RejectReality

This little guy was quite a find. He was hanging around in a tree in my backyard, doing whatever it is that insects do when they don’t have a macro lens pointed in their general direction.

It was only after I started looking through the images that I realised something – he was not only watching me (or more precisely, the huge, shiny glass thing right in front of him), but seemed to posing. Go figure

Your challenge: I’ve posted the whole mantis set to Flickr – come up with the description for the pose or expression. The best one on each ends up in the title.

Make sure you view the large version to get your inspiration

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As promised, the second part of the photo catchup session.

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I’ve been meaning to post these photos for a while.

These photos were taken on a recent spur-of-the-moment midnight trip to a local lookout.

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This was my first foray into Strobist territory; the basic premise involves cheap, off camera lighting to create dramatic effects. Anything DIY earns extra brownie points.

In this case, I used a Vivitar 285HV flash, a remake of the “classic workhorse” used over the last 20 years, placed on the ground firing upwards at 1/16th power using a remote trigger.

Considering I’ve haven’t progressed very far through the whole Strobist “training” course (read: haven’t done much more than read the concept ), I was very happy with how the shot came out.

It also helps that I had a patient model, especially when the battery in my transmitter started crapping out

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This was taken in near pitch black as an experiment in curves, not only in the subject, but in the shadows still present in the darkness.

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The classic city lights at night photo.

Everyone should have one of these in their collection.

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Aside from hunting for shadows in the dark (where else would you find them? ), I was also on the hunt for interesting textures.

For some reason, I dig the stippled effect on the pavers from this angle.

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Next up will be another catchup post.

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… and now with extra Web 2.0!

Over the weekend, I was playing around with Photophlow, a new web application which combines collaborative Flickr photo browsing with IRC-style web chat.

A very intriguing combination, and certainly, one worthy of some exploration.

The Anteroom is where you start out when you first connect to the site. There are a few static rooms, however most dynamically appear based on members of Flickr groups using the site.

If you are an administrator of a Flickr group, you can “claim” your room so your group members can get together to discuss their latest work, assignments or organise the next event. On top of that, each user can claim their own room, accessible by your Flickr contacts.

After selecting a room, you enter the main chat interface.

If you’ve used any form of chat application before, be it web, instant messenger, text conference rooms or ye olde IRC, the basics to this will be quite familiar. You type what’s on your mind, others read in real time. They produce a cutting, yet witty retort (hopefully on-topic), and leave you rummaging for your best “yo mamma” joke.

Or does that only happen to me?

Ahem.

The text chat itself is simple, but it has a trick up it’s sleeve. I’ll get to that later.

On the left of the chat is the list of users in your current room. Hover over each to obtain links to their profile, Flickr photostream, favourites and others.

On the far left is where the magic begins; a drop down menu or a simple search box, linked to all that is Flickr.

Search for tags, search for keywords, browse your photostream or favourites; the outcome is a collection of photos, just as if you searched the Flickr site itself, sortable by most relevant, recent or (my personal favourite) interesting.

Now add in the collaboration:

Your search and the results are shared with the rest of the members in the room. Find an image, either interesting or pertinent to the discussion, select it, and it too will be shared with the group in the large right hand pane.

A good search, or good results usually spark some interesting discussion; the searches and display of images following on from either the first image or the discussion surrounding it tend to create a snowball effect.

Again, this brings up the discussion part – here’s it’s trick:

All text entered into the chat is scanned for keywords which are auto-linked to become a search. If you ignore making the first search to seed a discussion, a plain text chat usually produces enough random keywords and searches to find a bunch of interesting photos to spur or keep a conversation rolling.

Random links = random fun!

And now, for the really interesting part; this application also brings in all the social networking aspects of the Flickr site also. From the one interface, you can mark photos as a favourite, leave comments, magnify it and look at the EXIF data, if it’s present. You can also glue it to your Twitter account so you can tell your followers about the great image you just found, or to your IM account, so you can be notified when someone has joined one of your rooms for a chat.

There is one downside to the shared browsing experience; if you’re hanging out with chatty people who like clicking on the random searches that appear, it’s all too easy for one person’s search to stomp on the search or image posting by the previous user.

“Manual mode” was set up to counteract this. Enabling the manual checkbox above the chat area will stop searches invoked by others from affecting your view, allowing you to either progress at your own speed or take a different road.

On a similar topic, enabling the private checkbox hides your searches and results from the room. Feel free to use these for comic effect.

As a recommendation, I’ve found about six to eight chatty people and a little judicious use of manual mode makes for a comfortable sized room. Any larger than eight needs a lot more use of manual mode.

Note that this has only just scratched the surface. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words; I think I’ve well and truly blown my thousand here, so I’ll refer you to a five minute demo movie to show you the site in action.

