Day 19 Assignment – Leading Lines

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Driving Australia

Create a photograph with leading lines that guide the viewer’s eye.

The lines can either lead the viewer into the subject of the picture or across the picture to the subject.

Decide whether you want the subject of the picture to be the lines themselves or something else.

I tried to find leading lines in a variety of natural and constructed situations.

I experimented with Lightroom and Photoshop to enhance my photos by using the exposure, whiteness, contrast and highlights controls; I used a vignette for the first time and I removed a person’s head. I tried out the luminance bar/arch but I wasn’t confident and need a lot more practice as I pulled it into some unexpected shapes with undesirable results.

The originals follow the enhanced photos below.

Elizabeth River Bridge from the jetty

Elizabeth River Jetty with the bridge in the background

Train tracks converging with the road approaching the bridge

Finn Road in the rural area before the bridge – accidentally replaced the original

Rapid Creek

Footbridge over Rapid Creek – two views

A grove of gumtrees before the footbridge

Cloud over Nightcliff boat ramp breakwater and Sunset Park

Golden path to the sun Nightcliff

Day 18 Assignment – Clouds

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Driving Australia

For this assignment we were to create one compelling photo of clouds.

Set the horizon on the bottom third line so that at least two thirds of the frame is sky.

Foreground is important so chose your location carefully.

Make sure the picture balances – use formal or informal balance – symmetrical or asymmetrical.

Spend time getting it just right by cropping.

This is almost identical to the original which I seem to have deleted.

Cropped and removed blemishes in Photoshop.

I love the balance of the little fishing boat on one side against the dark menacing storm cloud on the other.

This cloud balanced itself but I took a few other shots to include some foreground.

It was hard to find an example of formal symmetrical balance. I used the jetty lightposts.

Day 17 Assignment – Invite the Viewer In – Back to Front Composition

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Driving Australia

For this assignment we were to

shoot a landscape scene arranging the shots using ‘back to front’ composition.

Concentrate on the foreground.

Create a sense that the viewer can walk into the picture.

Try getting low, getting behind something.

Look for patterns on the ground.

Day 16 Assignment – Landscape – Rule of Thirds

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Driving Australia

For this assignment we were to

shoot a landscape scene and arrange the shots using the Rule of Thirds.

To accentuate the sky put the horizon on the lower third line.

To accentuate the ground put the horizon on the top third line.

If there’s a subject or centre of interest, place it on the left or right line, don’t centre it.

Use the crop tool to refine the composition later.

Darwin City from Charles Darwin National Park

All 1/200 f8.0 ISO 80 4.10 – 42 mm

Darwin City from Larrakeyah

First three shots 1/1000 f5.6 to f8.0 ISO 200 to 400

1/500 f8 ISO 100

Day 15 Assignment – A Walk in the Park

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Driving Australia

For this assignment we were to go to a local park and

identify subjects to photograph – Ask ‘What is this a picture of?’

decide on the context it goes in by asking ‘Does this support the subject?’. If it does it’s in; if it doesn’t it’s out.

I found this assignment anything but a ‘walk in the park’. For a start it was difficult to decide on a subject. The choices were: children’s play equipment; a lot of greenery; and water features.

Then, although I had spent most of the day revising what we had covered until now, I froze and felt almost as hopeless as I was on the first night shooting the sunset.

I stuck at it however, and came up with these offerings.

1/50 f4.5 ISO 80 Lens 80 mm

Identify the Subject – I had noticed the fountain in the distance as we entered the park and climbed to the top of a hill to get an overall view.

Decide on the context it goes in – I asked whether the surrounding park supported the fountain.

I zoomed in to reduce the amount of park around the subject.

1/20 f4.5 ISO 80 Lens 80 mm

I narrowed it further by shooting a portrait view.

1/20 f8.0 ISO 80 Lens 85 mm

I also tried shooting the fountain off centre.

1/20 f6.3 ISO 80 Lens 85 mm

In the end I choose the third photo as it highlights the fountain and has the least amount of distraction.

