To save me from going stir crazy being in Darwin for 2 weeks I decided to head down to the Adelaide River and Litchfield National lPark. Despite incredibly cheap rates from Hertz (for once using a CDP/discout code that I was entitled to use!) it still worked out cheaper to go on a tour. So after parting with $120, the fine folks at Wallaro Eco Tours took me and a few other people on a ride down the Adelaide River to look for crocodiles and then around some of the sights at Litchfield National Park.
I’m not generally a tour person, but I think I might’ve been converted. The minibus driver (Ben) and guy driving the boat (Adam) seem to know a hell of a lot about the top end and are more than happy to share their knowledge. Although I didn’t go as mad as I did at the Mindil Beach Fireworks, I still took a photo or 50. Click on the photo below to see the ones that made the cut!
Territory Day (known locally as Cracker Day for obvious reasons) is celebrated in the Northern Territory to commemorate the anniversary of self government on 1st July every year. Because they’re such a nice bunch up here, the NT government lays on a huge firework display at Darwin’s Mindil Beach. Given that I’m working up here for a couple of weeks, I thought I’d go join that thousands of other people on the beach to see what it was all about. I might’ve taken a photo or two while I was there…
Well that was fun wasn’t it? For some reason, I got it into my head that driving from Adelaide to Alice Spring and back and stoppingin at Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) on the way home would be a good idea. The novelty has now well and truly worn off!
I have a problem. Well actually, I have several but we won’t go into all of them. For some reason that I can’t fathom, I consistently take photographs with horizons that aren’t horizontal and it’s getting annoying. Here’s an example…
OK, so this is a bit of an extreme example and given that my camera was balanced on a log, there wasn’t much that I could do to prevent it happening in the first place, but there are a few things that can be done to either straighten things up or stop cocking up in the first place. If you’re going to correct the horizon after taking the photo, try not to crop the scene too much in cameraas you may lose quite a bit on rotation if you want a square photograph.
In no particular order the things to stop messing up/fix things later are…
I’ve been talking way too much about photography recently, so it’s probably time to get back to the Food part of Food ‘n’ Photos for at least one post. I used to get myself in a right state when cooking with stuff all over the place, and a lot of stress being released through banging, crashing and swearing. Then I found the secret to home kitchen zen – preparation, preparation, preparation.
To greatly reduce the risk of any cockups, I do the following for any recipe that I’m following or pulling together from the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind:
Go through required ingredients at least twice and make sure they’re in the house or on a shopping list
Check the ingredients again
Read/recollect the recipe several times to make sure I don’t forget anything
If it’s a complicated recipe or if there are multiple parts to a meal (e.g. Christmas dinner) come up with a running sheet with timings and a brief description of what needs to be done. Refer to recipe book and page number if relevant
If there’s a lot of preparation to be done, do it as far ahead of the meal is possible/practical. Wherever possible, try to make sure that cooking time is only use for assembling ingredients. This is particularly important if there’s a likelihood that you’re going to cock something up as this will only add to your stress levels and raise the likelihood that whatever you’re making is going to turn out badly
Years ago, engineers came up with a concept known as the “Project Triangle”. It’s based off of the age old adage that nothing’s perfect. The saying can be slightly adapted to apply to just about any situation you can think of. Here are a couple that spring to mind:
What’s the one thing that you need to be able to take photographs? A camera.
There have been a few scenes that I’ve seen recently that would’ve made fantastic photographs generating enough of an income for me to retire on. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there have certainly been times recently when it would’ve been useful to have a camera with me. One of them was just this morning while I was driving into work. One cow walked across part of a paddock to another cow, and kissed him/her/it. Now I’m sure that it was part of a bovine identification ritual, and they weren’t actually kissing, but it would’ve made a good photo.
Unless you’ve been living under a photography free rock for a while, you’ll have heard that Photoshop CS5 is to be released in the very near future (April 12th if you want to be exact). There looks to be some interesting features being implemented, not lease of which is Content Aware Fill. See video below…
There’s bound to be some ‘lively discussion’ on whether or not this new functionality goes too far and to be honest I’m not too sure where I sit myself. On the one hand it can help to make up for compositional shortfalls, on the other it possibly goes a bit too far.
Other features suggested to be in the new version are (in no particular order):
Vi vs Emacs, Windows vs Apple, Ford vs Holden, Canon vs Nikon. All of these are discussions that generally end through invocation of Godwin’s Law or a thoroughly good punch up at the very least. More recently, there has been a fair bit of heated discussion on whether or not HDR Imaging is photography or not. I’ll lay my cards on the table up front and let you know that I’m well and truly in the not camp.
Ducks trying to cross roads should use 50km/h zones, wear bright coloured feathers and stay in pond until they're easily seen #adelhills22:11:09 30/08/10from web
