japan

We've been back for a week now... such a fun holiday. So much to do, I think we packed in quite a bit. Started in Osaka but travelled straight to Tokyo. We spent about 5 days there; visiting a few temples, shopping, and just travelling all over the city.

Then we headed up to Hakuba, near Nagano, for a week of snowboarding. It was awesome but so cold.

After that week was up we travelled down to Hiroshima and Miyajima. A couple of days there and then off to Kyoto for temple craziness. So many to see... I think we did pretty well. I don't think my feet could have taken much more walking. :)

Our last day was in Osaka and we went to the aquarium, then we caught our plane home (when it was finally ready).

Here are a few photos... I am really happy with my d90. Especially the LCD screen, very nice to use.



Matsumoto Castle near Nagano. A very photogenic place.



We went to visit the snow monkeys in Yamanouchi. This little place is near the start of the 2km walk from the bus stop to the monkey park.



Torii gates at Fushimi Inari-taisha. Hard to get photos without people in it. :)



Lights in Dōtonbori, Osaka.

More photos to come. ;D
Later.

time for an update?

Haha... I guess I was lying about updating this blog with Mexico posts... head over to my flickr to check out the photos. :)

Here is some photography news... I bought a new camera, a Nikon D90. Here's a photo :)



Oh... another thing... I'm heading off to Japan for a few weeks with ozzy, leaving tomorrow! It should be awesome... We're planning to fly into Osaka and travel straight to Tokyo for new years... Then to Hakuba for a week of snow boarding. After that we will probably head back to Osaka, Kyoto, and possibly Hiroshima... but the last week and a bit is still open at the moment.

Cya when I get back, happy new year to everyone. Bye!

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.