I got a new bike just over a month ago, and have been trying to ride at least once or twice a week after week. I had a few days off last week but it was just Too Damn Hot TM so I avoided riding.

I did go out once in a 35 degree day but got so hot after a short amount of time that I simply gave up trying and came home.

Justine also got a bike as we want to ride together; we usually ride along the Scotchman’s Creek Trail as it’s near home, nice and green and has a wide enough path that we don’t smack into anyone (yet; knock on wood!).

Previously, the furthest I’d been was to Huntingdale Road, where I usually turned back, except for one day over the Christmas break where I decided it would be fun to ride home… via work. Round trip around 23km.

This evening after work, Justine and I rode all the way to Chadstone Shopping Centre which — according to WhereIs is around 7km (it seemed much longer than that, and possibly was due to the winding trail we took) — and then home, which was mostly uphill. A decent-length ride, especially considering how long it’s been since I’ve done any riding (of any merit, anyway).

Since the weather’s been so nice recently I thought I’d jump in and buy a polarising filter for my big lens as skies using those filters can look fantastic. Not content with ordering it online and waiting around for a few weeks, we went down to Ted’s at Chadstone and I purchased one.

Imagine my excitement when we get home and the skies are grey, and the rain begins to fall. Great.

Imagine my second round of excitement when I go to eBay to jump in again and put in a Buy-It-Now “bid” for Kenko Extension Tubes so I can try my hand (cheaply) at macro photography (and saving about ninety bucks in the process) and see the same filter from the seller for a whole lot less than Ted’s asked me to pay. Great.

If I really wanted to, I could take the filter back tomorrow and could get the eBay guy (or girl) to send me one with the tubes but stuff it; I’ve made the commitment and this time I lost out. It’s too much mucking around and I bet I’ll end up worse off if I try to save a few bucks. Next time though, I will check elsewhere first…

So much for spontaneity, eh?

Today Justine and I decided to celebrate Australia Day by doing something different to our normal “public holiday” fare: enjoying a bunch of free activities being offered in and around the Melbourne CBD.

We took the train into the city and on arrival at Flinders St station, mini Coke Zero cans were thrust into our hands (my first impression of Coke Zero a week or so ago was positive, except for the phenylalanine taste; now after having more, I’m not really interesting in pursuing that relationship); I was surprised at the number of people walking around the city enjoying their day and walking haphazardly around.

After deciding not to wait in a short line to learn whip cracking due to the strength of the sun, we proceeded to Kings Domain Park (where the Music Bowl is) and viewed a very large number of vintage cars (for instance: Rolls Royces and 1930s Chryslers (or maybe they’re something else). A lot of other little activities were being offered but most didn’t look interesting or had long lines in the sun. No thanks.

We then walked — Boost in hand — beside the Yarra down to Spencer St Southern Cross Station, where we checked out the new Docklands.

We checked out the Volvo Ocean Race stopover which was particularly shit; there were four boats being worked, and besides the huge fanfare really nothing interesting to see whatsoever.

Luckily, there were dragon boat races being held at the Docklands too so we hung around to see a couple. Unfortunately, the racers were way too far out to really get a good view, so it ended up being pretty uninteresting. I’m sure they used to run those sorts of races on the Yarra, which would be a lot better since you’d get a decent view.

Making our way back to Flinders St we grabbed more Coke Zero, I cemented my “not interested” position on the new addition to the Coke family and shortly after, we decided to make our way home.

The train trip was uneventful, except for the guy at the other end of our carriage throwing up. Always an exciting time on Melbourne’s public transport system!

As we reach the end of the second month of the scavenger hunt, we had seven people participate with six of those posting photos of all three topics. well done.

I gave myself a little challenge this week to make all my three photos portrait orientation rather than my usual landscape orientation and I’m happy with them all. I think Mysterious Door is the best of the three with Pour coming second (mostly for the idea, not the execution which could have been better). Surfers Shotty is not quite right, but I’m not sure why.

My choices for the photos this week are:

• Purple: Purple by mrdehoot

  Of the six “purple” shots, one was pink, two were blue and three actually contained purple. While it’s not purple I think this photo is the most interesting of — to my mind — a pretty average bunch (including my own).

• Mystery: Can by stardust96

  A hard topic and a hard choice for me as I thought most of the “mystery” photos were also rather average. I chose Can because I think it’s really the only shot with an element of mystery.

• Cook: Cook II by mrdehoot

  The first version of this photo wasn’t particularly interesting, in my opinion. This second one, however, simply works. The colours, the angle, the subject, are all really good. Well done.

Since there were only three people who voted for topics this week, and some were the same, I’ll take one from each voter:

• Orange
• Post
• Rule of thirds

I am happy with the number of participants though of course would like to see it grow, but I would love to see the quality of the photos improve this week and I think using the concept of Rule of thirds may help everyone think more critically of their own shots.

Good luck!

The old saying that you “learn something new every day” doesn’t always seem to quite hold true, depending on your point of view, of course.

