Explorations! (Part V)

Final post for my week long explorations!

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DAY 6 (17 NOV)

The 6th Day of explorations was another overcast day. On this day, the journey went further out again, this time southwards by train to Cronulla, and then by bus to the Kurnell Peninsula. On this day, my housemate came along too, since he didn't have anything else to do.

The weather held for part of the morning, but as we wandered further, the rain started, and it was a pretty wet walk,  and a very, very long one too (See image below), though the views were pretty rewarding once again.

Overall, it was another location that needs to be visited once again, and this one more so, as there was a large area yet to be explored.

DAY 7 (18 NOV)

I didn't have much time to go around on the final day of explorations, since I had a plane to catch at 430pm, so I just spent the morning going taking the Mosman Bay ferry around, and stopping by at Cremorne Point. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, unlike that of the previous two or three mornings.

After the lovely morning out, it was back to Randwick, then off to the airport, thus ending off approximately 7 days of almost non-stop travelling around.

From all that zooming around, I'd say that the $57 that was spent on the MyMulti was well spent, since I'd probably used up more than a hundred dollars worth of transportation in all my travels.

Oh, and I didn't mention before, but more photos of all the explorations can be found on facebook.

Explorations! (Part IV)

DAY 4 (15 NOV)

After three days of great sunshine (which was already better than forcasted, but I wasn't complaining), the weather turned gloomy. I didn't have far-flung plans for this day, but the overcast skies didn't help, in any case.

The morning involved what I termed a "Ferry Run", which was a plan to hop on and off as many ferries possible. So I made stops at McMachons Point, Balmain East, and Milsons Point (at Jeffery's Street Wharf), all places that I've not looked around before. The views, while mostly familiar, were at least from different directions, so the perspectives were slightly different.

Perhaps I would go to some of these areas again on days with better weather.

After hopping off the ferryt at Jefferys Street, I took the train to Waverton, and walked to Balls Head Reserve. The views were once again of the harbour, but further west, and I believe it would have looked much nicer on a clear sunny day.

(Click image for larger size)

After Balls Head, I headed back to Circular Quay, and caught a ferry to Manly. I had planned to try to reach North Head in the afternoon, but while I was still at Manly, it began to rain, and all further explorations had to be postponed (Though I did go out for a short while in the evening, somehow ending up all the way at Macquarie University's train station before going back to the city :P).

DAY 5 (16 NOV)

The 5th day started out as overcast as the day before, but I decided to head for North Head anyway, taking the ferry to Manly once more, and catching a bus from there. Even so, it was still a pretty long walk to the lookout points (The bus stopped near the entrance to Q Station).

The views were great, though the drizzle that started while I was walking and the overcast skies did dampen the mood a little. Didn't spend too long there due to the wet weather, but when I walked back to the bus stop, I realized that I missed the bus (which came once an hour), so I had to walk all the way back to Manly Wharf. And to add on to that, the sky that greeted me back at Manly looked like this:

Yes, the sky cleared up and the sun came out, after I was done walking and exploring North Head...

In any case, I just decided to head on back and continue with my plans, and come back to North Head another time. From Manly, I headed back to Circular Quay, got lunch, and headed right of to Watsons Bay.

After looking around a bit at Greens Point, I headed to South Head once again to visit my favourite lighthouse:

I think it was my 5th visit there, if I'm not mistaken.

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TBC in one final post...

Explorations! (Part III)

DAY 3 (14 NOV)

The third day of explorations took me north once again, this time to Newcastle - and it took a train journey of nearly 3 hours to get there.

The first place I visited was Nobby's Headland and Lighthouse, located where the Hunter River met the Tasman Sea. Walked right to the very end of the breakwater too.

From there, I headed to Fort Scratchley, a WWII fortification located just around the corner.  As the fort was built on a hill overlooking the river mouth, it had great views of the city and surrounding coast.

Looking back at Nobby's Headland and the mouth of the Hunter River, from Fort Scratchley:

Paroramic view of the city and more of the Hunter River:

(Click image for larger size)

From the Fort, it was lunch, then a long-ish walk back along the river to the Stockton Ferry Wharf, where I caught the ferry to cross the Hunter to the other bank (You can actually see the wharf and ferry in the panorama above).

The Stockton side of the river was mostly residential, so there was less to do, but the riverside park still gave pretty nice views of the city.

(Click image for larger size)

After Stockton, it was back to the other shore, then a train ride back towards Sydney. Instead of going all the way back though, I made a stop at Woy Woy, to have a quick look around Brisbane Water, which was an offshoot of the Hawkesbury River (no idea why it's called Brisbane Water though).

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TBC in another post...

Explorations! (Part II)

Continuing on with the second post...

