065/365 Playing With Fire

 

I'm a bit of a pyro...

Because waving around flame and hot wax seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

New hair!

 

My new hair and new outfit!

 

 

064/365 Paths

 

A longer exposure time tonight.

No, I haven’t gotten tired of taking these pictures yet. I wanted to take a heap today, but unfortunately the sun graced me with it’s presence, and I was not able to set up a completely dark room anywhere. So, the result is more tired experimenting. First with a longer exposure time (13sec) then by changing the light source. I can’t wait to try some more on Sunday with fresh batteries in this:

 

One of those electrical static-y buzzy circle things. Like this.

Just a warning, there won’t be a post on Saturday, I’m going to a Halloween party, dressed as “The Greek Goddess of Epicness” to match “The Greek God of Awesomeness” who invited me. Should be fun! I know Halloween isn’t a very Australian tradition (in fact I have vivid memories of my parents telling me so!) but who can resist the chance to dress up and party? Wh-hoo! Not too sure what my stance on Trick-or-Treating in Australia is though…

I tried one other light source tonight, my mobile phone. I really wanted to try a candle or sparkler, but lighting sparklers inside is *dangerous* and I’ve misplaced my lighter and so I can’t light any of my candles. Perhaps another night. But the mobile one turned out rather interesting, very soft compared to the torch, because the light was less bright I suppose:

 

Mobile phone light.

It’s also got some purple tones in it, which I very much like. OOOOoooooh, I just had a great idea. I want to take one of these photos (or several I should say) with a string of coloured fairy lights!!!

So many possibilities to try! For now though, Picture details (and they are the same for all three pictures):
Nikon D3000
Nikkor 18-55mm lens
f/8
ISO-100
13sec exposure

Ps. Hey Dad, can your precious iPhone do that^^   ?

 

 

 

063/365 Neon

A different light source

Still LOVING my Nikon D3000 and the fact that I can take awesome photographs with it. Admittedly, I’m yet to progress to the manual settings, but, shutter priority is working pretty well right now. Especially considering I’ve found the best way to trick the camera. Last night I was basically shifting the camera slightly, pressing the shutter and *hoping* it would decide to take a picture. That wasn’t working so well, and the photographs had an ugly background. I tried turning the light on, pressing the shutter and racing to switch the light off again, which resulted in some interesting pics, with two different colours of light showing. But it wasn’t what I wanted. Tonight, I moved the camera closer to the light switch, zoomed in 0n a blank piece of wall (not completely blank, just one small photograph to help the camera focus), focused the camera, reached out and flicked off the switch, then fully pressed the shutter and took the pic! I’ve only been using LED torches, I’m yet to experiment with other light sources, which I will when I’m not tired from work.

Speaking of work, tonight I had to close, practically as supervisor. Our fruit and veg manager was asked to stay back (to lock the doors and stuff) but I had the responsibility of making sure all the “stuff”  that had to get done by the check-out operators was done. We were one person short up the front too, so I’m pretty happy that everything went ok. Yay!!

Picture Details:
Nikon D3000
Nikkor 18-55mm lens
f/5.6
ISO-100
10sec exposure

Oh, and I thought I should mention my first thoughts of this picture, it reminded me of neon lights, and then of the song by Simon And Garfunkel, The Sound Of Silence, which I used to play on the piano. In particular, the lyrics of this verse:

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
Beneath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed
By the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

062/365 Light

Like a shooting star...

Wh-hoo!! Fun is going to be had tonight! Playing around with super long exposures and a torch! I’ve always loved photographs like this, and now I get a chance to make them myself, thanks to my Nikon D3000. DSLRs are sooooo good. And I’m so very, very glad I didn’t buy a semi-SLR, totally worth the extra $$

Photo Details:
Nikon D3000
Nikkor 18-55mm lens
F/11
ISO-100
6sec exposure

I’m off to play around a bit more, until I get the hang of it!

 

061/365 Giraffe

 

Awwwwwww!

I didn’t take a photograph today, so I thought I’d post a teaser of what’s on it’s way (I’m aiming for Sunday), ie a whole heap of Uganda pics and possibly some videos. This pic was taken on Safari (at Murchinson Falls National Park) with my Nikon D3000. Nikkor 55-200mm Lens, f/5.6, ISO-800, 1/500sec exposure. I’m under the impression that giraffes don’t have a “bad side”, they look good from every angle!

