I would've loved to have lined this up properly, but a large group were approaching and time wasn't on my side.
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- In retrospect, I should've taken better photos of the flowers.
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- I've never understood why there are always bears at graduations. For the record, I didn't arrange them this way. =D
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- Why is taking pictures of the flowers important? They aren't around for very long.
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- And a bird... I'm not a bird watcher.
A re-cap of past events
I must apologise for not updating in quite a while.
Since the last time I wrote, I went to Malaysia with my camera. Unfortunately, I didn't take many shots and those that I did weren't so great.
I was soon back into shooting for the magazine that one of my friends writes for and made the trip to Putty Road again.
There was also an interview with Ed and Irena of Oz Motorcycle Leathers that I shot for. Fabulous down to Earth people. You don't see that many good, honest people in business any more these days so it was refreshing change to meet them.
Of course, there was the usual messing around with off-camera flash and I needed a new biography photo, so it was a good excuse to turn the home living room into a makeshift studio setup with what little gear I have.
Lastly, there was the matter of shooting real estate for the first time. Essentially, all wide angle and flash. The flash stayed put on the camera, but I think if I had the time to really think things through I could have come up with something better.
As I've been so tardy in posting anything, I'll write a few comments in the gallery this time. Enjoy!
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- Malaysia Trip - Brisbane
Flying over Brisbane at night during a transfer. It's one of the most boring places to transfer, especially at midnight.
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- Malaysia Trip - Brisbane
Just one of the many, many giant shopping complexes in Kuala Lumpur. Then again, shopping is one of the main (only?) things to do over there.
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- Malaysia Trip - KL Tower
I didn't end up going up. There are actually strobe lights that make the tower sparkle during certain hours.
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- Malaysia Trip - Malaysian Sunset
From where I was staying, looking out to Kuala Lumpur on one of the last few days I was there.
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- Malaysia Trip - KLCC
Yet another giant shopping complex. They do not allow photography anywhere in this building except in this area.
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- Malaysia Trip - The Twin Towers
Had to get at least one snap of the towers. I did end up going to the sky-bridge, but perhaps because I've been before I didn't consider it very exciting.
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- Putty Rd - A Grim Reminder
Flowers mark places on the Old Pacific Highway where drivers and riders have been killed. They serve a chilling warning for those of us fortunate to have not yet had their brush with death.
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- Putty Rd - The Superduke
One of the guys from Riders Anonymous gets his bike over. I can't get over how orange his bike is.
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- Putty Rd - Burnt Out
The gas pumps at the burnt out Half-way House have since been stripped and pillaged. I do hope that someone either rebuilds the landmark or puts up another establishment so I can at least have somewhere to eat lunch!
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- Ed and Irena of Oz Motorcycle Leathers
I must pay these two a visit one day and check to see if I need any adjustments made to my leathers. Some of the examples in their store showed how some of the cheap eBay knock-offs provide absolutely no protection whatsoever.
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- Flash Experiments - Puddles
Our resident kitty is often surprised by the appearance of the camera.
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- Flash Experiments - Hungry Kitty
That's just a pillow he's attempting to gnaw on. Thankfully he doesn't do it very often.
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- Flash Experiments - Posed
I would have loved to get a photo with my significant other and Puddles, but his attention span is short.
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- Flash Experiments - Self portrait
I failed to gobo the flash head and so have the reflection in my glasses. Lessons learnt!
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- Real Estate
One of the shots for the owners.
A Different Way to Become an Early Riser
I've tried, for years, to become an early riser with little success.
It seems that the one problem I had was how motivate myself to actually get out of bed in the morning. I knew my life would be better if I got up earlier, but that "Just another few minutes!" mentality always caught me off guard in my sleepy state. It's just too cold and snuggling under the blankets is so much better. Or it's too hot and I just want to lounge about and not move. Or maybe it's just oh-so-perfect sleeping conditions.
There are some circumstances that force me to get out of bed and it's usually because there's something more exciting or important happening the next day. The first day on the job, or going on an adventure; it's under these circumstances where you wouldn't dream of saying, "No, I want to go back to sleep. This is so much nicer." Why do you think children can suddenly wake up early on Christmas morning?
Now the main school of thought is that when you introduce a change into your life, you should do so slowly and sustain that for a month. I agree with this, but when making that first step to wake up early, I think you need more of a shock and awe approach. Jolt your morning into action. Do something different. Here's just 7 different ways you can jumpstart your way to becoming an early riser.
1. Wake up somewhere else
I don't think this will work for everyone, but I've found I get surprisingly freaked out when I wake up somewhere else, like another room, on the floor, in someone else's bed. Perhaps it's my morning after dread, but it wakes me up pretty quick and has me pulling on my clothes and diving for the windows or a nearby closet. Or at worst you'll wonder why you're there and remember there's supposed to be something different about this morning.
2. Plan something exciting in the morning
Christmas. Only you don't believe in Santa Claus, do you? Never mind, go and plan something awesome for your morning, and I do mean awesome. This should be on the scale of 11 out of 10 and almost prevent you from getting any sleep the night before. If you sleep in, you're going to miss it. Those of you with girlfriend or boyfriends can probably find something exciting for the morning. Just don't fall back to sleep. That's lame.
