I got up at 04:45 this morning to head out to Mahon Pool at Maroubra for a photo shoot. Unfortunately the sky was a bit too cloudy for anything really spectacular, but I got a few decent shots. Then went to a cafe and spoiled myself with eggs benedict for breakfast. :-)
Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Mahon Pool at Dawn
Sunday, 23 October, 2011More Getty Images
Wednesday, 3 August, 2011Woo! Getty Images selected another 7 of my Flickr photos to be added to their collection for licensing to commercial buyers.
And I realised this is where the money mysteriously appearing in my PayPal account is coming from. I went through my Getty statements for the past few months and realised I’ve made several sales. One for a book published by the UK National Trust!
Leon Dormido
Wednesday, 15 June, 2011
Back in the day, I used to get roughly one of my photos per month into Flickr’s Explore – the top 500 most “interesting” photos posted on the site on any given day. But the rate petered off and now I’ve had a drought that’s lasted almost two years – my last Explored photo was back in September, 2009.
I figure it’s because Flickr has grown rapidly. There are more people uploading more photos, and that just makes it harder to attract enough attention to get a photo into the top 500 of an ever-expanding sample size.
But I was pleasantly surprised to see a raft of comments and likes on this photo, which I posted a couple of days ago. This is a shot of Leon Dormido (“Sleeping Lion”), a volcanic rock spire sticking out of the ocean a few kilometres off the coast of San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos. It’s a nesting site for blue-footed boobies and magnificent frigatebirds. We circled the rock in our boat a couple of times at dawn to see the frigatebirds in their courtship displays – there’s no landing place on the rock. This shot is as we were leaving it behind, our last encounter with wildlife in the Galapagos. To me there’s that element of sadness in this image – something I guess nobody else picks up just from looking at it. Still, I’m very pleased with how this photo turned out.
Owl Butterfly
Tuesday, 7 June, 2011
One of my favourite photos from my recent trip to South America. This is a species of giant owl butterfly, taken in the Peruvian jungle near Puerto Maldonado, a stone’s throw from the Rio Madre de Dios, which is the largest tributary of the Amazon. This is probably the biggest butterfly I’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately I can’t quite identify the exact species of owl butterfly. It somewhat resembles either the Forest giant owl butterfly (Caligo eurilochus), Idomeneus giant owl butterfly (Caligo idomeneus), or Illioneus giant owl butterfly (Caligo illioneus), but not enough that I’m positive about an identification. It may be another species I haven’t managed to find good pictures of to make a comparison. If anyone can make a positive ID, I’d be grateful.
Yes, that’s my wife in the background. :-)
Early to rise
Saturday, 9 April, 2011
I got up at 4:30 on Friday morning to go out to Curl Curl Beach and take some photos of the sunrise. It’s the nicest time of year to do this, and it will probably be my last chance before leaving for South America. The sunrise wasn’t great, but I got some half decent shots.
It was pitch black when I got to the beach, but there were already some people swimming in the rock pool at the southern end. By the time the sun came up, it was like rush hour – dozens of people in the pool, lots of surfers out, a fisher collecting bait on the rocks, several joggers, an entire fitness class being put through a routine with a trainer, and a guy on the beach doing a painting! It would be so nice to live by the beach and get up before dawn every day!
Friday was also Magic night – we played a 5-player round robin draft of the latest two sets: Scars of Mirrodin and Mirrodin Besieged. Alas, I lost every game! And I thought my deck was pretty good when I was assembling it too. Oh well, my excuse is I was too tired!
Sunrise by the Water
Monday, 28 March, 2011
I got up at 5:30 on Sunday morning and headed out to Collaroy for some dawn photography at the ocean rock pool there. The weather had been overcast and showery on Saturday, with more of the same forecast for Sunday, but you can never really tell what it’ll be like for a shooting session until you get there, so I persevered, despite it looking gloomy and rainy when I got up. It rained the entire way there in the car, and I was fearing we’d have to just sit in the car for an hour before heading off for a breakfast somewhere.
