Leonine Skyline

It really is a very pretty city. And I like that little blonde skyscraper especially.

"My Foot" (Leo Board)

...glossing over the potential satanic symbology. I had a good sit down with him to see if there's anything he wants to talk to us about. He just growled, and I could be wrong, but I think his eyes may have glowed a tiny bit red. Still, good picture!

Big Wheel (a different one)

A totally different, and much bigger, Big Wheel. Took a whole load of frames of this angle with different settings and compositions, but the first, snapped on Auto, was by far the best.

Sunset at Williamstown beach

Raced down to the bay to catch the last of the light and take Leo for a leg-stretch. Got there just as it went down, and had a great display...

From Williamstown sunset

From Williamstown sunset

Fun at the fair

A couple of rides have been erected down at Federation Square, where we had lunch today with a mate from work.

Just snapped this when playing with a slow shutter, but it turned out a bit better than I thought -- wish I'd taken another without the fence.

Another slow shutter job.

It's certainly the case that the more you snap, the greater the chance of one being good. I grabbed at least half a dozen; reckon this was the best.

Night shots part deux

Took the long way home after leaving the office a bit later, and continued with my theme of 'Melbourne's dirty bits by night'.

(This was my favourite from the previous lot, which I'm sticking here rather than hiding on the web album.)

Higher-res originals all to be found here.

Some great low-light shots

Captions on the photos so I won't explain again here, but I'm pretty happy with some of these.

(Click here to see them.)

Full moon

Ponce-a-rama from Mum and Dad's trip

As usual I put a bit more effort into some of the photos I took during the holiday with Mum and Dad, and the better ones are posted up on the Picasa Web Album here. I think I'm slowly getting better, but only slowly. Still, no hurry.

It was my birthday while I was out there, and they had bought me a couple of books I'd asked for, both by Bryan Peterson. 'Understanding Exposure' is a classic handbook (apparently) on getting "creatively correct exposures", which opened my eyes to the M setting on the camera. 'Learning To See Creatively' focuses more on composition and spotting a good shot. Both are filled with amazing photos that I'd kill to be able to achieve, all in full colour. I've recently seen he has another book, 'Beyond Portraiture', with more great shots, that I may buy in the future.

I've also just bought another couple of books in the States, where they're much cheaper - 'Photography: The Art of Composition', which I've actually yet yet read, and a 'Digital Field Guide to the Nikon D50' which looked like a good source of extra info about my camera, includin how to get the best out of it in certain photographic situations.

Any other books you could recommend?

Zebra cropping

Lesley made a fine point about the zebra picture below. At the time I took two photos, portrait and landscape, with and without ears. I chose the one without the ears simply for framing reasons, using the eye as a point of interest in a fuller frame, but it was really no better than the portrait.

So, as an exercise for anyone interested, I've created a web album with three pictures: the zebra portrait with ears, and two croppings I've made of it. I'm keen to see what else could be achieved with a really creative crop, if you can be bothered!

Pics are here.

Long lens in the butterfly room

Another one from the Zoo's (very lovely) butterfly house. I'm very happy with the close framing, and the composition is even OK, but I can't help thinking it's a bit ... green. The wings' hue is basically green, and only the red dot really stands out. Hmm, not sure. I partly really like it, and wonder if it's better than I think, and maybe the red spot is the reason. But mostly I think it's lacking something. Oh, how I wish I knew what the hell I was talking about.

Learning about black and white

I'd like to learn to make nice black and white shots. I have to do it in post-processing - the camera doesn't have a B&W setting that I can find - so it feels a bit like cheating, but still, I find this a pleasing image. I'm also beginning to learn the value of the histogram the camera can show me, in getting a good spread of tones. This isn't a hugely compelling subject but the image has come out with good strong contrast, and something about the composition is nice, although I'm not sure what, and I think it still needs something doing to it (cropping, perhaps), but I can't work that out either. I'll be content with it as it is, though.

Fauna down the long lens

From Melbourne Zoo, except the wild kookaburras, who we saw at the Children's Farm. Click on the pics for bigger versions, as with all images on these blogs.

Kaleidoscope

The science museum button-pressing lever-pulling place in Port Melbourne had a shop, and the shop had kaleidoscopes, and I had my camera.