Long time No post
Outback Shed.
Above is an image taken from one of my favourite spots to photograph, Marrakai just a few clicks down the road from us here in the Northern Territory of Australia. I have finished a Photoshop course and have am happy to try out a few new tricks I learnt along the way, infact it was a reassuring course just letting me know I am already on the right track. This image has just been processed with the channel mixer and a texture added, too easy! Now I am up with all the tricks of CS4 I’ll have to start brushing up with CS5 soon enough!
New point n shoot
Well been busy getting the house ready for sale, painting for the last 4 months non stop and finally all is ready! Meanwhile I have signed up to do an advanced Photoshop course here in Darwin. Its been 10 long years since I was in a formal photoshop class so I figured I was well overdue and with a little one at home it’s alot harder to study online.I have been thinking (not surprisingly) alot about real estate photography recently…and with all the market research I have done the images that go with most house sales are really crap! Anyways before I buy my dream camera when we finally get to WA I thought a good travel camera for the family would be good so I bought a Panasonic LX3 and gosh I am impressed for a little point n shoot! I love the fact that it can be used fully manual and it has a superb Leica lens. To tell the truth I also got it for the real estate pictures as it has a wonderful wide angle lens and was cheaper to get than a wide angle for a DSLR. I wouldn’t have thought twice about getting a L series Canon wide angle lens but with the possibility of upgrading to a medium format camera I thought this the best option. Logic in the madness well thats what i tell my other half!
So below is one of the first images I took with the Lumix not a remarkable image by any means but not too bad either! My daughter and I watched these two crows smooching and preening each other at Fogg Dam. We don’t see too many crows up close so it was nice to watch. The second image is the Fogg Dam road a road I have seen many a tourist and local stand in the water to take photos which is super SUPER scary as there are crocs everywhere!!! Infact if they look around they’d see the very large croc trap set in the lillies trying to catch a fairly decent sized scaly handbag. Infact if you look closely at the last image (bottom left hand corner) you will see a little croc just sitting there, a freshie but a croc no less! Every tourist car drove straight past it oh how easy it really is to get eaten up here!!
Croc Tails
So I braved my fear and agreed to go out in the boat, its been nearly 10 years since I was last in a boat of any kind and thankfully it was uneventful! It was when I worked for Paspaley Pearls in my twenties (some time ago) that I was thrown out of a boat at high speed. I had been working out at sea as a deckhand for over two weeks during a pearl harvest when I was tranferred to Kuri Bay to work. There was a few of us in the boat with our belongings (clothes, doonas, pillows etc) and I remember being so excited at the prospect of walking on land again as I had been at sea nearly three weeks.
Well anyway, the idiot skipper decided to have some fun with the boat next to us and with some serious high speeds and a few water boat donuts thrown in for good measure about 3 of us were thrown clean out of the boat. Unfortunately I was carrying my doona at the time, so first thing I remember was being underwater not knowing which way was up and completely entangled in my doona. What felt like ages I finally made my way to the surface to be nearly hit by the other boat!
I still have an area on the back of my leg where the muscle was pushed & mishaped from the impact of hitting the water, I had a purple leg for about two weeks from the bruise arhh, a reminder of my time with Paspaley. But dispute being thrown into croc and shark infested waters I am not overly worried about the crocs up here, so it was a pleasure to come across this old man croc on the bank.
I got out an old lens that is covered in mould esp for the journey, so don’t look too closely but you’ll get the idea. We saw quite a few crocs swimming about but this guy got our attention, laying on the bank as if he didn’t have a care in the world…well he doesn’t really does he? By the shape of his tail we suggest he would be about 60- 70 years old and no sooner had i finished taking the pics when he turned quickly to disappear into the murly waters, I didn’t catch this action as I was holding my daughter a little too tight by this stage.
Still thinking about what camera to get when we sell the house, CF is certainly making it difficult by showing the best of nearly ever camera brand out there!!
