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I took these photos a couple of weeks ago. I had just got home from work and after a stinking hot day there was the beginnings of a stormy front sweeping in. The wind had obviously picked up because on looking out towards Pittwater the expanse seen from our balcony was covered in dozens of little white sails.

My first thought was how I wished my dad could be there to see it, being a dinghy enthusiast, and so I decided to do the next best thing and take some pictures for him.

I’m not a huge fan of boats in general but (more…)

Art – it is such an ambiguous word and can describe many things, from music to a painting to simply a wonderful landscape, at least in my opinion, art can be whatever you want it to be if it brings you joy.

Whatever your take on art, it is definitely food for the soul and for the past year or more I have had the urge to create some of my own art. I have dabbled over the years in many different crafts but just recently got re-motivated to get out the acrylics by a course that was being run at the local college. It was a short course, just two evenings, on aboriginal art, but I have been so fascinated by the types of paintings that the aboriginals create and the deep stories and legends behind them that I was really inspired to give it a go. I also thought it might help loosen my artist’s block (my excuse for thinking about painting a lot but never actually picking up the brush) and help me find my muse.

However, after spending a whole week really looking forward to it, it was not to be. I had a phone call last Thursday to say that the tutor had unfortunately had to pull out due to personal reasons and that only two people had signed up so it was unlikely to have gone ahead anyway.

Very disheartened, I started to think about whether there were any other courses I could do instead and had a flip through the college pamphlet when I got home. After much deliberation I decided on (more…)

Some belated pictures I took whilst watching the sun rise off South Curl Curl Headland with Mat on Sat 21st July.

More to come with better annotations but wanted to get something posted up at least.

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Last month I was driving home from work and was stopping off at Tom and Chris’ on the way to pick up Mat as he was round there having a beer with them. As I was driving down the hill I marvelled at the beautiful mauve sky which complimented the almost full (it was one day off), silvery moon perfectly.

As I approached the turn off to Fielding Street instead of turning right I decided to pull over into the beach front car park and take some pictures first.

The following are some of the better results I got and considering I did not have a tripod I think they have come out quite well (if you click on the photos you can display them at full size if you wish):

This photo shows the moon over the sea with a bit of Norfolk Island Pine showing in the foreground (a tree which is prolific along many beach fronts in the Sydney area due to it having favourable properties for making ships’ masts; in the olden days damaged ships could pull in, cut them down to build new masts and then continue on their way).
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Mat & I got up rediculously early yesterday morning (5am) as Mat had to go on a two day job down south. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it as he would be staying away overnight and it would be our first night apart since I got to Australia. However, Mat said it would be a good character building exercise (lol) and practice for when he goes on a lads’ off roading “no girls allowed” weekend. Hmm, I’m not so sure about that but I did decide to make the most of the early start by going down to the beach before work and catching the sunrise.

I have found a nice little cul-de-sac off the main road where I can park and either sit in the car and watch the waves if it’s raining or go for a stroll along the sand. This has now replaced Leckhampton Hill which I used to use for my early morning stroll and chill out before work back in the UK.

I have always had an interest in photography and just recently I have been newly inspired and motivated by Nico, at work. He is a very keen and accomplished photographer and has kindly been giving me some hints and tips, the main one being “practice, practice, practice”. So relishing the opportunity to take some seascape photos I was on the sand of Narrabeen Beach by 6am, a rich orange glow just starting to rise over the sea.

To cut a long story short I spent half an hour taking photos (95 in total) and then got to work an hour early so I could download them and inspect the results. Most of them were useless but there were a couple that had potential and Nico, who was also in early, kindly suggested that I picked my favourite and he would post-process it for me. Now I know one can use Photoshop or the like to edit photos but I didn’t realise until recently that it is an important part of the photographic process. Nico spent just ten minutes performing his jiggery pokery and here is the result:

Before:

After:

The main things done were cropping to improve the composition, lighting adjustment and sharpening. I am pretty chuffed with the results and although it is obviously better to take a great photo to start with it’s good to know certain things can be adjusted afterwards. I can’t wait to learn the process and then maybe I can improve some of my other shots.

Anyway, I have now added a “photography” category within this blog so I can log my ongoing progress.

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