Full Moon Rising

A full moon rising over an Australian city, but the trees give it a bush feel. I took this pic from the upstairs balcony of our last house, on July 14^th 2011. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then! It was nice to have an upstairs (it was nice to have a swimming pool...) and occasionally there were photo ops without leaving home. This is an interesting pic, not for the moon but foe the trees. The sun is just down and the evening light still enough to front-light the trunks, which gives a very pleasing effect, The moon is a burned out disc, which is to be expected at the kind of exposure needed to register the trees in detail. It must also have been a very still evening, because the lens would have been open a while, yet the leaves have not blurred. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Surfing Weather

 

This is King’s Beach, west of Victor Harbor, South Australia. These heights are westward from The Bluff and Petrel Cove, looking toward Cape Jervis, and give a wonderful overview of one of South Australia’s best surfing beaches. The reach of the Southern Ocean throws excellent combers onto these shallows, racing in for hundreds of metres. Little wonder it’s a magnet for those with salt water in their veins. I took this frame as part of a set on April 7^th, 2018, on a long trip south, taking in many of our favourite spots. The weather was warm and clear, the way Australian summers linger (the weather often seems to break at Easter—no matter when Easter actually falls!) No special photographic technique here, this was all about framing the scene as a pleasing composition. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

A Disconcerting Landscape

Why disconcerting? Well, first, for the sheer starkness of a dry, Australian summer—harvested fields or long-grazed-down paddocks under that merciless sky. But there’s the simple fact a cloud had drawn before the sun, so while the background is sunlit and the sky a fleece-strewn blue, the foreground is in shadow, and that lends a very strange feeling to the image. This pic was taken in the southern hills near Strathalbyn, South Australia, on December 30^th, 2018. I was airing out the camera on a new phone at the time and seeing how it handled various conditions. The cloud shadow intruded upon the moment and it was worth capturing for both its aesthetic oddness, and as a test of the phone’s chip. General tweaks in Irfanview. Leagoo M9. Image by Mike.

Changeing Skies

 

The title of this post has two meanings. I took this frame on my way to the UK on November 8^th, 2012, so I was changing skies between hemispheres, early spring to autumn; but a storm was moving in at the time and the local sky was thus changing rapidly. I had a brief, unplanned stopover in Kuala Lumpur when the Air Malaysia A380 had a technical problem, and the flight resumed in the early afternoon the following day. This frame was taken from the height of the lower deck, a sweet view of an AM 747 as the A380 taxied out. The sky was interesting, quite dramatic in its way, though the foreground had full sun. Coming up behind the POV was a tick weather front, and we took off into a storm. The pic was squared up very slightly with fine rotation, and colour, contrast, brightness and sharpness were marginally adjusted in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

NB: Tomorrow will mark two years since I resurrected this photo blog, and this is my 107^th post in that time.