Other subjects included a bird on a nest metal art installation:

Both 1/6 f8 ISO 80 Lens 100 mm and 143 mm

I prefer the second shot as I think the pond detracts from the picture.

Corkscrew Palms

Both 1/6 f5.6 ISO 200 Lens 31 mm

It was the pattern of the trunks that attracted my attention, therefore I prefer the idea of the second photo, though because it’s a bit blurry, I would have to return and step back a little to re-take the shot.

I also took the opportunity to practise photographing flowing water while I was there. Again, the images appear darker here than on my camera’s display but I hope to be able to lighten them in post processing.

1/30 f8.0 ISO 100 Lens 85 mm

1/30 f8.0 ISO 100 Lens 24 mm

1/30 f8.0 ISO 100 Lens 112 mm

1/40 f8.0 ISO 200 Lens 80 mm

1/40 f8.0 ISO 200 Lens 64 mm

Day 14 Assignment: The Twilight Shot

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Driving Australia

For this assignment we were required to take photos in one location from sunset to full darkness so that we could experience the changing light and the adjustments we needed to make to our settings.

I found this chart when I was checking the time of sunset on the day. It shows the times of Civil, Nautical and Astro Twilight.

I started shooting at 7.12 pm and took about 35 photos until 7.47 pm when it became impossible for my camera to capture any image, regardless of what settings I chose.

7.12 pm 1/160 f6.4 ISO 400

Within five minutes I had to widen the aperture and Increase the ISO:

7.17 pm 1/130 f6.3 ISO 800

From 7.18 pm I had to use the widest aperture on my camera f5.6

7.18 pm 1/320 f5.6 ISO 800

At 7.19 pm I increased the ISO to 1600 but that made the image too bright and washed out the colours.

7.19 pm 1/320 f5.6 ISO 1600

I tried including some foreground after that and adjusted the shutter speed and ISO settings to try to get a true representation of the colours – f5.6 aperture being the widest on my camera used for all.

7.27 pm 1/100 f5.6 ISO 1600

From then until the end of Civil Twilight at 7.34 pm I turned the ISO up to 800 and adjusted the shutter speed to between 1/30 and 1/100.

7.34 pm 1/30 f5.6 ISO 800

After that, while I was shooting in Nautical Twilight, I increased the ISO to 3200 and adjusted the shutter speed to between 1/25 and 1/160

7.47 pm 1/25 f5.6 ISO 3200

My camera didn’t make it to the end of Nautical Twilight, which is probably just as well as it was past dinner time and we were hungry!

31 Days to Becoming a Better Photographer

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Driving Australia

I’ve been doing an online photography course for a couple of weeks now, ’31 Days to Becoming a Better Photographer’, which requires posting photos to a Facebook group.

1/320 f6.4 ISO 200 Off Nightcliff Beach

I’m trying to work out how to do this from WordPress.

I would like to post my photos and assignments here so people can view them if they are interested instead of on Facebook where they don’t have any option.

Day 13: Find the Best Location

Virtual Scouting

I used Google Maps to locate Nightcliff Jetty, my favourite place to take photos. I had a look at some of the photos other people had posted on there. It’s a very popular spot and it looks like it has been photographed from every possible angle already. I’ll have to get creative!

This assignment proved very useful in planning our upcoming trip to Hawaii. When I Googled ‘Hawaii photography guides’ it came up with three sites detailing the best locations for classic shots from painted forests and snow-capped mountains to volcanoes and lava flowing into the sea.

Flickr World Map was also full of amazing shots.

A search of my local libraries found a recent edition of Lonely Planet’s Best of Hawaii which is full of amazing photos a well as being a great source of information.

I can hardly wait to make my own attempts!

Europe Trip 2018

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Driving Australia

France – Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, the Normandy Beaches, Le Mont Saint Michel, Giverney

Rouen

Rouen is where Joan of Arc was executed and there is an unusual church on the site commemorating her.