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DAY 2 (13 NOV)

The second day of explorations started out really early (I woke up before 4am), with a sunrise outing to Bondi with the UNSW Photoclub, and that kicked off a really, really, long day of walking.

From Bondi, I went right over by bus to Circular Quay, caught a ferry to Manly, then another bus to Long Reef, where I walked the beach and headland (taking more time than expected too). The view was pretty great, though the day was really hot.

(Click image for larger size, as I couldn't get it to fit)

From Long Reef, I caught a bus (Which came very late and was way too crowded) to Palm Beach, all the way at the Northern edge of Sydney. There I climbed Barrenjoey Headland, which was really steep, but the views from the top were rewarding.

Above - Barrenjoey Lighthouse. Below - panoramic views south and north of the Headland.

(Click image for larger size)

(Click image for larger size)

After the rather exhausting climb up (and down), I took a short break, and caught a bus to the next place.

The next location, Bangalley Headland Reserve, was a location that I had found out about only a week before. Information about the place was a little confusing (some people called it Bangalley Headland, others Careel Headland), and the route to the Reserve, which was through residential areas, wasn't marked out (I had to rely on what I remembered from Google Maps). But I found the place, and it also involved quite a bit of climbing. Views from the few lookout points (not really marked out either) were pretty nice too.

View northwards; Barrenjoey Headland can be seen in the distance.

View southwards, towards Avalon.

Climbing down the other end of the headland, I caught a bus, then made a short unscheduled stop at Newport Beach  to take a look around (Not very much there, unfortunately). From there, it was another bus journey back to Manly, then ferry back to the city, and the end of the day's explorations.

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TBC once again...

Explorations! (Part I)

I'm finally getting round to doing this series of long overdue posts...

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Being a non-local in Australia meant that there were many places that I've never been to; places that I wanted to find out about for photography. And because I'm always dreadfully busy during semester time, the time to do some exploring was either before or after semester. The first time I did this was earlier this year in February, when I bought a weekly pass and went around the eastern beaches and the city. Now at the end of Semester II, 2010, I decided to go exploring once again, but instead of just going around to locations closer to the CBD and where I stayed in Randwick, I decided to go further out.

As such, I got myself a MyMulti 3, the weekly ticket that covered the greatest extent of unlimited travel, and went exploring for a week, from 11 - 18 November.

DAY 0 (11 NOV)

The explorations began earlier than planned when I decided to make a quick trip over to Bondi for a look at the annual Sculptures by the Sea, right after I bought my ticket (and right after my exam ended too).

My eye for art isn't that great though, so I didn't take many interesting photos.

DAY 1 (12 NOV)

For the first day of actual explorations, I decided to go south, towards Wollongong. First stop, however, was at Coalcliff station, just over an hour out from Sydney. From there, I walked the Sea Cliff Bridge, with its great views, all the way to the next train station at Scarborough.

From Scarborough Station, it was about another hour by train before I reached North Wollongong Station, where I stopped to walk to the beach, and to walk along the beach to the main part of Wollongong itself.

I didn't really spend a lot of time in Wollongong however, and it was only mid afternoon when I went to Wollongong station to catch the train back to Sydney (I did consider going further south to Kiama, but was worried that I'd miss the necessary trains back to Sydney, so I didn't go. Plans for next year, perhaps?)

TBC in the next post...

Back in SG

Yep, as stated by the title, I'm back in Singapore for the Australian summer holidays. And it looks like a pretty packed one, as I'll be going to KL next week, to London sometime in December, and maybe somewhere else after that. Plus I need to get my laptop repaired, and replace all my failed technologies. I'll be trying to get this blog back up-to-date too, with my Explorations! posts and photos still to edit and to put up (And there are sooooo many of them too).

To everyone out there, have a good end-of-year holiday :)

Of Studio Shoots and Car Shoots

Pardon the long gap between posts... But the past month was truely hectic, with multiple assignments due, laptop and other technological problems, and exams, I just haven't had the time to deal with blogging :/ On to the topic... Studio shoots and Car shoots (Which happened so many weeks ago now ~)

As I've probably mentioned before, model shoots and other forms of people photography isn't my main area of interest when it comes to photography genres, and I'm not that good at it anyway. However, because the photos from this years first studio shoot looked great, I decided to give it a try myself.

Overall, it was pretty fun playing with the lighting, and I liked how different photos could look with the various types of lighting we tried, though in the end, I still don't know a lot about lighting...

The car shoot was held a week after the model shoot, and involved yet another form of photography that I haven't really tried. Most of my shots didn't turn out too well, with lighting being an issue again. Fortunately, I felt that at least a few turned out acceptably (Not sure if they're acceptable to those who do car shoots more frequently though...).

