A wide-angle lens can be great for capturing cars from interesting angles. With this particular photo, I wanted to capture the mud on the side of the car, as well as the dark and threatening sky overhead.
Holding the camera low down, with the 10-22mm lens, allowed me to capture the car, road, and plenty of interesting sky.

dirty car

central Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 10-22mm @14mm, 1/200 sec, f/8, ISO100

I recently purchased a Cokin Z-Pro U960 ND Grad kit for my camera and some adapter rings, and I'm looking forward to using the filters on my camera.

Cokin Z-Pro U960 ND Grad Kit

mounted on a Canon 10-22mm lens

I wanted the Z-Pro kit primarily so I could use Neutral Density and Neutral Density Graduated filters (often referred to as "ND" and "ND Grad" filters) on my camera.

The purpose of an ND (neutral density) filter is to reduce the amount of light getting to the camera's sensor, without affecting the colour balance, contrast or colour temperature. ND filters are useful for allowing longer shutter speeds to be used (ie, for "smoothing" out water when taking photos of rivers and waterfalls). An ND Grad filter is a graduated ND filter, and has half the filter darkened, and half the filter clear. This allows you to darken a bright sky, to ensure both the sky and the subject are better exposed.

Here's a photo from Saturday night, while at a friend's house for a bonfire. The kids (including older kids and adults) always love a bonfire, and it's great to sit near it on a cold night, with the bonfire providing lots of warmth.

bonfire silhouette II

Forrestdale, Western Australia
Canon EOS 350D, 50mm f/1.8 @50mm, 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO200

This photo was taken at the same location as a bonfire silhouette photo taken several years ago.

In November 2007, while attending the Red Bull Air Race qualifying in Perth with a friend, I took a a number of photos of some of the many police officers who were in attendance in the crowd. Along with photos of the various Red Bull aeroplanes, I also published a photo of two police officers in my Red Bull photo gallery.

Several weeks ago, I received the following email, which referenced the image of the two police officers:

By today's standards, we have a pretty large back yard. While I'm not a very keen gardener, and often find it difficult to motivate myself to do the gardening. However, the kids love the large back yard, and are often out there, kicking a ball around on the lawn, on the swings, in the sandpit, or in the cubby house.

Earlier today, I followed the kids around in the back yard with my camera, as kids playing can often provide great opportunities for candid shots.
Here's some of the photos of my youngest daughter, Samantha (17 months old), enjoying the back yard.

Click each image for a larger version.

Taken from the Fossil Rock Lookout, near the Blowhole in Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania.
Unfortunately it was a wet and miserable day when we were here, but I love the dark brown tones of the rocks and cliff face.

Fossil Rock Lookout

Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 10-22mm @17mm, 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO200

I recently ordered a canvas print of one of my photos from RedBubble.com, an Australian-based company that provides print-on-demand services. You can buy prints of your own photos from RedBubble, or you can buy prints of any of the many high quality photos uploaded by other RedBubble users.

I've previously ordered greeting cards from them (great quality!), but this was the first canvas print I've bought through RedBubble, and I decided to write this review to allow people to see what a canvas print from RedBubble looks like.

I ordered the large canvas version of this image, which works out at a size of 610x311mm. The completed canvas print was delivered about 8 business days after being ordered online (published times for standard delivery are 10-15 business days), and was securely packaged in cardboard, bubblewrap and plastic.