3. Schedule your important meetings in the morning
This is putting all your eggs into one basket. It sure sounds risky, but the more risky it is, the more inclined you'll be to get out of bed. This is your movie-classic, "Oh my God I'm about to miss my meeting with the CEO and I'm going to get fired," moment. Present yourself with an ultimatum: Get up or get fired.
4. Drink a lot of water
When nature calls, hope that it's not a fax. And hope that you don't get a paper jam. Drinking a lot of water before sleeping will either result in you waking up with a burning rush to the toilet in an effort to empty your bladder, or take you back to your bed wetting days. Either way, you're going to wake up in a real hurry and if you don't, well I think waking up early pales in comparison to some other issues you may have.
5. Park your car in a clearway
I have literally sprung out of bed, run down the street in my pajamas and jumped into my car to stop it from getting towed. I've also had to park a few blocks down and walk back home amongst the morning commute a little sheepishly.
6. Arrange for a friend to meet you for breakfast
I think most people have a friend or two that are early risers. Invite them to breakfast, but ask them to meet at your place. The more annoying and persistent they are, the better. You know, the early bird who for some reason hasn't quite caught on that not everyone is awake yet? The one that calls you up at strange hours in the morning (8am? What the hell is 8am?) thinking that everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed. Invite them to breakfast. I think for the most part, most early birds don't like wasting their time. If they're at your front door, they're going to get you up rather than let you off with an, "Okay, maybe some other day then."
7. Make a bet
High susceptible to people who just cannot lose, make a bet with someone. Don't make it as simple as waking up or you'll just call them up sleepily, drawl out that you won and then fall asleep again. Now that just sounded rather lame over the phone. Make a bet with someone over who can be at a certain location earlier. If you want that extra incentive, don't set a meeting time. Let's see who'll get up earlier!
Now, all of these ideas are great for a single day, but who is to say that tomorrow you're not going to sleep in again? Start chaining these together. If nothing at all, I'm sure you'll have a more active lifestyle. Every time you find it's a little hard to get up, plan something outrageous and jolt yourself back into shape. Don't use just one method to get yourself out of bed or it'll become routine. I've almost missed flights, had my car towed, missed breakfast and meetings and peed my bed by getting stuck in a routine. Okay, maybe not the last one. Mix it up and surprise yourself!
The Cyclist, The Pedestrian and The Cars
All it took was a cyclist to travel down an illegal T-Way in NSW and assault a bus driver to get this long, drawn out issue into the limelight. It's existed for years and years, but the tensions are getting a bit high as of late. In my opinion, it's all a bit of a misunderstanding between everyone due to a lack of proper infrastructure.
The Scenario: At an intersection, the traffic lights turn red, the cars halt and pedestrians start to cross the road. A cyclist filters between cars on the way up to the lights, slows down and makes his way through the pedestrians, then checking there is no more traffic crossing the intersection, crosses the intersection and keeps on going.
The Cars: They see a cyclist squeezing past them, possibly almost scratching their cars. Are they in such a rush that they can't wait in line like everyone else? And they're slower too! Everyone is now going to have to wait behind them and then squeeze past them again.
The Pedestrians: Aren't you using the road? Then obey the road rules. Why are you riding dangerously across pedestrian traffic? If you had a licence and I were a cop, I would have booked you ages ago!
The Cyclist: If I stay amongst the cars, I'm going to be in their blind spot. The cars will all take off around me and at this distance, they're not going to see me. I've got to get out of the way of danger because if there's an accident it's not a dented fender, it's broken bones for me. I've got to be up ahead where people can see me early and think ahead. I'll carefully move around the pedestrians although they're not paying attention to me. I know running the red is illegal, but being legal is dangerous and it doesn't matter if I'm in the right or wrong if I end up dead.
A few facts:
- At intersections, cyclists are often in the blind spot of cars and trucks, leading to a large number of accidents
- Unless under the age of 12, cyclists are not permitted to use footpaths and must, by law, use the road
- Cyclists are permitted to travel in lanes marked as a "Bus Lane", but NOT in lanes marked as "Bus Only"
- In a cyclist-pedestrian collision, the cyclist is more likely to be injured due to a higher fall and the speed of travel. In a cyclist-vehicle collision, the cyclist is more likely to be injured due to little to no protection
- As a general rule, pedestrians have right of way regardless of where or how they ended up on the road
- Motorcycles are considered to have little to negligable impact on greenhouse emissions and road wear, yet this reduction in impact is not recognised during vehicle registration or tolls
- Cyclists have no greenhouse emissions and negligable impact on road wear
A few observations:
- Vehicles on the road often block cycleways
- Pedestrians are often not aware of approaching cyclists, but the cyclist may be aware of them.
- Where cycleways are not available, footpaths are not legal and roads are dangerous, there is no place for cyclists to ride
- Motorcyclists are discouraged from filtering through traffic (and may be booked on technicalities such as "Overtaking on the left of a vehicle"). Being a road user, this discouragement should also apply to cyclists, even though the practice is safer for both cyclists and motorcyclists.