Dirty Dirt
This used to be covered in natural bush land and is an area I used to visit to watch wondering wild Buffalo, the place I spotted my first antilopine walleroo (which I thought was a ‘big red’ at first) and to watch various finches in the tall grasses (wishing for that 400mm canon lens). It is government land that is used to collect dirt for the new bridge that is currently being built in Palmerston. When I spoke to the guy that is in charge of the area (-as i asked to drive in to take images of dump track tyres for some ttv work) he reassured me that the land is fully regenerated and no one would even know they were there. Little does he know that I have been visiting the area for long enough to watch these 2-3 square kilometre areas get wiped clean of all nature and no, years later they do not look the same.Granted though, there is enough land available here in the NT to take what you want from it without any fuss but it makes me SAD as its MY area, less than 10 kms from my home and a where I can go to see everything the territory has to offer from wandering emus to wetlands to rocky outcrops.It is where most of my ‘Through the Viewfinder’ images have been taken that appear on this blog. Anyways I said my bit…good on you if you’ve read this far as i really just wanted to rant outloud. Oh and the pano is a 6 image stitch with PTGui with no colour manipulation just a little burning and dodging. Don’t care about pano correctness in this one-I know I’ve got alot to learn re panos:)Cheers Jules
Jules Campbell in DiscoUnderWorld
Jules Campbell, originally uploaded by discounderworld.
Jules Campbell
The very first print issue of disco underworld, featuring all the best artists and articles from the last 12 issues.
A book with a soft cover, this mook weighs in at over 1/2 a kilo, is printed on high quality stock, and looks fabulous on the coffee table.
100 pages of advertising free, visually stunning, brain feeding disco underworld goodness! -Features artists from around the world.
Limited Edition as only 1000 issues will be printed!
To buy (or find out more info)click on the link below;
http://discounderworld.blogspot.com/2009/10/buy-copy-of-gold-edition-1-only-1000.html
Old habits die hard..
Taking more pictures of trees I can’t help myself …sigh…Can’t wait to see what the ttv style comes up with in the big tree country in the SW of WA.Still haven’t moved, as I write I am sitting in the loungeroom surrounded by boxes.It’s a hot time of year and I’m holding off packing all my thousands of large prints and negatives as the 20ft packing container reaches 40+ degrees!
Good news is I’m flying to WA to attend a 20 year high school reunion at Busselton in Decemeber so I could probably take the most important negs and prints on the flight with me and store them with my folks in Margarets.Arhhh problem solved, blogging does have a reason! too sort out problems as you type! I still feel as though I’m talking to myself though…
Cheers for now Jules
My apprentice
Well here is my daughter 3 years old taking in the scene at one of our favourite spots (as mentioned in previous post; Milly’s Rock ) she looks the part doesn’t she?, complete with gum boots! Looking about for future potential image gems, whats that they say? when photographing always look at the scene behind you esp at sunrise and sunset. lol Cheers Jules
Misty Mornings
Its been a while I know things are starting to get back on track and with a short break from photography I am feeling more inspired than ever. Lately there have been a few misty mornings which has been quite strange, although we do get fog in the dry season on occasion its usually cold-ish (low 20C’s) but lately its been thick fog and 26 degrees or more.
I took this image above at a favourite spot of mine, I call “Milly’s Lookout” as I once released a Frilled Neck Lizard there after I nursed it back to health. It had been hit by a car, I stopped and picked it up before another car came and after a Vet visit a few stitches and nearly dying twice on the operating table she came back with me for months of re-hab as I often used to do volunteer wild life rescue and care. Anyways years on and I still enjoy the visiting the place I call Milly Lookout.
A recent fire had gone through leaving the place looking quite eerie in the fog, if it wasn’t for the extreme humidity and the temp I could have been in a winter wonderland somewhere- well I can dream can’t I ? I’ll be right we are having another cold snap I think tomorrow morning it might even get below 20 Degrees C! Cheers Jules
Dragonflies
Hi all ..am having a break for a bit from photos. My daughter had a nasty fall and needed stitches on her chin -poor little thing, so I’m happy to take a break from normal web stuff.
The image above is a dragonfly in its last moments of life..kinda bizarre to photograph it as it was on its last breath and me knowing the image would be with me forever but the dragonfly itself would be long gone.A small homage to these amazing little flying machines.
Cheers Jules
Postcards
I miss those old old postcards….
PS As you can see I’ve changed my blog theme again..its only temporary till I make the one I really want, could be days, weeks or months lol
One Image Six Ways
Sooo many options sooo little time…..
Admittedly the blue wash ones don’t look too hot pressed up against the black ~ they really deserve their own space but I just knocked this up to show the differences. Sometimes I play with colour so much I can have a dozen different versions which I usually put on the back burner till the next couple of days then I come back and decide. Its strange how a day or so can make such a difference in editing choices..does anyone else do that ? or have or tips/tricks to the final cut edition?
Outback Photographer
Well here it is my first magazine interview with the fabulous Disco Underworld
You can read all about it online and in several different just check the homepage out.You can also vote for the best article (ie me) in the mag and I might even some win some cold hard cash!! So don’t forget to vote for me:)
Here’s the link to go straight to voting;
VOTE FOR ME HERE