After unpacking the canvas print, I took a closer look at it, and was surprised at how much detail had been retained in the image. Some canvas prints lose a lot of details due to the texture of the canvas, but the texture of the canvas used by redubble is subtle enough to ensure detail is preserved.

folded canvas on the corner

solid wooden frame

My youngest daughter is fascinated with my camera. This makes it difficult to get photos of her, as she immediately heads towards the camera when she sees it in my hands.
She particularly likes to see the results on the rear screen after I've taken a photo. Maybe she's an aspiring photographer who can't wait to take her own photos ;-)

reach

home, Western Australia
Canon EOS 350D, 50mm f/1.8 @50mm, 1/60 sec, f/3.2, ISO200

However, on rare occasions, she'll pose for the camera. This typically occurs when she's found something that's more interesting than the camera - often something she's not supposed to be touching. In this particular case, she was experimenting with my wife's sudoku book and pen that was on the coffee table.

smile!

home, Western Australia
Canon EOS 350D, 50mm f/1.8 @50mm, 1/80 sec, f/1.8, ISO200

Mountains appear blue in the distance as the clouds roll in.

distant mountains

central Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 10-22mm @22mm, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO100

I love the colours of autumn leaves.

autumn red

Cataract Gorge reserve, Launceston, Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 17-85mm IS @85mm, 1/60 sec, f/6.3, ISO200

The Tessellated Pavement is located just north of Eaglehawk Neck, in Tasmania. Nearby, a number of other geological attractions are located, including the Tasman Arch, Devil's Kitchen, and the Blowhole.
However, the Tessellated Pavement was the most intriguing for me, with the rock formation looking very much like it was man-made, due to the very straight and parallel lines in the rock formation.

There are two main types of formations in the Tessellated Pavement, with the pan formations (as shown in the two photos below) being concave (ie, pan-shaped), and the loaf formations (to be shown in a future blog post) being convex like a loaf.

pan formations at the Tessellated Pavement

Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 10-22mm @12mm, 1/40 sec, f/9, ISO200

Earlier today, a friend pointed me at an interesting blog post about how many photographers obsess with gear, and always needing to upgrade a body or lens... It's a worthwhile read, and serves as a great reminder for all photographers out there to focus on their photos, and not the gear they think they need/want ;-)

Also from the same blogger, a humorous look at the realisation that he has too much gear, and sells most of it to buy the "dream" camera he thought was too expensive....not realising just how much money he had already spent on gear anyway!


On another note, if you've ever wondered how to tell the age of a Canon lens, here's some info on making sense of the date code that's on most Canon lenses.
A quick look through my lenses indicates L lenses have a date code, but my other lenses don't have one.


Scott Kelby recently interviewed an attorney to discuss various topics, including copyright, model releases, and shooting in public. While it's primarily US-focused, there's still some interesting content for people in other countries.

While not specifically photography-related, I thought I'd post this information, as all webmasters and people running websites should be aware of it, as AVG LinkScanner could be causing additional bandwidth usage on your websites, and falsely inflating your website hit counts.
Also, anyone with AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0 needs to be aware of this behaviour, that it will consume additional download quota as LinkScanner queries every result on a search engine results page, and that it is having a negative impact on websites.

While in Tasmania in May, we visited the Devils @ Cradle wildlife park. Devils @ Cradle have a captive-breeding program, with 20 Devils on-site. They also monitor wild Devils in the Cradle Mountain area. When we visited, they had several female Devils which were thought to be pregnant.

This particular Tasmanian Devil is a small female named Charlotte.
I like this photo because it shows the Devil in the classic screaming posture, with her mouth wide open.

Charlotte the Tasmanian Devil

Devils @ Cradle, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania
Canon EOS 350D, 70-200mm f/4L @200mm, 1/80 sec, f/4, ISO200

Tasmanian Devils have a reputation for making lots of noise, and the specimens at Devils @ Cradle were no exception. They screeched and screamed a great deal while we were there. Apparently the screaming is not really a show of aggression - it is done to intimidate their enemies (including humans).

Here's an overview of all the photos I blogged during the month of June, with all the photos coming from my recent Tasmanian holiday.





Click any image to navigate directly to that blog post.


Some of the other posts from June include:

• Copyright Violation - what would you do? (posted 2008-06-16)
• Copyright Violation - follow up (posted 2008-06-30)
• Tasmania Holiday (posted 2008-06-02)