We visited that church and the rest of the old town including the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Rouen, Eglise Saint-Maclou, Abbatiale Saint-Ouen and a statue of Napoleon.

Later we had a walk along the Seine before dinner – fish and chips at Poppy’s near our hotel, Hotel Dandy.

Caen

We got to the train station to find the midday train to Caen had been cancelled and we had an almost three-hour wait ahead of us. Spent most of the time forward-booking accommodation before getting a bus and checking into an Ibis hotel near Caen Station.

We went for a short walk before having a delicious boeuf bourguignon for dinner at a nearby hotel. There were a lot of youths loitering around the area which made us feel unsafe so we returned to our hotel.

We booked a hire car to get us to Bayeux.

Bayeux

After breakfast the next morning we picked up the hire car and got them to set the GPS for us in English, then followed the directions to Bayeux. We meet the owner of the house we had hired for three days at the property, Le 4 holiday home. She was lovely and the home was gorgeous, with the most well-equipped kitchen I’ve ever found in our travels. On the outside it was an old building in a cobblestoned laneway behind the cathedral but the inside had been renovated into a modern, stylish, comfortable home.

The 11th century Bayeux Tapestry is the town’s main attraction and first on our list of places to visit. The tapestry is actually nine embroidered linen bands stitched together stretching 70 metres long and 50 cm wide. It recounts the story of William the Conqueror’s accession to the English throne in 1066. Visitors are issued an audio device on entry which provides commentary in their selected language as they pass the tapestry.

Bayeux also has a great selection of half-wooden buildings, manor houses and a beautiful cathedral.

Bayeux is also home to the Battle of Normandy Museum and military cemetery.

Normandy Beaches

We picked a miserable wet day to visit the Normandy Beaches.

Le Mont Saint Michel

We had seen photos of Le Mont Saint Michel – the floating castle – and views of it during the television coverage of the Tour de France a few times so we had to visit since we were in the general area.

__________________________________

Giverney

Fitting Giverney into our itinerary was a challenge but I was determined to see Claude Monet’s home and garden so we had to squeeze it in on the last afternoon the day before flying out of France.

Easier said than done! First we had to get the car back to Caen. We were supposed to return it with a full tank of fuel but we didn’t pass a single petrol station on our drive from Bayeux so had to let the car-hire firm do it and charge it to our card which they did and then some!

We got a train back to Rouen then another to Giverney. Our hotel was too far to walk to and there was no public transport so we got a taxi. We thought we would have been able to catch a bus from there to Monet’s house but we were told there was no bus service so we could either catch a taxi there, go back to the train station and get a shuttle or walk. We decided that by the time we walked back to the train station we would have covered half the distance to the house anyway so decided to walk.

We should have taken another taxi! The footpath was in a very bad state of repair. Half-way into the very long walk it started bucketing down. When we eventually reached Monet’s place the reception was as bleak as the weather. The staff were curt and officious and not a smile between them.

Whenever I had thought about visiting Monet’s garden I’d imagined entering a low-fenced garden in the centre of a small town and strolling through the flower gardens in the warmth of the Spring sunshine, then relaxing over afternoon tea on the terrace of a ground-level dwelling. Then in bursts reality – a five-kilometre trudge in the pouring rain out of town to a two-storey house without a terrace in a walled garden and not a drop of tea in sight!

Inside the house was interesting. If it wasn’t for all the people traipsing through, you could easily imagine Monet living here having just popped out to the shop for more art supplies.

We caught the shuttle back to Giverney and had a walk around the town then back to our hotel along the riverbank.

We had intended going to an Indian restaurant we had passed earlier in the day for dinner but the riverbank walk bypassed it so we ended up buying some salads from the supermarket nextdoor instead.

So we settled in for the night. Brian found some footy to watch on the iPad while I wrote the postcards I’d bought earlier in the day. Before going to bed I checked the emails, only to find there was one from French Rail telling us that due to a rail strike the train we were booked on the next day to get us to the airport was cancelled!!!

