The surprise reptile

Riding home from work I spotted this bearded dragon only around the corner from my house, just chilling near the lake munching unsuspecting bugs, I saw it as a random opportunity so I went home and grabbed my camera with my old macro lens on. I would have rather not used my extremely old macro lens for this since it's useless for decent quality photos, but practice is practice and I wouldn't have been able to get close enough with my kit lens to have a short depth of field. Anyway, I managed these, not very good quality but at least my subject was co-operative!

Riding photos #3: Nick and Chris

A couple of weeks ago before my laptop died, I went on a ride from some Victoria Point locals and took my camera, along with a crappy $30 fisheye filter lens I bought from Ebay. You're probably wondering why I bothered buying a lens that's really kind of useless quality-wise, but the reason is I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend $1000+ on a lens that I might not be able to use due to the fact that I might have to get way too close to the rider and risk having it smashed by a wayward bike. Turns out with the filter-fish I was able to get close enough without putting the camera at risk on most occasions. So, here's the results of the day. riders are Nick Barnier and his brother Chris.

First thing to do of the day, try out the fisheye lens. This is my own bike, custom built frame, wheels and handlebars. This is the frame I designed myself, and built by FBM bicycle co. from 100% supertherm cro-mo steel. After this, I left home and first stop was Thornlands skatepark.

Chris, with a backflip out of a very tight quarter pipe

Chris - no footed can-can

Nick - footjam stall

Nick boosting the hip

Next, was the mission train ride to Brisbane city, then on the Sunshine station to get to Ramp Attak. Ramp Attak is a large indoor skatepark on the north side of the river and is well worth the travel to get there. However, because It was indoors, light was limited and I could not use the fisheye much due to it not letting a lot of light in. This is where I need a couple of flashes, remotely triggered to be able to get decent shots. The built in flash just can't cut it and therefore I had to use a higher ISO setting than I would have liked.

Chris - superman seatgrab barspin

Chris - superman seatgrab

Chris - backflip

It was a great day and got me back in to the grove of being comfortable doing backflips after having a pretty hard crash at a comp a few months ago (yes, I do ride quite a lot when I'm not behind the lens). Flips are one of those things that never get less scary, you just do them more often when you think less about the consequences and more about the rush. GOOD TIMES!!