Every year there’s a hardfought unofficial competition within the Talbot family — who is the first to see hot cross buns in the shops after Christmas?
This year Fred is the clear winner.
31st of December.
It isn’t even the New Year yet, and Safeway has already moved on to the next Hallmark holiday.
Rampant commercialism like this just is not right. But I guess ’tis the season to get ripped off. Like every other time of the year.
One of the things I got for Christmas is a remote release cable for the D80. (Thanks, Fred & Sue!)
I went out this morning and came back with ~90 shots that I took around town while the sun was coming up. There’s definitely an extra sharpness in the photos compared to other tripod based long exposure shots I’ve taken before. As careful as you are when you press the camera mounted shutter it’s no substitute for the clarity and precision of a remote release cable.
I also used the little eyepiece blackout piece. The idea is that light will actually leak into the camera body (and hence influence the image) by coming back through the eyepiece and down through the mirror assembly, so for longer exposures you replace the eyepiece with the blackout piece and stop that light leakage. I used it on some shots and not others, and I can’t pick the difference. Forums I’ve read are very undecided about whether they’re worth the trouble or not.
I’m hoping to take a few starfield pictures tonight before the moon comes up, and they’ll be ~20 minute exposures. For stuff that long it probably does matter, so I’ll make sure I use it.
Lisa, The Kids and I went to a family friend’s this afternoon. Big Kid spent the afternoon playing with the other kids, Lisa chatted to the boss of the house, and I spent the afternoon watching cricket with the man of the house.
The man of the house is the head wine maker at Warrenmang, one of the local boutique wineries. We emptied two bottles while we watched Australia take the game away from India. First up was a very crisp sparking white, and that was followed by a lovely sparkling Shiraz. Very nice. The Shiraz was a 2000 vintage, and wasn’t labeled, so I’m tipping it was part of the private stock that the winery keep for themselves. It had definitely not been sitting around in a bottle shop.
A very enjoyable way to spend a lazy and hot summer afternoon — lounging on a couch doing nothing but watching cricket, talking bloke stuff about cricket, and being served some very nice wine.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Trevor Carpenter is a photowalker and blogger who has issued a few challenges in the past. The most recent is the December challenge, which is one portrait a day. I haven’t been particularly good at following this one because I don’t get to shoot every day.
His 2008 challenge, however, is something I can definitely aim for. You need to spend the whole year photographing your local community and post one picture per week. The term “community” is loosely defined. His blog post has more info.
I’ll almost certainly interpret the term quite literally and post a picture a week from the town I live in. Considering it’s an old goldrush town there should be plenty of stuff I can capture and post.
What I’ll need to decide in the next few days is what style I’ll shoot. I might add an extra twist and shoot everything black and white, although I love shooting color and using strong vignetting and contrast to draw the eye toward the subject. Regardless, I’ve committed to shooting and posting once a week.
I was going to go out for a 10km run this morning but really just couldn’t be bothered.
I went out with the camera instead and spent an hour wandering around the railyards. There’s so much detail there; I’ve shot there before and I’m sure I’ll do it again. It’s a great place to visit.
There’s a photoset up on flickr…
EDIT: I’ve posted them to a SmugMug gallery too.
One beautiful December evening Pedro and his girlfriend Rosita were sitting by the side of the ocean.
It was a romantic full moon, when Pedro said, “Hey, mamacita, let’s do Weeweechu.”
“Oh no, not now, let’s look at the moon!” said Rosita.
“Oh, c’mon baby, let’s you and I do Weeweechu. I love you and it’s the perfect time,” Pedro begged.
“But I wanna just hold your hand and watch the moon.” replied Rosita.
“Please, mi amor, just once, do Weeweechu with me.”
Rosita looked at Pedro and said, “OK, one time, we’ll do Weeweechu.”
Pedro grabbed his guitar and they both sang…..
“Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!”
Last Tuesday (18th) The Kid’s school had their annual Christmas pageant. The whole school was involved; The Kid got to take part in a few of the songs.
They also had the year 6 graduation ceremony and they handed out half a dozen scholarships to outstanding year 6 students.
It’s taken a few days, but I’ve finally managed to go through the photos I took. There’s a gallery up on SmugMug.
While I was driving home yesterday I went through some of the most torrential rain I’ve ever had to drive in.
On the road between Elphinstone and Castlemaine (through Chewton, etc) there was tree debris all over the road and it was raining so hard I could barely see. I had the Falcon wipers on full and as soon as the wiper moved the windscreen was covered in water again. I would have pulled over except I knew there was a truck somewhere just behind me, but I had no idea where. Visibility really was absolutely dreadful. It cleared up a little once I got into Castlemaine itself, and the drive over the Moolort plains was just fine.
Once I got into Maryborough it was clear just how much water we’d got. There were huge puddles everywhere. Pulling into our court I saw Lisa’s car was at Peter & Diane’s — just in front of the SES car. I figured this couldn’t be good.
When I pulled into the driveway Peter and Lisa were bucketing water out of the bungalow. It turns out that the dam next door had overflowed in the rain and most of that runoff had gone through the bungalow. At one point it was under 2 feet of water. Everything on the floor was soaking wet.
I took over from Lisa because she’d spent 2 hours cleaning up, and by the time Peter and knocked off it was 9:30pm. Even then the floor was still damp, and of course nothing that got wet has dried out yet. We got more rain this morning, but nothing like the downpour yesterday afternoon.
The Kids had been left at Lisa’s parents while the mop-up was going on, so I ducked over there to take some baby formula over for the little one. The big one decided to come back with me and spent a few hours trying not to get in the way.
While she was there she found half a dozen yabbies wandering around the driveway. They all got dropped in the dam. I suspect they had been washed out of next door’s dam when it overflowed.
We had planned to phone Grandma Elli to wish her a happy birthday once I got home, but the evening disappeared really quickly. Lisa and The Kid had got a present for Grandma too, but when I left home very early Thursday morning I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I didn’t get to take it down! We’ll phone Grandma some time this morning to wish her a happy birthday (and I’ll apologise for not taking her present down).
Google Maps (and Google Earth) finally have hi-res scans of our home!
Looks dry, huh? And yeah, it is. 10 years of drought tends to take its toll.
Who said what?