Afternoon storms

If you live in Queensland, afternoon thunderstorms are pretty normal. sometimes they can be pretty destructive too, not so long ago there were some storms that left my house and my work without power for 4 days. unfortunately I wasn't camera-ready for that one, but I was for this one.

Lightning is pretty difficult to take a photo of, especially when you only have about 10 minutes of the peak of the storm as they move so fast. you don't get to choose when to practice taking lighting photos either so that 10 minutes is pure guess work with settings.

For this, I kept taking 20 second exposures at f5.6, iso200, cpl filter. it took a while till there was a decent strike, and when I saw this one emerge from the clouds I felt pretty stoked. I kept my outside light on while taking the photos which illuminated the back garden with rich, warm colours which contrasts well with the cold, blue sky.

I think next time, using a shorter exposure time and higher iso setting would darken the sky more and make the fainter lightning pop out more. I'll also set up my laptop with EOS utility to take constant photos, that way I can set everything up and leave it to fire away until I get the right shot. But at least I got to practice and learn this time around, so that next time I'll know what settings I need and I'll get something amazing.

Almost Alien

Insects are cool. Flying insects are even cooler. So, up close and personal with a cicada should be a cool photo, right? They look almost like a creature from another world in detail, but kind of beautiful at the same time. I haven't posted anything to this blog in ages because I haven't really had the time to spend on photography lately to produce anything I'm happy with, but 10 minutes of free time and a rouge cicada in my house finally gave me something I was a little happy with.

For these I used my little old Canon 1000D with the 18-55mm kit lens, though I would have liked to have used a CPL filter to take out the bright reflections from the flash and bring out some richer colours in the cicada. I might invest in a black backdrop soon so I can use a more powerful flash without having to balance having a dark room and bright subject. After this, I let the little fella go on his way. Probably got eaten by a bat, but whatever.

Winternationals 2012

Sorry it's taken so long to upload these, but these are all from the Fuchs Lubricants Winternationals 2012. I only stayed for qualifying and only had my17-40mm lens with me, So this year I focused on lurking through the pits. I did manage to get my face right in the nitro fumes down in the top fuel pits. God damn that filthy yellow stuff clears the nasal passages better than snorting wasabi.

Above: I found this and thought it might be of interest.
Below: Just some of the parts that come out of a Top Fuel engine when things don't go right. Left is bent and burned valves, centre is mutilated connecting rod caps and right is melted bore sleeves.

Above: Right after a test fire up. The great part about being in the pits is that you can get almost as close as you like to these monsters, unlike many other motorsports.

the two above and one below: Off track entertainment is awesome.

 Above: In the the years of spectating Drag Racing, I have never seen the track cleaning tractors race during downtime.
Below: this one might be pretty grainy, using a 17-40mm with limited light is not ideal, but this was an amazing run by Andrew Cowin.

Below: I caught these guys at 1am finally test firing after a massive rebuild effort to make it for race day. If you camp nearby the track, you often get the #$% scared out of you in the middle of the night when one of these fire up and stabs the throttle. But that's ok, because it sounds so good.

Below: Testing the clutch, reverser and warming the diff gears.

 Above and below: Let's not forget the bikes. Below is a Top Fuel Motorcycle. These also run on nitromethane, and also hit well over 200mph in under 7 seconds. The people who ride these must be insane.

Again, sorry about being 2 months late on these, but I hope you enjoy them.

Riding photos #6: Goodbye Shailer Park!

Today's riding focus was to go ride Shailer Park skatepark, a fairly old skatepark that I'm told is soon to be demolished to make way for a set of shops. It's pretty sad, since this skatepark has been featured in an absolute ton of riding videos, including videos for the Brisbane based BMX parts company Tempered Bikes. Despite it's age it's bursting with very fun lines and is great for riders of all skill level. Riders for this set are a mate of mine who is just learning BMX, Alex Johnson, and sponsored rider Christian Dilizio.

I absolutely love the photo above. Today was the first time I've used a CPL filter, and I see why people use them. I hardly touched this photo in post processing at all. Rider above is Christian, with a decent x-up to get a bit warm and loose.

In about 3 or 4 riding sessions, Alex has really started to pick up why I've been riding so many years. He is more of a gamer, but since he's picked up a bike it seems as though he gets in to it as much as a damn good battlefield session.

Above, nac-nac. The weird name comes from it being basically the reverse of a can-can, where you kick one leg over the frame in front of your other leg as if you were dancing the can-can. Doing a nac-nac, you kick the leg behind your other leg above the tyre.