Biiiiiiiiiiiiiig day at work tomorrow (not helped by the very early start and the fact that two pallets of groceries fell over in the truck when they arrived tonight and made a huge mess) so I’ll probably post another Uganda pic… maybe more, depending on how fast I get through the million phone calls I have to make after work!

Yay!

 

060/365 “Tom”

My "sick" brother "Tom"

It’s a good thing I had the day off work today, with mum scheduled to go sky-diving and dad to go with her, I was left at home to look after “Tom” who had a fever yesterday and some growing pains.  He was perfectly fine today though. Fine enough to cost me an extra shift when work called to ask me to come in. Oh well.

This pic was taken with my Nikon D3000 (like I have any other camera!) and my Nikkor 55-200mm lens. F/5.6, ISO-400,1/25sec. I possibly should have used a tripod, but I like the softness of the picture as it is.

Also, I think my breakfast and lunch deserve a quick mention, if only because they were both made of potato! For brekky I had mini diced-and-fried potato, where I basically cut some potatoes into super tiny cubes and fried them in too much oil (I always seem to use too much oil) with some dried herbs and salt. Yum! And lunch was fresh cut hot potato chips, where I cooked the chips in too much oil, herbs and salt…again. De-lish!

And, we’re back! (With LOTS of pics)

Coming to you live from Morayfield! I’m getting back into the swing of things now, and so I’ll be going back to posting a photograph everyday. Starting today, with some pics I took yesterday. We had a family day at Bribie Island, went to the beach, the ice-cream shop and the park. It was great. I took my (still fairly new) Nikon D3000 with me. Here’s what I took:

"Johnny Ackleberry"

"Timmy" "Bek" and "Bek's" friend

One of many small blue jellyfish that washed up with the tide.

"Johnny Ackleberry" jumping away from an incoming jellyfish!

One of the boys threw a chunk of sand at a poor jellyfish to bury it!

A dribble castle made by "Tom"

A sand bridge made by "Timmy"

"Bek" had lots of fun climbing trees and pulling faces

"Johnny Ackleberry" in a tree.

All the photographs were taken with my Nikkor 55-200mm lens. I did have a wide-angle lens on at some point, but lately I’ve been more interested in taking close up photographs, and on a day out like yesterday, I needed the zoom to get in that close. I’m really loving my camera, especially the speed at which it starts up. I can turn it on and take a photograph in less than a second (ok, just so you know, that’s just an estimate based on my not-so-great skills of estimation!). And I can take shots one after the other very quickly too! At first, the fact that I couldn’t use the LCD screen as a viewfinder bugged me, but I’m finding myself enjoying the fact that I have to look like a professional photographer to use it

Oh, and despite the fact that the ice-creams were just crying out to be photographed (they looked sooooo good, and were massive compared to the cone) they were a task and a half just to eat, and I’d rather eat one than photograph one any day!

Another post to come tonight!

Writer’s Block

I’ve been back in Aus for a few days now, but it’s been hard to wrap my head around the fact, and I’m still figuring some stuff out. So I thought I’d get back into the swing of things with a story about another nickname I’ve accrued. Kirabo (pronounced: Chirah-bow).

I’ve been in Uganda for the past three weeks and at the moment you can read (most of) what happened on here. But  there’s a story I want to tell you about my new name. And it’s not on there. See, on my last day at work before I went away, my boss gave me a few warnings. He told me I’d better not get eaten by lions, warned me that afros probably won’t suit me, and that I’d better write my “tribal name” down when I came back, so he’d know how to pronounce it. Well, I only saw one lion (a lioness to be precise) and there was no way that she wanted to eat me. Nobody in Uganda has a ‘fro, if you don’t have a shaven dome, you most likely have those small tight plait-type braids, and I didn’t get those done to me. And the name. While we were having breakfast on a Tuesday on the last week (in Gulu, Northern Uganda at the time) I asked our guide Bonny if he could give me an African name, so that I could tell my boss when I got back. He called me Kirabo, it means gift. The other team members who were with me also were given names (although two of them already had names from last year) and I cannot spell them, so I’m not going to try, but they meant Boss, Grandfather, Peace and Comedian. Very suitable we all thought.

So that is how I earned another nickname. Kind of cheating, asking for one, but… well, who could resist?

I will be getting some photos up here soon (hopefully) but with over 2500 to sort through, it will take me a while. And they are just my photographs, wait until I get a copy of everyone else’s!!

In Uganda!

To see what I’ve been doing over here, visit www.auscanuga.wordpress.com/