I have recently decided to switch to using the RAW image format in my camera, because it allows me to fiddle with camera settings in a non-destructive way. For instance, you can change the white balance (whether a photo was shot in daylight, under flourescent lighting, etc) to change the colour cast of an image, among many other options. Most of the time I take less than a hundred photos in a session so there’s little worry about my memory card’s capacity.

So today I was taking photos for the scavenger hunt and decided on a lark that I might try a go a bit more artistic. I switched to black & white mode and continued shooting.

Imagine my surprise when I was browsing the photos in Google’s Picasa image organiser (which I have recently begun using again due to finding out it also supports Canon’s RAW format) and I saw the photos I’d just taken in full colour!

Of course, in hindsight it makes perfect sense and mirrors what I’ve told people before: in black & white mode, digital cameras take a colour photo and then process it into black & white afterwards. Well, using RAW mode it doesn’t bother with the colour removal process regardless of what you say. This brings up another thought: I need to learn how to emulate using black & white with red, yellow, green filters as the camera won’t do that in RAW mode.

Moral of the story: You’ve got a high-end camera, so use the highest-end mode! Picasa and Photoshop make it a breeze to organise, view and edit the photos anyway.

Well well well, this week seems to have improved since last week’s efforts, both in quantity and — in some cases — quality.

A few joined, left, and we’re now at 11 members with fourteen photos submitted this week. Six (a group high) managed to snap all three topics and I think we can easily match that again this week.

My picks are:

• White: White golf ball by innercreation

  I really like this shot, it works well. The sky is, I think, a little too blue; I don’t know if you changed it or if it’s your camera, but it’s overdone — check the blue sky my camera captured barely two hours later on the same day. Is the golf ball a real golf ball or is it that big one at that place on Springvale Rd?Horsehead by theblueboy was also good but I think it needed some light/contrast tweaking and slightly different cropping to win, especially with the competition.

• Square: Square by mrdehoot

  I like the idea, it’s a different take compared to others’. I think the framing and angle could be improved but the idea won here.Actually, I thought Square scrapbooking by stardust96 was best but I helped with the cropping (though the angle, choice of subject and everything else had nothing to do with me) and I don’t pick my own photos.

• Street: My Street by neofitou

  A tough one between the winner and Street by mrdehoot (again for the interesting slant on the topic, just needed to be a bit more exciting, I think).I think the photo could be improved by having the rest of the picture a bit brighter. The street light makes it though. Perhaps mutiple bracketed exposures blended might have worked?

I would like to see other’s thoughts on the best shots (and why!); perhaps post in that week’s topic post or go wild and reply to a post on this site!

The plan was for people to vote for the topics they want and though it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, at least we have a bit more member input into the topics.

I would like to mention that the point of the group for me is to not only get out everyone out there and take photos, but hopefully improve my own technique and take photos I wouldn’t normally consider taking. Adding objects or emotions as topics I think makes the topics a little too task-based (look at the “street” photos as an example, they are all a little too similar; now compare with the “square” topic and see how many different interpretations there are).

Not to mention that I think successfully capturing things like emotions in a week will be terribly difficult and I wanted the topics to be open to as much interpretation as possible to allow for as much freedom as possible. That’s how I want the group to work, and there are already other groups if you just want to hunt down “things on a list”.

The topics for the following week are:

• Purple
• Mystery
• Cook

I didn’t use any of neofitou’s votes because he broke the voting rules (used two from the one group), not that it changed the outcome. Phew, a big post this week. Let’s get to it!

P.S. Sorry to theblueboy, but even though I quite liked your street photo, it was too late to qualify! I also updated the post to reflect that you got all three topics.

I just recently finished reading One of Us. I chose this book as it’s by Michael Marshall Smith who also wrote Only Forward which I read a few months back and mostly enjoyed.

Smith’s writing in both stories is similar, and some of the concepts illustrated throughout carry across from one story to another (such as machines/objects having personalities).

Sometime in the near future, dreams are capable of being ‘transferred’ from one person to another; this is deemed only slightly illegal as it’s invasion of privacy, but illegal nonetheless. An underground exists for people who wish to have their dreams ‘dumped’; they must, however, have somewhere to go. People such as Hap Thompson receive dreams from others to give them a good night’s sleep, and get well paid in the process.

Hap is offered to have memories transferred for him (a highly illegal practice) — for a few days only — so people do not have to deal with them. People may get rid of memories to have a few day’s peace (from, perhaps, accidentally killing someone) or to assist in the removal of guilt (when cheating on a partner, for instance).

The major theme (transferral of memories) in the book is, strangely enough, the centrepiece for the most recent Stargate SG-1 episode aired in the US though this show deals with the memories in a ‘what is real?’ scenario.

The plot surrounds Hap as he receives a memory of murdering someone, but is unable to determine who the murderer is. He must track down the murderer and then determine not only how to get the memory removed (it’s not an easy process) but who is chasing him, and why.

It’s told in the same film noir style as Only Forward, and Smith’s style of writing seems to be a style of writing I enjoy reading. As with Only Forward, I found the ending to be slightly weak (though One of Us’ is stronger than Only Forward’s).

Highly recommended. There is now a slight problem, in that my local library has no more copies of Smith’s other books. I have since decided to read The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson as it was recommended to me a few years back.