Above, Christian transferring bowl to bowl. A prime example of why this skatepark will be missed, one bowl features steel coping and a sub box, while the other is coping-less and a little more mellow for beginners. When we got to the skatepark, Alex started out riding around the coping-less bowl and did a few jumps out of it before moving on the the "better" bowl. Both bowls are open ended and you can transfer from each one into another bowl or section which creates some awesome lines. I even backfipped the coping bowl right before we left, and out of the handful of backflips out of concrete ramps I have done, it was by far the smoothest.

Above is Alex getting a little more psyched and jumping out of the corner pocket of the coping bowl. Between runs, Christian and I muttered a joke that we thought he was getting hooked on bikes like us, next minute he called out across the park "MAN! THIS IS ADDICTIVE!". Hunch confirmed? That pocket is the very same I launched a flip out of too, this place was definitely built for everyone.

After a brief stop off at Mt. Cotton skatepark and KFC, we went back to our home park of Victoria Point. It's a small skatepark with pretty mellow banks and quarters, but it's close to where we all live so it ends up being a regular weeknight riding spot. Apparently our local council has agreed to a petition to upgrade the park, but they're pretty slack when it comes to improving anything other than shopping centres or housing estates to be honest.

It was an awesome day with good mates, and everyone making  bit of progress. I feel pretty sad that Shailer park may be gone soon, but I am glad I got to ride it one more time and get the things I wanted to learn there done. Being around Alex while he took it to the wall and learned more was probably what pushed me to want to bring out the flips again. Backflips are incredibly fun, and there is no other rush like it in BMX (or anything else!), but the obvious dangers and intensity of them makes me hold back a lot, not to mention that right up until the point of already being commited to the flip, I'm always fighting a tough mind game. But that's just another thing I love about BMX, fighting to overcome what holds you back, and being rewarded for it. Enjoy!

Riding Photos #5: Thornlands fisheye set

Been meaning to upload these for a while, but work and my Cert III course has really been eating up all of my time lately, and, when I actually do get free time it's usually spent catching up on some riding time. I recently learned frontflips as well so usually there's a lot of resting time after I go out riding now (you gotta crash a lot to learn them, and crashing hard takes it out of you even if you walk away uninjured).

So, here's the rest of the batch from the 2 days of riding Nick Barnier and I did at Thornlands skatepark.

Nice tailwhip

Such a great day for a ride

Black Weapons

These last two shots were our focus for the day. Nick wanted a few shots of riding this hip, and some of an invert over it (one on the right). I framed it with the the edge of the tree at the top and the hip itself at the bottom, and had to use a bit of magic in post processing to cut the brightness of the sun.

This hip is one of my favourite spots to ride and appears in many riding photos in Australia. There's plenty of shots of young Alex Hiam blasting ridiculous stunts over it, among others. The reason being, this skatepark is fairly photogenic to riders, and the hip is a really nice shape to get a lot of height but it doesn't kick you hard enough to disrupt your balance. I typically have troubles trying to bring it up short when transferring in to the short side, there's not much room to land in but it's way too easy to boost too high.

Anyway, all of these shots were with a Canon 1000D with the 18-55mm f3.5-5.3 lens with a $30 eBay fisheye filter. That lens setup is worth no more than $130, and the distortion is pretty terrible but it's fun to experiment with, and I'm not a professional looking for super brilliant photos. I'm just a dude with a camera that likes to play around with angles and settings for fun. Maybe one day I will invest a lot of money in to my camera gear, but not while I'm still enjoying this setup.

Good bike, Good riding.

Rider: Nick Barnier. This photo has a little back story to it, which I'm sure many riders can relate to a little bit. I certainly can. A couple of days ago, Nick snapped a set of handlebars (you read that right, snapped them...) and in the down time spent some time and money on his bike and footwear. I met him this morning as he was fitting the new bars and I put on a new chain using the left over links from his and Chris' chain (apparently, KMC gives you enough links to make a chain and a half, 3 for the price of 2 anyone?). The result of the work is that he now has a perfectly smooth bike and nice fresh kicks to stick to the pedals. What does that have to do with this photo? well, a smooth bike always makes you go that little bit harder, because it feels great and really makes you more connected with the bike. This photo is a prime example of that rule, a huge boost over Thornlands hip isn't easy with the limited landing space, but damn it looks good!

Face to face

Bearded Dragons are cool. I know they're pretty common, but they make such great subjects because they sit still and look right at the camera lens no matter where you move, unless you preoccupy them with food. I spotted this on on  walk this morning when I went to collect some fresh plants and tadpole snails for my fish tank.

Both pictures were taken with my 18-55mm lens @55mm focal length, f5.6 and ISO 100. I wanted to use my 17-40mm but there was no way I'd be able to get close enough to the tree in the first place. Still, I'm pretty happy with these 2 photos since my 18-55 is just a kit lens.

Enjoy!