Random photo #2
This photo was taken at the front of Nagashima Spa Land, one of Japan's theme parks. It's situated near Nagoya, about an hour north of Osaka by bullet train.
Clouds bathing in the setting sun
Details: D700 | 24-120 f4 VR @ 34mm | f/5.6 | 1/500 | ISO 200
Random photo #1
Hopefully to inspire myself to take/post more photos, I'm going to aim to put up one photo of mine once a week, feel free to add any comments you may have. I'm thinking it'll be mostly older photos (unless it's new and never made it to an album). One for this week will be this shot:
Jellyfish at Osaka Aquarium
Taken at Osaka Aquarium.
Details: Nikon D700 | Nikon 50mm 1.4D | f/2.0 | 1/80 | ISO: 3200
two two with little lily
So thanks to everyone who made the night so (un)memorable, I had a great time from the bits that I do remember and so glad to have had so much awesome company to celebrate with. Hope to have another one next year and hopefully see you all there again!
Many thanks to Jimmy Lam who took these photos 
Click here for drunken photos
Another year goes on…
and my liver takes another pounding and so does my memory. Had a killer night on Friday with plenty of holes in my memory but definitely a great time celebrating my 22nd birthday, feel so old! No longer able to be in denial and telling myself that I'm still 21. Celebrated the night with Lily Tran at the ever-so-classy venue of Sanctuary Hotel, because you know, the drinks are cheap. Here are the first lot of photos from my DIY photobooth consisting of my D700, flash and 17-35mm f/2.8 lens and a remote trigger, perfect.
Click here for the photobooth photos
Set up seemed to work okay, I think it didn't fire a few times but in the end I was just too drunk to notice but it seems like it did its job.
Melbourne!
So went down for a trip to Melbourne over the Queen's Birthday long weekend (mostly because of a free domestic flight from JetStar). Decided to go down just to chill and get away from regular life in Sydney. Took a flight down on Friday morning and arrived at about lunch time. Hired a car, decided to go with a manual for some practice despite my lack of confidence in manual driving, but I seemed to do okay. Car was a late model Ford Laser which felt rather zippy.
The beast
Went shopping for a bit before heading into the city to check into the hotel room. Caught up with an old friend who moved down from Sydney before catching up with a friend I met in Japan. Went around drinking at night and ended up going to Alumbra. Pretty good place there and enjoyed the vibe there a lot more than what Sydney has. Next day went for a little more shopping at South Wharf before taking a trek down to the 12 apostles via the Great Ocean Road. The road is great fun and twists a fair bit. Took a wrong turn as it got dark as well and it became forest like and pitch black! Kinda scary driving down a twisty unknown road, just to make it worse, for one section there were cows along side the road. It ended up leading to a lighthouse but it was a heaps dark walk to the light house so I just snapped this and left.
Light house in the distance
Stayed there for the night so I could get up early and get some sunrise photos of the 12 apostles and stuff, didn't quite turn out as I had hoped but this was the result:
12 Apostles by morning
Finally came back to the city in the morning to meet up with a few more people I met from Japan where they took me to eat and showed me round the grafitti and more of the town.
Streets of Melbourne
The last day was spent driving around randomly before catching my delayed flight home which was quite fortunate as there were heaps of people waiting around as their flights were cancelled because of the ash cloud.
Rest of the pics below:
Click here for the rest
Vivid 2011
Bit delayed but finally got round to getting through the rest of the photos, cold nights and the projections were heaps dynamic and moved around making long exposures difficult. Vivid does seem to be growing in size but one thing I did notice was that the projections on the Opera House weren't as precise as the previous years, not sure why.
The display at Customs House was rather pretty though!
Pics below:
Click for photos
Sports Car Weekend at Eastern Creek
So you've seen the preview with that sexy chrome painted SLS, now here are the rest of the pictures, plenty of fast cars to drool over.
Click for gallery
Vivid 2011 Panorama
Did a rough panorama between the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge as part of my Vivid adventures, what do you think?
(Click for bigger)
Vivid 2011 – Preview
Went to check out the 3rd incarnation of Vivid Sydney a few days ago after work and put my new tripod to work (Manfrotto MT294A3 with an 804RC2 3-way head). Found this year's to be more vibrant and animated, which was both a good and bad thing. Sure it made it more interesting to watch from your own eyes, but photographing it became a pain in the ass. Timing was crucial as well as a thorough analysis of the patterns as not all could be shot with a long exposure.
First was customs house, displaying a lovely video display of the building burning up, cracking, being filled with water, stretched and more. Very cool to look at, and the audio certainly adds to the effect.
