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!

Backyard Warfare #2

These Max Force blasters are not only heaps of fun and great for defense against zombie attacks, but their colour schemes suit well with de-saturated backdrops. Like the last Max force blaster, I spent some time screwing around with different photos. I might do a night time long exposure shot again but I'll have to wait until I get a night off work.

Gecko!

Caught this sneaky ninja hunting down a moth just now. While geckos are great at keeping bugs at bay, they tend to fall off of whatever they're climbing and scare the hell out of you. They're totally harmless of course, but I scooped up this little fella and took him outside to go hunting elsewhere so I could work in peace.

They do also make this really loud chirping noise to communicate with each other at night. It's pretty common to see 5 or 10 ganging up on one massive moth. poor bugs don't stand a chance around here...

Anyway, nothing too exciting. Just a gecko. I like geckos though, just not convenient when I'm trying to get some stuff done.

More random wildlife

Another day on Coochie-Mudlo island, a few more photos with words to go with them. What should I find first? The same pair of curlews as last time I went over, but with a new baby. The parents were nesting in some scrub, and they aren't worried by people much anymore (probably because Dad always leaves out food for them in the afternoon...) so I managed to get this close to them, but the younger baby Curlew was too frightened to let me get close enough so I left it alone.

Magpies are fun to watch. In suburbia, they screw around by swing off your clothes on the clothes line or teasing cats behind windows. Pretty smart birds really. They're extremely common, but I thought this would make a decent photo. When I first got my camera, I learned to use it by using old lenses adapted to my camera body and taking photos of magpies in a field that was near me.

This Bearded Dragon also lives in the same area as the Curlew family, and spends most of it's time hanging off this tree. It's a bit bigger than the last random reptile I took a photo of, but definitely not very aggressive.

Australia is awesome.

Exploring: Eprapah Creek

I moved house last week to an estate that backs on to Eprapah Creek, and over the last few days I have been doing a bit of exploring for a couple of reasons, one is to collect some food for my fish and some native water plants for the tank, and the other is because I just plain love exploring random bushland. You can find all sorts of random things pretty easily, especially if you know what wallaby trails look like. They tend to cut through the bush finding places to get water and also to rest, so it makes sense to just follow where they go and eventually you'll end up at a nice spot to rest. But it's not all easy going, sometimes you have to do a bit of this:

After a few more dodgy log walks across much larger spans of water, and a bit of being a ninja across some rocks I found this little fella:

And then I followed another wallaby track to my final spot, a section of faster moving water in Eprapah Creek. I did set out with the intention of finding a spot like this, since I'd never tried long exposure photos of moving water before.

Both photos I had settings of f22, ISO 100 and a 5 second shutter speed. I also set a timer of 2 seconds, because the tripod had a little shake in it when I pressed the shutter button.

This spot was actually a thriving little ecosystem, I picked up a couple of plants for my aquarium and some native snails too. There were quite a few native rainbow fish feeding on mosquito larvae and tons of fry feeding on algae. It is actually legal to take rainbow fish from the wild to keep, but I decided to wait until the fry are a bit older so that I don't impact the breeding cycle.

Last one, is a HDR. I'm really shocking at doing these since I hardly ever do them, but I thought I might include this one since it turned out alright:

Giving the bike some love.

The other day while out riding to do the last bunch of photos, I noticed a few things on my bike that needed addressing. After you ride the same bike for so long you can feel when something is not quite right, like a faint vibration through the pedals or perhaps a bit of stiffness somewhere. Some people think I'm either psychic or just mental when I pick these things, but it just comes with a lot of riding and building a lot of bikes.

So, I decided to do a strip and rebuild to find these little issues. Sure enough, I had a headset bearing that was getting a little rough, a pair of crank bearings that will need replacing soon, and a stiff link in the chain. I also serviced my hubs, painted them and laced them to a different set of rims. I re-painted the frame in satin black as well. So here it is:

After almost 3 years of solid abuse, this frame is still going very strong. When I designed it, I intended for it to last 18 months to 2 years, and chose to have it built from Supertherm tubing. FBM did a great job of turning the dream into a reality. I am now expecting this frame to exceed the 5 year mark, which is almost unheard of within the BMX industry. Cheers to the only bicycle so far that can handle being put through hell and back!