Overall, it’s an awesome application by itself, and even better with friends (or complete strangers). For a beta application, it’s also especially well polished.

I’d like to see one or two small usability issues addressed (one being a minimum search or result posting lifetime of five or ten seconds to stop the inevitable search stomping, without needing to keep toggling manual mode), however they are very minor when you see what the application can provide.

If you want to try it out, the requirements are very light light; a recent web browser with Flash and a Flickr account will pretty much cover it. Oh, and bucketloads of time, if you get hooked. But I didn’t tell you that

Free Flickr accounts work just fine; just make sure you upload a couple of photos if you sign up for a fresh account to play with this site (not a requirements; just adds to the fun!)

Photophlow is in limited beta. You can register at photophlow.com to be advised when it’s available (I received a beta invite five minutes later) or leave me a comment – I have a few invites available.

Oh, and if you do decide to try it out, make sure to watch out for the troll traps …

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Happy new year to all and sundry.

May your 2008 rock harder, be more awesome and more shiny than all your previous years combined.

Our new years was spent relaxing on the side of a hill, looking out at the city’s annual fireworks display. While our position turned out to be a tad average due to the surrounding trees and the fireworks detonating lower than expected, I still managed to end up with some great photos of the event.

If you want more (and face it, who doesn’t want more fireworks?), click here for the full set.

Oh, and for my first good deed of the year; a hint for budding photographers.

If you use UV/daylight/skylight filter on the end of your lenses (especially cheap ones used only for protection), remove them for firework shots unless you have already tested how well they do with glare, lens flare and reflections. If your filters are not glare friendly, you will probably end up with something like this.

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This post is going to be a bit different than usual.

I’ve gone through the archives to pick out some of my technically or creatively best photos that I’ve taken this year. This is to not only show the world what has been hiding on my drive, but also to set a personal benchmark for me to see how far I progress in my photography in the year to come.

So, with this lofty goal, I present some of my favourites from this year!

(Click for bigger versions)

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From a colour and subject point of view, I really like this shot.

It was taken at that particular time of an evening where wet sand turns into a mirror, reflecting one of the most awesome sunsets I’ve seen in a long time.

While I was playing with capturing light, my infinitely more sensible other half was relaxing, taking in the sea air and keeping an ever-watchful eye out, just to make sure the horizon was doing it’s job.

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If you’ve ever done the tourist thing around South Australia, it’s highly likely you’ve seen this before; it’s almost a rite of passage for all visitors to either go or be taken to Granite Island.

As the name suggests, it’s a big rock located just off the coast of Victor Harbour Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula. It’s joined to the mainland by this particular bridge, with transport for weary tourists provided by horse drawn carriages.

The bridge has been around for years – I can remember walking across it many times either looking for penguins or to go stargazing in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, the horses had a big night on the town the night before and thus were unwilling to pose for photos while the hangovers were being nursed. You’ll either have to imagine them or hunt them down yourself during your inevitable visit.

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As is usual in the IT industry, there are certain things that can only be performed at really ugly hours in the morning. This particular morning, featuring a major server migration, was no exception.

(You want me to do what? At 4am? Seriously? <sigh>)

This day’s early start finished much earlier than expected, providing plenty of spare time and the rare opportunity for me to take an early morning walk around the neighbourhood and see dawn break.

(For those that know me, they’ll agree this is almost unheard of; me surfacing before 9am usually makes people run for earmuffs or headphones to drown out excess whinging)

This morning was different, though; seeing this sun rise and start turning the clouds golden with a sense of accomplishment so early in the day was well worth the price of admission.

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Many a story has begun, “it was a dark and stormy night…”

Whilst there was no such storm on this night, I’ll settle for “dark and pea soupy” for this photo.

This was taken just outside the city centre of Melbourne, Victoria, on one freezing cold night while seeking refuge from the wind at a tram stop.

The night really was as eery and orange as the photo alludes; the only light available was from the sodium street lamps burning through the fog, as well as the head and tail lights of passing cars. Visibility was down to around 100 metres and there was not even a hint of sky or moon visible.

Walking around in this, at night, when you can’t even see the traffic lights at the corner of the block, was certainly a bizarre experience (as it was again the next day – the fog didn’t start burning off until around lunchtime).

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On the topic of storms, this truly was from a dark and stormy night (and was officially taken two days before 2007 – because I like this shot, I’ll let it slide for this year though).

This photo was taken using my old trusty point’n'shoot set up on a nasty table-top tripod precariously balanced on the window sill, randomly taking shots in the hope I’d catch a bolt of lightning.

Fortunately, luck and, well, lightning struck right over the neighbour’s roof.