When we got there, it was still dark and the rain had cleared to a very light drizzle, so I braved it with the help of an umbrella to keep the camera dry. There was a swimmer already in the pool, getting some laps in. I got about half a dozen shots in before the rain started getting heavier, forcing me to retreat back to the car. We sat there for about half an hour, watching it tumble down, as the sky slowly lightened from black to dark grey. As we waited, several cars and vans pulled up next to us, with guys getting out to survey the surfing conditions. Some took one look and headed away again. One guy stood staring at the ocean for about 20 minutes, brooding under a golf umbrella, trying to come to a decision. One or two grabbed their boards and headed out into the surf.
Eventually the rain slowed again. I ventured out and it quickly slackened off enough to take more photos, without needing an umbrella. The sunlight was giving some texture to the looming clouds by then, and I think I got some decent shots. The rain held off and the clouds began to break up slightly, allowing glimpses of sky. A dozen or so surfers plied the waves beyond the pool, and a procession of swimmers – almost all of them elderly men – arrived at the pool for their daily constitutional.
The concrete surrounds were slick with puddles of rain, and the surf was up a bit, washing over the seaward side of the pool, and getting my feet wet with seawater as I walked around with my gear. It wasn’t the best sunrise shooting session, but it was well worth it. At 7:30 or so we packed up and headed to a nearby cafe for some breakfast and to continue our early start to the day.
Lorikeet visit
Sunday, 9 January, 2011
Look who visited my balcony this morning. There were three rainbow lorikeets hanging around. I tried offering them sunflower seeds, but they didn’t like them much. Only when I checked later did I realise they are nectar and fruit eaters. Ooops.
I might look into getting a nectar feeder to hang out there.
Flickr blogged
Wednesday, 8 December, 2010
One of my photos made today’s Flickr blog post! It’s a photo of mountain ash trees in Tasmania’s Mount Field National Park. This is the first time any of my work has been featured on the blog. :-)
Retro Digital Photography
Thursday, 23 September, 2010I was discussing photography with friends at lunch today, specifically this article about attaching a 102-year-old movie camera lens to a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR. The sample photos on there are very cool looking.
We talked about the trend for photographer to try to emulate the look and feel of old-time film photography. You can of course create some of the old-time photo effects on a digital image with Photoshop. Some people actually go out now and buy cheap and crappy film cameras and take photos with them, and scan them in to share online. That’s cool and good and all. But we pondered reproducing the experience of film photography with a digital camera.
Consider a Canon 5D Mark II. If you shoot in RAW mode (as I do with mine), each image file is about 20 megabytes. You find you need multi-gigabyte memory cards to hold a decent number of photos. But maybe you have an old 512 MB card lying around from an earlier camera. That will hold… 25 photos, give or take a couple depending on what you’re shooting and the file compression ratios. A common number of exposures on a roll of film was 24 (and you could usually squeeze a 25th shot in).
And so was born the idea. Take your fancy-shmancy digital camera and a memory card just big enough to hold roughly 24 photos. Go out shooting, without any other memory cards. Do not delete any shots you take until you get home. Post all the shots from your “roll of film” to your photo sharing site.
This puts you into the mindset of film photography. You only have 24 shots, and you better try to make each one count.
And then we went a step further. For a real challenge, find a 32 MB card (or appropriate size for your camera), which will hold only one photo (in RAW format). Go out shooting without any other memory cards. This time, you’re allowed to delete any photos you take. But you only get to come home with one shot. If you think you can improve on the shot on your card, you can erase it and take another photo. if you think you’ve got the best shot of the day, keep it until you go home.
If you try either of these ideas, please point me at the results.
I’m a Getty Images contributor!
Saturday, 11 September, 2010About a year ago, Getty Images started a partnership with Flickr, which allowed any Flickr user to elect to place a Getty Images licensing request link on their photos. I did so. Recently someone expressed an interest in licensing one of my photos via this link, and so I’ve been invited to become a Getty Images contributor! So far, four of my photos have been selected for inclusion in the Getty Images Collection.
As an invited contributor I can now submit up to 25 new photos per month for consideration by the Getty editors. They’re very selective about which images they accept, but hopefully my contribution there will grow over time. :-)