The contact phone number French Rail provided went to a recording in French naturally, so there was nothing we could do until the morning except go to bed and try to get some sleep. That proved to be impossible. We knew were completely stranded. No trains were running in the region and the town we were in wasn’t on a bus route to the city. Another guest Brian talked to checked his iPhone and found that trains wouldn’t be running the next day either.

The knock-on effect if we couldn’t get to Charles de Gaulle airport by that afternoon meant we’d not only miss our flight back to Ireland but, by the time we rescheduled, we could miss our flight from there to Australia!

The weather deteriorated overnight with torrential rain causing road and highway closures and delays. It was so bad that when, after hours trying to get through and as a last resort, we tried to get a taxi to take us all the way to the airport, we were told they wouldn’t let their drivers attempt the drive.

Trying to book a hire car online proved to be impossible. There were two firms in the area so we left our luggage at the hotel and walked in the rain to the nearest one, due to open at 9.00 am. There were five other people in the tiny office when we got there just after opening, but no receptionist. The guy in charge came in from the garage, said something in French to the waiting group, then got on his mobile and after a lot of gesticulating drove out.

From what we could gather, the receptionist had been held up by the weather and we thought he’d gone to pick her up. Instead, an older lady arrived, possibly his mother, and she proceeded to get the office under way – slowly. Murphy’s Law was in full swing – everything that could go wrong did: the calculator ran out of batteries, the printer ran out of paper, the couple from America didn’t have their passports with them. At this point we realised we didn’t have ours either. They were back at the hotel with our luggage. So, when it was eventually our turn and we got to that stage of the process, I pleaded in what I could remember of my best high-school French for her to continue processing our application while Brian walked back to our hotel. The garage guy overheard this and gesticulating again impatiently indicated that he’d drive Brian to the hotel. It seemed to take forever. Every possible catastrophe ran through my mind. Apparently it was worse for Brian. The guy drove like a rally driver and, in trying to avoid a traffic jam, took a shortcut and hit roadworks instead! Murphy’s Law continued to rule when they got back and we resumed the hire process. When we reached the last stage in the process, payment, the system rejected our credit card even though it was the same one we used just hours earlier to pay the hotel bill. Fortunately we were able to use another one which the system did accept but it meant she had to go back and change the details in the system. All the time, precious minutes are ticking by! My nerves are stretched to breaking point. Finally, she hands over the keys. Then, before we could even get up from the desk, CRUNCH!!! A truck had backed into the entrance and was wedged in the doorway.

Luckily they managed to free the truck quite quickly and we were able to get underway using the GPS the garage guy had set up so we avoided the hold-ups caused by the overnight weather. We needed help to find fuel near the airport, but we eventually made it in plenty of time to catch our flight and subsequently made it home to Australia, with a brief stopover in Singapore on the way.

We stayed at Changi Village and had a day trip to the island of Pulau Ubin.

Well that was the end of our trip. Thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoyed the pictorial journey. Until next time …

Europe Trip 2018

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Driving Australia

Belgium – France

We crossed the border into Belgium on the train from Amsterdam to Brussels. It was pretty uneventful. A couple of officials checked our passports. That was it!

It wasn’t a long walk from the train station to our hotel but it was a bit tricky – cobblestones and luggage wheels do not make a good combination! But it was worth the effort, Hotel Mozart was just amazing!

Getting to breakfast was an adventure in itself. It was served in the basement, which was accessed via spiral staircases from the ground floor. Our room was on the third floor and the lift only went down as far as Reception, but then only if Brian kicked the door in the right spot. Other times he would have to go down the stairs and send the lift up to me.

Brussels surprised me. It was vibrant with a holiday atmosphere. Not what I expected. It has a great selection of grand buildings, cathedrals, parks, Manneken Pis – the Peeing Boy – and a magnificent plaza with gilded buildings that shone in the sunlight and at night were illuminated with coloured lights. There’s a wide variety of eateries in the square, the streets and the laneways, all offering alfresco dining with entertainment provided by a band of street musicians. We enjoyed Lebanese at La Perle du Liban and Greek at Makonos in our street and at El Greco on the plaza; and sampled various beers along the way!