- The practice of filtering to the front of traffic on a motorcycle is a fineable offence. On a bicycle it is generally not.
- Motorcyclists have sustained damage to their vehicles from having to stop from colliding with jay-walking pedestrians. To my knowledge, no legal mechanism exists for enforcing compensation from the pedestrian to the motorcyclist
Doll Meet
My significant other and my housemate are interested in dolls. Yes, dolls. Dressing them up, posing them, taking pictures, creating photostories, you name it.
I think people should pursue hobbies on the side. I think that's a healthy thing to do so that you're not buried in your work, even if what you do for work is what you love. I don't know much about dolls as it isn't my hobby, but there are a lot of different things to learn about them. I don't think I have the interest or wallet to delve much further into them though. Up until recently I considered dolls to be a strange, strange hobby. I could understand the concept of people buying cars, photographing them, modifying them and racing them, but to me that seemed to have a functional purpose. At the end of the day, you could take them out racing. You could drive from A to B.
With dolls, I wasn't so sure. They seemed to end up sitting around. It wasn't until I considered that it falls under collector's hobby that I really got my head around it. Sometimes, that's the whole point of having a hobby. There are stamp collectors who could tell you an entire story about how a certain stamp was made, who it was sent to, where it originated from. Antique collectors will provide you with a whole history, from why certain materials were used and from which families it was passed down from. A hobby doesn't have to be functional, it just has to be interesting and each person has different interests.
So, back to dolls. Today was the opportunity to shoot something different. When your doll is significantly smaller than your usual subjects, your perspective suddenly changes. I generally use a 70-200mm lens for portraits, but the size of dolls changes everything. Normally with wedding photography, I'll try and capture the finer details. These are now even harder due to the tiny scale of things and I kept finding myself wanting a macro lens of sorts. It's ironic, but a small sensor, but high resolution point and shoot could probably outdo my current gear at taking those shots. Something like the Panasonic LX3 would do really well.
I'm not sure which doll community organised the meet (as I was brought along by my significant other and have next to no knowledge of dolls), but I'm going to assume it was Den of Angels.The meet was organised though The Faireground forums. Have a look there if you'd like more information.
Anyway, below are the photos I took from the day. As I am not familiar with the owner of the dolls themselves, I am happy to remove any offending images on request. Each photo has had basic corrections in Lightroom, but no Photoshop manipulation.
Sydney Night Noodle Market
Hyde Park is one of the nicest open spaces in the Sydney CBD and on any given day you'll find anyone and everyone ranging from your average office worker, taking time out for lunch in the park, to flair bartenders, throwing bottles over their shoulder and perfecting their skills. It made sense on paper to hold a night noodle market in Hyde Park, after all, where else would you find as much room for the huge variety of food vendors?
It's not every day that you are able to get off from work and let the evening slip away, sitting in the outdoors with friends and family. I've always seen night noodle markets in asian countries as being all about the food, rather than the atmosphere, but Sydney-siders have a different approach. The burly old asian men drinking Tiger beer were replaced with the corporate workhorses, sipping on wine. The plastic chairs and tables were still there, but every so often you'd see a blanket spread out with couples and families making a picnic out of it. You'd never see that in an asian country. The stray cats and dogs were replaced by the random household pet, brought along for company and the hot sweltering heat was replaced by a cool evening breeze. A VIP section for certain guests? It was a bit of a surprise for me really, to see what's usually a bit of a squabble turned into, dare I say it, a sophisticated night out for some.
As demonstrated recently at M-Fest, food fairs have quite a bit of a line. Forget about being able to roam from one stall to the next trying to get some variety - you'll be there all night, with one of my friends waiting in line for almost an hour just to get a plate of food. You can join the longest line, hoping that people are in there because the food is good and not because they're doing what you're doing and hoping everyone else is right, or you can join the shortest queue, get some food and run the risk of it lacking any flavour. Unfortunately, I picked the latter and for $10 received a large paper plate full of noodles that could have been shredded newspaper for all I know.
Personally, the key draw point for noodle markets in Asia is that the food is cheap, it's quick and it tastes fantastic. My selection of food unfortunately failed on all three accounts as did my partner's. Aside from that, I would have been willing to let it slide. After all, the food was produced in giant batches for the masses, not as it was ordered. Any other approach would probably have seen queues triple in size. After all the atmosphere was nice, right?
One of the problems with Hyde Park is that it plays home to the bat community almost as soon as the sun goes down and you can't exactly have a Night Noodle Market during the day, can you? I was hit by bat droppings twice when I was there, witnessed two other tables get bombarded and a family get up and move, table and all. Needless to say, I didn't have a great time and left fairly early once my food had been contaminated, but I can see that this was most likely circumstantial and would not necessarily reflect the state of the evening for others.
If you want to have a nice evening out in the park, the Sydney Night Noodle Market is a fair choice. Ironically, if you're looking for a genuine hawker style night noodle market, you'll be fairly disappointed as this isn't what it's about, but the real deal is fairly hard to find in Sydney and not without a premium.
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