Kookaburra

Blue Moon in June - June 30

Well it seems I have started blogging so infrequently that it could be said I post only once in a blue moon - not quite true, as we have 'blue moons' approximately every 2.72 years.

This Saturday we do have a blue moon - the moon is the same colour it's just the name used when a second full moon falls in a calendar month. Take the chance of doing some moon gazing (cloud cover permitting).

Something I only learnt in recent years is that on the day of a full moon, the moon rises very close to the time the sun sets, which makes getting photographs easier as there is still some daylight to light the land.

You can discover your moonrise and sunset times using the calendars available at http://www.sunrisesunset.com/

More reading on the Blue Moon is available via The Sydney Observatory blog.

Unreal beauty

When advertising is used for good (not the evil of tempting us into further consumerism) it's really good.

This campaign from Dove really drives home the message that every model in a glamourous magazine has been digitally enhanced well beyond their natural beauty.

What messages do these unreal photographs send to the women in our lives?

Fathers show your daughters this ad - they deserve to know that no one looks like these models look. They shouldn't suffer from the self-doubt and low self-esteem that results from comparing themselves to the unreal beauty pumped out by the image industry.

Iceland - amazing light = amazing photos

An interesting crowd has gathered in Iceland for the Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop Iceland Adventure - Bill Atkinson (creator of much of the original Mac's software including MacPaint - now a firstclass photographer), Michael Reichmann (host of www.luminous-landscape.com and the man I 'blame' for rekindling my interest in photography) and other luminaries.

You can read all about it at the O'Reilly Digital Media Blog [technorati search on Lightroom Adventure]

The pictures really do glow. Check out the Gallery.

This one by Martin Sundberg is especially wonderous -- [wild horses]

As for the light. It's the height of summer in Iceland so there lots of right sort of light to really bring out the colours and hardly any night to speak of.

Sticking sunrise & sunset in your e-calendar

As we (in the southern hemisphere) move into Spring and the longer days it's great to see virtually an extra minute of daylight every day. That also means the excuses for me not getting on with the gardening are also diminishing - though I don't believe the neighbours will appreciate my leafblower running at the crack of dawn.

It's a pain to have to periodically remember to look up somewhere on the net (usually sunrisesunset.com) to find when sunrise and sunset fall. It's also useful to know when a full moon is rolling around as it does provide great sunset photo opps. Essentially the full moon is so bright that the best time to photograph it is as it leaps over the horizon on the eve of the full moon. On this day the virtually full moon crests the horizon just before the sun goes down. This means there is more balanced light and you can more easily capture the beauty of the full moon.

Anyhow figured there should be an easy way to get this info into a iCal file so I can easily import it into Apple's imaginantively named Ical. There is -- it's called TideCal. It's not very flashy but it does just the trick and it's freeware. Marvellous. If you are a non-Mac user you can turn to XTide which is on various flavours of *nix and has been ported to Win32.

Note I have pondering my garden over winter (hence not many postings) and watching excess amounts of Gardening Australia - I fear that I will soon take on the vocabulary of it's venerable host - Peter Cundall. "And that's your blooming lot for this week". Oh well I seem to have lived my life by leaping from obsession to obsession. Pottering around in the garden should keep me out of trouble for a bit, actually my garden is large enough to consume me for many years. I am looking forward to it.

Your Camera Does Not Matter

Ken Rockwell sets out in a recent essay to explain why the choice of camera is less critical than learning to really 'see' and capture the shot. What you see in your head is more critical than what you hold in your hand. I'll remind myself of that next time I start lusting after some marvellous new cameras.

People know cars don't drive themselves, typewriters don't write novels by themselves and that Rembrandt's brushes didn't paint by themselves, so why do some people think cameras drive around and make pictures all by themselves? The most advanced, exotic and expensive car can't even stay in the same lane on the freeway by itself, much less drive you home. No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. Every camera requires you to make manual adjustments now and then as well, regardless of how advanced it is. Never blame a camera for not knowing everything or making a wrong exposure or fuzzy image.

One photo per mile across the U.S.

Photographer Matt Frondorf drove from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate bridge and took one photo at each mile marker. The result is a collection of 3,304 photos moving from east to west - an interactive Flash map of the project lets you travel across the States and see Matt’s photos in order. -- American Mile Markers [Kodak] (from Lifehacker)

Enhancer v.1.2 -- Detail-Enhancement Software

Here you will find examples of AKVIS Enhancer application. It seems to do an excellent job of recovering detail from shadow areas. Available for Mac OS and Windows.

Sports photo of the year

From the Sydney Morning Herald

Tim Clayton from The Sydney Morning Herald has won the sports photo of 2003 award at the World Press Photo contest for this amazing picture of French rugby player Yannick Bru demonstrating what happens to hookers when scrums collapse.

Is it no wonder that a couple of times a season we hear of Rugby players being paralysed or worse!

Still a brilliant shot from the Rugby World Cup captured at the precise moment with a 600 mm lens.

A nostalgia trip back to film

Frank van Riper who writes about photography for the Washington Post has an interesting article about a pro who has (in part) put down his digital camera and re-bought a Leica film camera. (The article is presently on the front page and is titled "One Photographer's Return to Film"). The central thesis is that a well accomplished professional photographer may enjoy their lot more just shooting film and leaving the rest to the pro-labs, than having to master PhotoShop and a squillion techniques.

The arguments will continue to rage over digital vs analog but if I could have the size, speed and range of high quality lenses of a Leica Rangefinder (such as the M7) in digital then I would be very happy indeed. For me the key is getting the images into digital form so you can have ultimate control over tones, size and treatments.

Back to film!

Just purchased a second hand Pentax ME camera (circa 1977-81) to experiment with astrophotography and night shots. Unlike 'modern' cameras it will happily hold its shutter open all night without burning batteries.

A credit to Pentax and their loyal customers is the fact that I can still download the manual for the camera (from Pentax) and get some great service info on it from fans.

It will seem distinctly odd to be using film not digital. Will I be able to wait for my transparencies to come back from the lab? We'll see.