Brussels by night

Bruge

We had a day trip to Bruge by train.

The highlight was visiting Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child at the Church of Our Lady, Saint Salvadore’s Cathedral.

It was Market Day so the square was quite crowded. We had lunch at Sintamandje on a quaint cobblestoned laneway before exploring the rest of the canal town including a statue of Jan Van Eyck, ‘Skyscraper’ the Bruges Whale made from plastic waste from the seas and oceans of the world and Beaterio with its swans and a nuns’ priory.

Next morning we reluctantly handed in the key and trudged back up the cobblestones to catch the train to Ypres.

Ypres

Ypres is also spelt Ieper and pronounced by our tour guide like the sound of a whisper ‘i-pe’ – the i as in ‘it’ and the pe as in ‘pet’ .

It is the home of the Menin Gate which used to be guarded by two lion statues, since presented to Australia and relocated to the Australian War Memorial Canberra. The Last Post ceremony is held there nightly at 8.00 pm and on our first night there the Australian cricket team participated in the wreath laying.

On our second day we visited In Flanders Fields Museum, an excellent interactive experience providing an insight to the realities of war and the people impacted by it.

We followed this with an Ypres Salient guided tour of nearby battlefields, cemeteries and places of interest such as Hill 60, Caterpillar Crater, Pool of Peace, Bayernwald German trenches, 1914 Christmas Truce Memorials and Hyde Park Memorial. André, our guide and driver from Over the Top Tours, provided insightful, knowledgeable commentary.

The drenching rain lent itself to the sombre nature of the day.

As we walked back to the bus at one of the sites, our guide André picked up the shell of a bomb from the edge of a field we were passing, just by the side of the road. Farmers continue to find such items when they plough their fields. They just place them by the road and the authorities collect them. Its all part of their normal routine.

We finished off our stay with a meal and a beer in a local café before taking in the Last Post again.

Farewell Flanders Fields, farewell Ieper!

Lille

We has a two-night weekend stay in Citadines Apart’ Hotel Lille.

We explored the old town on the Saturday. It was bustling – people everywhere!

The next day it was the complete opposite. No Sunday trading here! No crowds of people! It made it easy for us to continue exploring though: Saint Maurice Church, Porte de Paris, Hotel de Ville, an Ola Cuba exhibition in an old railway station and the Citadel.

It was a lovely couple of days, especially considering it was a mistake. I was supposed to book us into Amiens, so that’s where were heading next.

Europe Trip 2018

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Driving Australia

Holland

Whenever we go back to Ireland we take advantage of being on that side of the world to make a side-trip to Europe. This time we visited Holland, Belgium and France.

Amsterdam: bicycles, crooked buildings, canals, flower market, cheese, Ann Frank’s house

We tried to visit the Van Gogh Museum but after a bus, train, then tram-ride to get there, we found that the only way to get tickets was online and I had left my iPad at the hotel so had no means of accessing the Internet and the museum didn’t provide any. Seems to be a very strange form of crowd control!

We had the same sort of luck with the tulips. Family in Liverpool had shown us their photos of field after field of tulips, each a different vibrant colour. But when we asked at the tourist office for directions to the tulip fields and windmills, we were told the tulip season was over and the farmers had pulled any remaining tulips out of the ground.

Fortunately in the Zaan Region there’s a dedicated windmill village that can’t go out of season so we went there instead!

We used 1-day Amsterdam and Region travel tickets to get a bus to the windmills at Zaanse Schans Village; trains to Zaandam where we ate lunch and to Edam where we had a beer across from a cheese shop; then a bus via Volendam and Julianaweg – one of my middle names is Julianna – back to Amsterdam Central.

Zaandam

Edam

We had dinner at the waterfront before taking the free ferry over to Buiksloterweg, then back again after a short walk. Its a very popular ferry with pedestrians and cyclists.