Best Friends

This is my DD Erica and her best friend. the two of them are so funny. They are so alike, both absolutely crazy.

I can't live without the sea

I have lived in 5 different states of Australian, but for almost all my life I have lived near the sea. Something like 80% of Australians live within 50km of the coast. Where I live now I can hear the sea from my backyard, I can see the dunes and I can smell the salty air. I love it. It is too cold to swim in the sea down here much, but I love watching the changing colours, sometimes it is the most amazing pretty greens and blues and other day it is grey and wild. When the surf is up it sound like a freight train going past. I took this pic tonight, at about 5:30pm, it was starting to get dark, I was hoping for some colour in the sky, but just gray clouds. The pic make the beach look much more hospitable than it was feeling, it was really windy and cold.

iso 100, f 18, ss 15 sec, tripod, neat image

And now for something completely different

These are some pics I took yesterday. I clambered down under a bridge to get pics of the river - well the river shots were pretty ordinary, but I found this really cool graffiti. I'm usually very anti graffiti, but the colours of this were fabulous. I really hate mindless, talentless tagging of other peoples property. I had fun PP'ing these - way over sharpened them to give the edgy feel. I didn't adjust the colours or saturation though, it really was this bright. i might even run them through some actions to see how they look. Today i took a really nice pic of my DD and her friend, but I have to check with her Mum before I post it here.

Kites

This afternoon I drove passed the wetland near here and noticed these two birds. I took these with my 70-200 f4 L, hand held. They are a bit noisy and not really sharp, but okay. It was pretty cool just watching them hunt.

Lookout

This is the lookout that the surf life savers patrol the beach from. I'm not thrilled with the composition, but I really like the sunlight on the tower. Thanks for looking.

Flinders Street

On Sunday I went to Melbourne (our state capital, pop about 3 million) for a work conference. Like most work conferences it was really boring, but I did get to catch up with a very dear friend whom I haven't seen for years. The building in this pic is Flinder's Street train station. I really like how it kinda glows so warm against the dull gray of the street and sky. Melbourne is a lovely city, but very gray.

Twilight skies

For the last few weeks I have been trying to get out and capture the twilight sky, when it is that fabulous dark blue. Unfortunately it only lasts for about 30 minutes and I always seem to be busy at that time. But tonight i finally got it. I am so pleased with these. I ran them through Neat image to decrease the noise, cropped the second one and cloned out a few weird pixels, but otherwise they are SOOC. The settings were iso 200, f 7.1, ss 20 secs. You can see some chromatic aberration (the purple) around some of the lights, but I'm still happy. I used my 50mm lens - it was on the camera and I was too lazy to change.

Dry Lake

These are pics of a lake near here. We have had some rain recently, but as you can see it is still really dry. The first pic I tried the Orton Technique on - mainly coz the sky was so lousy. The second one has better sky. The thing in the foreground of the second one is a boat ramp. Don't think it's been used in a while.

Hazy Days

TBA

TBA

Today was really hazy and overcast until about 2 pm. Then the sun came out and the fog cleared for about 2 hours and then it was back again. You can see how hazy the background is in the second pic. I took these just out of town. The first one is a place that's for sale. About 4 acres with this old run down house. Behind the house the land goes down to the river. I'm a real sucker for looking at real estate. Not that we are planning to buy anything (couldn't afford it even if we wanted too), but it's always fun to look. The last place I was looking at, 31 acres, sea and river views etc, sold for 2.5 million - OMG. The second pic is taken looking basically 180 degrees from the first one.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO EVERYONE FOR TOMORROW

Windy

Warrnambool is famous for being windy. Today was a just a bit breezy though, not like the gales we get sometimes.

iso 400, f 10, ss 1/125

Shop lights

It was raining tonight and the reflections of the shop lights on the wet road were really pretty. This is the main street of town.
I took this handheld, standing in the middle of the road (the rain had stopped by then).

Scrapping buddies

Today I spent the afternoon scrapbooking with my two friends Ebony and Michelle. Well, they scrapped and I talked to them. I used to be full on into scrapping, but photography has kinda taken over a bit. I do want to get back into it though coz i have enough stuff to last about 5 years. After today I am feeling really inspired. The DOF is a bit shallow - oops.

May Racing Carnival

Today was Warrnambool Race day. I'm not much into horse racing, but it is a big event on the local calendar (we even get a day off work). The last one is a landscape I took today -you knew I'd sneak one in. :)