Customs house, powered by Intel
Next, a shot of the Opera House with the sails lit up from the Overseas Passenger Terminal.
Blue essence
Moving on to Campbell's Cove to check out the fire dance (to Katy Perry), tried to balance the exposure of the flames with the bridge, not easy, the flames are bright.
Fire!
And a final shot of the Opera House.
Almost laser-like
More to come later.
Eastern Creek over the weekend
Spent some time at Eastern Creek over the weekend to check out some racing including Round 3 of the Australian GT Championship. Felt like I got the hang of panning that day and some areas seemed easier than others, definitely wanna go again some time soon and put the 70-200 to work, had a bit of trouble at the start of the day and was using shutter speeds of 1/160 or so, with a bit more practice, managed to get a couple of good shots down to about 1/50 and 1/60. Got dark pretty quick so I had to up the ISO a fair bit, up to 1600 near the end. Well here's a shot from the day, I'm still going through the pics.
SLS!
Probably get the whole gallery up in a few days.
Magic City 2011 – It’s Showtime – Photos
So after snapping over 1800 photos, I've been able to cull that down to a lovely 250 or so for your viewing pleasure. It was a much better night than I had expected (probably because the hardstyle started later than usual.
Click the image below to see all the photos:
Thanks for looking.
Twins!
Ok, I'm not talking about the type of the jayesslee girls (I did get a photo with them at boombox though), see below =P.
twins and me
Jealous? But the twins I'm talking about are these...
:D
Yes, that's two D700's with battery grips and they're both mine =D
So that brings my gear whoring to the following:
- 2x D700 FX bodies
- 2x MB-D10 battery grips
- SB-900
- Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR
- Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8
- Nikon 24-120 f/4 VR
- Nikon 50mm f/1.8
- Zenitar 15mm f/2.8 fisheye
- Loads of other crap..
Gear whorin'
So, who wants to give me a test run to shoot a wedding ceremony? =P
Magic City 2011 – Preview
Last Saturday night I was one of the photographers working at Magic City and it was a rather awesome night, usually not my kind of music, but this time it was pretty good. JamX aka DuMonde brought back a lot of memories, especially my younger years when I started listening to trance, quite a few songs I never thought I'd ever hear played again so that was rather awesome. I don't know why I always seem to clock up some many photos with these events, always makes going through them so difficult, especially when they only want 100-150 photos.
So here's a little preview of the shots from the night.
Production
Lasers from the ground
Lasers from the air
Crowd
On stage
Other thing that was particularly special about the night was this shot...
View from the roof
Yes, that is from the roof of the Hordern, spectacular view there. Guess that's the privilege of being a photographer, and getting your own dressing room is nice too 
.
Photographer's room
Few more birthdays
So as you can see I've finally gone through some more photos and these should be the last of the birthdays I've been to where I've had my camera with me. The first is a small album from Ben, Carmen and David Huynh's birthday, not quite as entertaining as the year before, but it was just a nice cake cutting at Carmen's place followed by dinner at Wagaya.
Next up was a dinner and karaoke night at Mizuya in the city, fun night out and in terms of photography, I've experimented a fair bit with these photos trying out various different looks (either low saturation, high contrast B&W or playing with split toning). Any thoughts and opinions would be great.
Particularly fond of this shot though, just like the way the light from Kim's phone shines on her and makes her stand out.
2011 begins, and I’m almost there
So after this post I'll be a couple of photos from being up-to-date, but since I stopped blogging for a while until now, quite a few things have changed, I'm finally in my final semester at Uni with another two subjects to go (seriously can't wait til it's over) and in addition to that, I had started full time work. Such a drastic change from being able to laze around and bludge to getting up before 7am getting ready to catch the train every day to work. Days at work vary, some insanely hectic to others where you're not too busy. Team's been great, everyone around is heaps friendly and always willing to help out and answer questions. I won't mention the awesome start to the year, walking out of the Etihad Stadium with a huge smile on my face, if you weren't there, you wouldn't understand.
Deb's birthday wasn't too far away from the start and I was there to take a few snaps.
Next up was my man Mike's 22nd birthday. For some reason this kid decided not to have a 21st birthday but instead, opts for a large 22nd! I just don't get him sometimes, but it was a great party despite me not being able to get back in at 12 as Aurorar bar sucks and no re-entry after 12 is permitted. Cover photo is in black and white because I'm moody and all that 
.
Tang turns 22
Final set of photos to complete this post is little Yvonne's 22nd birthday, celebrated with plenty of food.
Yvn's 22nd
So just another post and I'll be good to go, apologies to those waiting for photos (if you want them quick pay me 
).