Ah well. Goes to show that I need quite a bit more practicing with lots of stuff :P

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1387/5169149086_2f6431de92_z.jpg

Cupcake Photography

Remember the cupcakes from this post? Well, for the recent Food Photography tutorial for the UNSW Photoclub, we got a tower of them, made once again by Cupcakes by M :)

I'd say that I got more shots during that previous cupcake sale as compared to the tutorial, largely because it was pretty 'action packed' during the tutorial, with everyone going after the cupcakes, first for the photos, then to eat them when the photography was done (For shots of the tutorial, the Photoclub's blog entry has more).

Oh, and Alfred's Domokun made a special appearance too :)

For more cupcake shots, everone who attended probably has a few in their facebook albums, including me ~

Canberra Roadtrip

I've always liked the idea of going for a road trip, and doing one with friends is even better. It's been a long while since I went on a proper road trip (packaged tours don't count), so I was pretty fired up a day or two before we even got to the Photoclub's Canberra / Floriade road trip on 02 - 03 October.

Overall, the trip was a good one, even though the weather was far from favourable. I did not get as many great photos as I had hoped, but it still felt great to be on a trip with friends. Special thanks to Benny for being such a good driver, and to Clarissa, Alfred, Andrew, Nick, and whoever else who helped planned the trip!

Can't wait for the next one!

(P.S. Hopefully, I'll have practiced enough driving by then :D)

In the Field

Two weekends ago, I had a field class for my GEOS course, where we went to Artarmon Reserve to spend an entire day studying and identify vegetation (I'm still in the midst of doing the related assignment, unfortunately...). I brought my camera, just in case I could use it for some vegetation images (which I did, but insufficiently), I managed to get a few other interesting shots as well.

What my group-mate found:

And what we spotted on a tree somewhere along a path:

Who knew field class could be so interesting? (It was tiring too though)

Coastal Walks and Lighthouses

On Saturday, I organized a coastal walk for the UNSW Photoclub to look at (and photograph) two of Sydney's lighthouses. I am sure that it is of no surprise that I would organize a coastal walk, of all possible ideas : ) Unfortunately, even with an extended 1 - 5pm time range, we had insufficient time as we spent a little too much time walking to the Macquarie lighthouse, so the walk to South Head and back was a little more rushed than what I would have liked.

The first one, Macquarie lighthouse, is Australia's oldest, and one that I had only photographed from the back while on my walk from Watsons Bay to Bondi last semester.

The second was the Hornby lighthouse, located at South Head, which was a very nice place to be at, not just for its views, but for the relaxing feel that the location brings.

Overall, it was fun (I like coastal walks), and I would not mind going there again (That would become my 5th visit to South Head!)

A Trip to Melbourne

Last week was the mid-semester break, and for once, I used it as an actual break, and went somewhere (rather than doing assignments, which I was supposed to). It has already been years since I was last in Melbourne, and I had been thinking of going down at the end of the year. So when a friend pestered me about going down during the mid-semester break, it was quite easy to persuade me to move my plans forward. So down to Melbourne I went, flying there on the 5th and returning on the 8th. The weather was wet half the time, but fortunately, there was enough dry hours for me to get loads of photos.  Most of my time was spent walking around the CBD, with one day spent zooming through the Great Ocean Road on a day trip.

Flinders St Station, next to Federation Square, was pretty much the centre of Melbourne~

I brought my tripod down to Melbourne, and I'm happy to say that that paid off, with the night cityscapes being some of my best shots (In my opinion) from the trip.

The Great Ocean Road was beautiful too, though the weather wasn't at it's best for part of the day. It was also rather rushed, being a day trip after all. Next time, I'm going to spend a few days just at the GOR, to take more time to enjoy the views.

More photos coming soon, to both Facebook and Flickr! (When I have the time to finishing editing them all)

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P.S. Yes, I want to go to Melbourne again : )

Long Exposures at Mahon Pool

Landscape long exposures are somethings that I have always wanted to do, and was one of the factors that got me moving from normal point-and-shoots to DSLRs. Then, late last year, I got a set of cheap ND filters to try out daytime long exposures, finding out that the ND stops weren't high enough (and that the quality was rather dubious). In June, I finally decided to get a ten stop ND110 filter from B & W, as that was what many other photographers had recommended for doing daytime landscape long exposures.

I didn't have much opportunity to try it out until two weeks ago, when I went down to the Mahon pool near Maroubra beach to get some photos for an assignment I was doing.

While the effect wasn't anywhere as nice as the photos that inspired me, I was kinda happy that they were sort of  in the right direction.

Well, there's much more practicing to be done, and maybe one day, I'll be able to get some really, really good shots too!