back from mexico

Actually got back last Saturday. I took over 2000 photos; 420 with my 12-24mm, 914 with my new 35mm, 592 with my 50mm and 202 with my 70-300! I'll be going through them and slowly posting to flickr. Hopefully I'll get some sort of blog posting of what we did over there happening as well.

mexico

Well I'm off to Mexico for a month, travelling around with dtra and ozzy. It should be heaps of fun. Hopefully I'll be back with a heap of good photos to blog about. :D

Later

australia day at cumberland river

This is just gonna be a short post. Me, Ozzy and dtra went to Cumberland River for the Australia Day long weekend. We took a few photos, went swimming and body boarding and pretty much just relaxed for a couple of days.

Didn't do much on the first day, we went for a short walk up the river and had a barbecue dinner. After it got dark we walked out to the beach and took some experimental shots of the great ocean road. Also down in the water there were some mystery glowing things washing up and then disappearing. No idea what they were. :S



The next day I woke up early (about 7am) so I got up and went for a little walk, then later that morning we saw a little grasshopper... dtra, with his macro lens, got some really nice photos. I tried to reverse my 50mm with unusual results. ;D We went for a bit of a walk up to castle rock. It was quite a long walk but it was ok. We saw an Echidna, and I almost stepped on a snake. The only but I didn't enjoy were the downhill parts. :(



After that I put my camera away for the rest of the weekend. We went body boarding a few times and went to the Lorne Pub for dinner and to watch the Australian Open final. We got some ice cream's but my cone was structurally unsound and ended up in the dirt. :~(

rottnest island

I was planning on posting separate items, splitting up each day we spent at Rottnest Island, but I've run out of time (lazy). So I'm just gonna post an overview of the rest of the time that I haven't already written about.

My sister and I decided to ride out to Parker Point, where we had swam earlier that day, to get some photos of the sunset. It was one of the best sunsets I've ever seen. It lasted forever and went bright red.

We didn't think it would be a problem riding home after the sunset. Even though it was dark and we didn't have lights on our bikes, there are no cars on the island. We didn't count on the Quokkas though, those things can be suicidal! One ran straight under Kate's bike. She came off and scraped her toe on the ground. :( It was a bit upsetting but I think the Quokka would have been ok, they are tough little buggers. Kate was ok too. :)



The next day we rode to a different beach for some swimming, this time on the north side of the island. It was a really nice beach with a big reef and huge fish swimming around. I decided to come back to this beach later for the sunset. Kate didn't join me this time. :D

The Freo Doctor was blowing hard that night. Riding west, it was harder to ride down a hill than it was riding up it on the way back. I arrived for the sunset a bit early but it was nice to just sit on the rocks with the wind blowing around. In the end, the sunset wasn't great... but I had more fun taking photos of the rocks.



On our last day on Rottnest, I just realised I hadn't taken any photos of the Quokkas yet. We went for another bike ride but didn't see any. But it didn't matter, we knew they would come out in the evening. So later that day I went out to look for some. It took forever but finally found a few in some trees. I took a few photos and headed back to our cabin. When I got back there was a Quokka waiting for me at the front door! :)



So that's about it! Sorry about the rushed post and sorry that it's so late! Tomorrow, something a bit more recent ;), my long weekend at Cumberland River on the Australia Day weekend. :)

new 35mm lens + extension tubes!

New blog post?!! (I'll get back to those Rottnest Island posts some time) I've bought a new lens, It's the Nikon 35mm f2D. It looks pretty much identical to the 50mm 1.4, except it has different writing on it :). Also I noticed it's made in Japan, not China, if that means anything! :/

I haven't really had a chance to use it yet, I will on the weekend. I also picked up the Kenko extension tube set. I had a quick play around with them at work, they seem to work pretty well, they focus really close.

I guess the real test for these will be when I go on holidays to Mexico in TWO WEEKS!! Not very far away now.

riding around rottnest

On our first full day in Rottnest Island we hired some bikes and got away from the crowds. None of the schoolies can be bothered moving away from the main beaches, so the rest of the island was very quiet (I think a lot of other tourists stay away to avoid the schoolies). :) We rode around the bottom of the island to Parker Point and went for a swim there. There were a few Ospreys flying around a nest on the cliff... I didn't manage to get any decent photo though because I only had my 50mm lens and couldn't get close enough. Also I managed to get my camera set on 1600 ISO without noticing. :( I've gotta remember to check my ISO setting more!

After a bit of a swim, we got back on our bikes and headed north to a lighthouse in the middle of the island. Then we headed home. Click the photo below to view my Rottnest Island set on Flickr.

fremantle prison

Seeing the sights around Fremantle, we visited Freo prison. We took a guided tour around the place which was pretty interesting. As soon as we walked into the prison grounds I had a weird déjà vu experience. Obviously I have never been there before but then remembered I had seen the prison on the TV show, The Amazing Race.

The most interesting thing were the art works which were around, on walls and in the cells. I just realised that I haven't put one of these photos on Flickr... maybe I'll add one later. I've got a couple of photos of the non-arty cells though.