Decadence

22 02 2010

This is wretched excess in a portable form.

In the Perth area there is an average of one boat for every household.  Any way you count it, that’s a lot of boats.  On the weekends from our balcony it looks like everyone in the area is fleeing by boat to Rottnest Island.  Lucky dogs.





These bastards will feed you shark

21 02 2010

Don't eat here.

If you go to Hillarys in Western Australia (nice place), please avoid Sharky’s.  They serve shark.  They don’t even try to camouflage it by calling it “flake” like other places here.  It’s just a plate of bronze whaler and fries.  So yeah, add that to the “avoid” list.





Rottnest Island diving

14 02 2010

A very large bull ray cruises by.

On Valentine’s Day we went diving with Dolphon Dive in Fremantle.  They charged us for weights.  Seriously.  I’ve never even heard of a place charging for weights much less actually accepting it and paying for that.  Seriously.  Weights.  You can’t just keep a crate of weights on the boat like everyone else?

Anyway, it was nice.  Plenty of nudibranchs and some other random things.  On the boat they grilled steak sandwiches for lunch.  I can get use to that.

The highlight was going around a corner and looking down the barrel of a very large bull ray. Also we saw our first wild Port Jackson shark but didn’t get a shot of him because he took off in a hurry.  -jp

Am Valentinstag waren wir tauchen. Sind wir nicht süß – ein Valentinstauchgang! Es war echt schön, anders als gewohnt in den tropischen Gewässern mit vielen Korallen, aber trotzdem sehr schön. Nicht zuletzt, da wir einen Bullrochen gesehen haben, der so einen Meter an uns vorbeigeschwommen ist – faszinierend! Und ich habe eine superschöne Spanische Tänzerin entdeckt und einen kleinen Port Jackson Hai.

Leider sind wir schon so weit im Süden von Australien, dass das Wasser hier selbst im Sommer nicht richtig warm wird. Das heißt es bleibt so um die 20 Grad. Aber mit einem 7mm Anzug ist das auch kein Problem. Zumindest, wer kann schon von sich behaupten vor seiner Haustür tauchen gehen zu können;-) -mk

Rottnest Island is here.




Aperture was upgraded

10 02 2010

This was just an excuse to run this photo.

So here’s a geek post for those wondering about behind the scenes. Basically, we take all our photos in RAW and then white balance it and whatever else we need to do in Apple’s Aperture. When you take a RAW photo, the camera just takes in all of the data of what it sees and the photo you end up with is basically washed out and sometimes not very crisp.
So then we need to white balance it, put the saturation back into it, and put the definition back into it. Every good digital photo follows this workflow and anyone that says they shoot in RAW and don’t do anything to the photo is a liar or has bad photos. That’s all there is to it.
Shooting in JPEG doesn’t have these sorts of issues because the camera will just throw some processing at it and you’ll have a perfectly fine photo. However, if you don’t like the level of saturation the camera has given the photo then you’re screwed because you can’t change it much. Hence, if you’re at all serious about photography, you shoot in RAW.
We don’t use Photoshop unless there’s some specific reason and even then rarely.
So now to the point. Apple released Aperture 3 yesterday after TWO YEARS of barely supporting version 2. And it’s fantastic. The workflow is easier, the tools are better, and it has around 200 new features. But the top 10 or so were enough that I could delete Photoshop off the laptop forever if I didn’t need vector mapping once every three months.
Anyway, here’s a gallery of some of the older shots from earlier in the trip, redone with the new version of Aperture.

Edit: turns out a couple of the photos are corrupted. Yes, Aperture did that. It isn’t without its glitches and is in need of a patch. But the benefits outweigh the problems.





I’ve solved the mystery!

2 02 2010

While I was waiting for Monique to arrive at Perth airport when I solved a question people have been asking for months. I found Tiger Woods. He’s hiding out in plain sight, working as a barista at Dome at the airport. -jp





Monique in Deutschland

1 02 2010

Schön war’s! 3 Wochen Deutschland und ich hatte ehrlich gesagt Angst, dass es verdammt kalt werden würde. Was es letztendlich eigentlich auch war, aber dieser wunderschöne frische Schnee gemixt mit blauen Himmel ist einfach herzerwärmend. Und natürlich meine liebe Familie und die ganzen lieben Freunde, die ich getroffen habe.

Ich hatte wirklich eine schöne Zeit in Deutschland! War aber auch wieder glücklich in unserer neuen Wahlheimat und bei meinem Schatz angekommen zu sein.

Hier meine Erlebnisse fotografisch festgehalten:

http://gallery.me.com/the_np_bat_man#101218&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=26

-mk








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