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Cindy is absolutely nuts for birds. Her weekly series, Friday Feathers, is amazing to look through (as is all her other work).

Given Cindy’s interest in all things feathered, I go out of my way to try to find birds for our international show and tell sessions (although, my knowledge doesn’t extend much past “duck”, “goose”, “turkey”, “chicken” and “galah” – all the edible ones… well, except for the galah).

This time around, I was lucky enough to find a pair of galahs while down the coast taking a few day’s worth of rest and relaxation. These two were hanging around in a tree right near the beach front and were more than happy to pose for pictures, which is more than I can say for the Victor Harbour’s horses.

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Another shot from down the coast.

The place we were staying in was a five minute walk from the beach. Being so close, I couldn’t resist spending each evening there, watching the sun set.

These guys were a bunch of friendly teenagers, determined to fish long into the night and were very interested in talking about and looking through the rest of my sunset photos.

No idea if they were successful in, or even cared about, catching their quarry; they just seemed more than happy to find some bait, throw in a line and shoot the breeze for a few hours.

With this view, who could blame ‘em?

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Our local botanical gardens has undergone a significant overhaul since I was last there a few years back.

One of the improvements was a new glasshouse, specifically built to grow these humongous lillypads.

Most interestingly, the lillypads share their home with a bunch of small, guppy-like fish who were interested in anything and everything walking by. You would see a small swarm of them start to surface near where people were leaning on the edge of the pond causing the ripples you see in the otherwise mirrored water.

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This orangutan was one very clever monkey.

He spent the best part of an hour showing off for the dumbstruck masses who congregated around his home to watch him jumping around, finding things to throw around and effortlessly climbing bamboo poles and ropes.

I seriously, I think he’d have a future in Parkour if he put his mind to it.

This photo was taken after he was done with his exercise (or the audience), and progressed to the brooding segment of the show.

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This one here is another favourite for the colour.

I’m not sure if this peacock was tame or just plain fearless. He was more than happy to sit on the fence, eyeing off all the passers-by while I (and a couple of other interested people) approached with cameras at the ready.

In true supermodel style, there was a pose, a turn, a pout and another pose before he got bored and moved on.

I have to wonder how frequently he has to put on that show; it’s certainly well rehearsed.

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While wandering around town with my camera one afternoon, I came across this small alleyway filled with trees, vines and an old brick wall in the middle of nowhere.

This has obviously been here for a very long time going by the size of the trees – I have no idea how they have survived for this long with the very limited light that managed to make it’s way in.

I was aiming for a low-key shot with some interesting textures – I think the imperfect brick wall makes it in this one.

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A lot of my photography this year has revolved around people and portraits; there’s just something about people just being people that I want to learn how to capture.

In this case, I think I managed to do it. This photo is of my aforementioned infinitely more sensible other half. A combination of right time, right place, and her wanting to hide behind a piece of garden infrastructure to escape the crazy nieces and nephews running around made for a wonderful portrait.

Cute, ain’t she?

(For the record, she made me promise not to upload the karaoke photos. I will, however, accept bribes from anyone requiring one for “amusing” purposes )

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My favourite photo, and I’d like to think, one of my best.

This is my son Chris, circa 3 months of age.

For those not familiar with the story, Chris was born with an extremely rare condition known as VACTERL Association – a collection of abnormalities affecting the vertebrate, anus, cardiovascular system, trachea, (e)oesophagus, renal system and limbs (and other skeletal structures).

Possessing three of the seven abnormalities is sufficient to be diagnosed with the condition which affects roughly 250 births a year worldwide.

Chris was special.

He took on all seven.

Plus extras.

Head on.

And did it with a smile and nary a whinge, even after eight major operations in four months, right up until the point where he lost his fight for life.

Suffice to say, he was a fighter, an inspiration and an all-round awesome kid, although I suspect my opinion may be slightly biased.

Above all, he will be missed.

I won’t go into further details here; if you are interested in more information, leave a comment, email me, read his journal or view his gallery.

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So, here’s a line in the sand. Most of these are either straight out of the camera or slightly post processed to correct white/colour balance or cropped.

I think I’ve got most of the basic technical stuff down; now it’s up to learning the art and the craft and seeing where it takes me. I suspect one of my first stops in the new year will end up somewhere near Strobist-ville; my cheap Vivitar manual flash and remote trigger awaits!

For you, though, stick around or subscribe to the feed to see more photos from the archives as they are uploaded, as well as the new stuff coming up in 2008.

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This weekend was pretty sweet. My other half organised lunch with friends at the local botanical gardens, just for something different.

Although I’m not really much of a plant guy by nature (believe me when I say I kill more plants than I save – I can still hear the screams), it was a great excuse to get the camera out and see what was around.

The botanical gardens have gone through a serious upgrade since we were last there many years ago; a new glasshouse built for lilly pads,water feature, sculpture and new restaurants.

We also came across plenty of the native wildlife; these ducks were everywhere and were absolutely fearless. This one, in particular, was more than happy to sit there and pose while I had a lens around a foot or two away from his noggin for a good few minutes.

More photos from the outing are here. Warning – large quantity of duck lies beyond that link.

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Tonight was the night my Mac Mini and MacBook Pro met up with the new cat on the block.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Leopard has landed.

For the install (and to make my life easier if it went/goes up in flames), I turned my iPod into a bootable copy of the install DVD using Disk Utility. Both Macs were booted off of the iPod and Leopard was installed over USB.

Both boxes received the Archive and Install treatment which was decidedly uneventful; it Just Worked(tm). Each took around 1/2 an hour to complete using this method.

First impressions:

• Yeah, it’s pretty.
• Screen Sharing works great.
• Spaces work well. Give or take some strange focus issues, it seems to be less quirky than the last release of Virtue Desktop that I was using. At least Spaces hasn’t lost windows.
• I don’t know what all the fuss is about with the translucent menu bar – it looks fine to me, although that’s likely due to my background image.
• Stacks. Meh.
• Reflective Dock. Again, meh.
• Quick Look is a neat idea. Dunno how much I’ll use it.
• Tabbed Terminal is great – especially considering how many of the things I usually have flying around
• iPhoto still works with no apparent weirdness. I’m still glad I made (multiple) backups of my 40 gig library.

Quikry stuff:

• Spotlight decided it was time to do a full re-index on my MacBook, but not on my Mac Mini. A near-hour of thrashing later and it was happy again, although I’ve got no idea why it was necessary. Even more amusingly, it only on one box and not the other – they were both fully indexed and happy before the upgrade.
• Mail found and re-added two (really) old email accounts that I deleted months back.

  Good thing: it left my other three alone.

  Bad thing: it decided to suck down all my mail again for my primary account. 1.5 gig of mail coming from the other side of the world via IMAP when my home DSL connection has been shaped to modem speed ain’t fun to watch.

• MarsEdit’s post preview seems to refresh the page in it’s entirety *really* frequently, including sucking down header images from my remote server, rather than use a cached copy.

  I suspect WebKit’s changed it’s behaviour for the Leopard release; shame it’s new behaviour is crappier than before. I can say that it certainly didn’t have this behaviour under Tiger with the Safari 3 beta installed (v3.0.3), or at least, it wasn’t anywhere near so visible.

  Unfortunately, preview’s off until that is sorted.

• X11 is supposedly fundamentally broken. I’m not even going to bother trying this until the it receives a patch.

New stuff to play with:

• Time Machine’s going to get set up on the weekend when the parts for my new drive array rock up. Yay for completely automated backups (although I’ll still keep up with my Unison ones)
• Since I’ll have a couple of spindles spare, I’m going to break out the ZFS beta and see if I can work out how to kill it. For my workload, ZFS is going to rock — as long as it doesn’t hose my data in the process. Again, yay for automated backups

Overall, it’s not a bad release. Eye candy is always good, but I’ll take a solid platform over that any day. Once the (numerous) initial wrinkles are ironed out, it should be well worth the upgrade.

Apparently, Apple’s already preparing and testing 10.5.1 to address these issues. At least that’ll be a couple of week gap between release and the first “service pack”

I’ll post again when I find more broken stuff.

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I was posed with an interesting problem today; to come up with a way to quickly add and display outstanding iCal to-do items.

An hour later, a little AppleScript was born that grabs all your outstanding to-do items and displays them, separated by which calendar they exist in and displays the due date, if entered. Even better, they disappear from the notification list when you mark an item as completed in iCal.

It requires Growl, a general purpose notification utility, to be installed to display the to-do items. It also works best when invoked by using a global hotkey to execute the script on demand. I use Quicksilver, an application launcher, for the latter part; I’m sure there are alternatives that will function just as well.

Aside from having Growl installed and running, you don’t need any special configuration to use it with this script.

Details for how to set up a Quicksilver keyboard trigger to invoke this script can be found in the Quicksilver documentation.

Pick up a copy of the ready-to-run script here:
growl-todo-items.scpt.

Feel free to open it in Script Editor to have a look (and most likely a giggle if you’re a serious Mac developer ) at the script.

When you run the script, here’s what it looks like:

Pretty neat, eh?

If you use it, like it, hate it, have problems with it have mangled it into something else cool, make sure you drop a comment below or send me an email to let me know!

PS – If you install Quicksilver with the iCal plugin to run this script, you can also use it to quickly add todo’s into iCal too!

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