Wilson's Prom

A quick video recap of our camping trip down in Wilson's Prom last weekend.  Unfortunately I didn't get any shots of the hike or of Waterloo Bay where we stayed the second night, as I wanted to minimize weight for the 24km of hiking and I didn't want to risk dropping/soaking/destroying my camera on the hike.  In retrospect, I should've brought it, but oh well... as the song says, "No time for cameras, we'll use our eyes instead."

For those curious of how beautiful the scenery was, check out the below photos from the interwebs:

Photo courtesy of couriermail.com.au

Photo courtesy of kgrahamsjourneys.wordpress.com

5 Minutes or Less: It's a family affar (part deux)

A more substantial post to follow, but just wanted to share that Lydia and I had the pleasure of showing my sister and her boyfriend around greater Melbourne and Tasmania when they were in town a couple of weeks ago:

Thanks guys for coming to visit and for all of the fun!

Keeping up with the Jonses

Congratulations to Luke and Marnie Jones on their wedding this past weekend!

It was a beautiful ceremony right on the beach, and the reception was a party to be remembered.  We couldn't be happier for them!  I first met Luke over a year and a half ago at work.  After he warmed up to my Americaness (he was hesitant at first), we quickly became good friends, and he's become one of my best "mates" here in Australia; he, along with Nick (pictured below) have taken upon themselves to teach me the ways of their homeland, including the superiority of the metric system, the soft pronunciation of the letter "R," and what a B&S Ute is.  Not long after meeting Luke, Lydia and I had the honor of meeting his girlfriend Marnie, and we quickly all became close friends - we even spent Christmas together with their respective families.

I promised my other best mate that I'd post a picture on the blog.  You're welcome, Nicka

We wish them the best in their future lives together, and in their approaching travels.  Come April, we'll lose them both to an adventure over in Europe, which we're (selfishly) saddened by, although we suspect it won't be too long before we meet again, be it in Europe, Australia, or the States!

Good picture of Luke and Marnie, average picture of Lyds and myself

Tribeca Timelapse

As Lydia and I have both been holed up in our apartment this weekend (we've both come down with a nasty head cold), I figured I'd have a play with timelapse video.  I ordered a programmable shutter trigger for my camera about a week ago, but figured out yesterday that I can achieve the same result using my laptop and a bit of software.  Not wanting to leaving my camera and my laptop unattended in a public spot, and needing a powerpoint for my laptop, I figured the best place to try it out would be the porch of our apartment.  Unfortunately we don't have an awesome view of the night sky from our apartment (as evident in the video), so I had to frame the shot using a portrait orientation rather than the preferred landscape for video:

*Hot tip- change the video quality to HD720P to see the stars

Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with the result, although I definitely have some ideas for improvement for next time around.  For the photography nerds out there, here's what settings I used:

13" exposure
F/3.5
ISO 800
One shot taken every 3 minutes, with the hope of capturing 80 shots (camera battery died after 62 shots)
Shots were taken starting at 8:27pm and continued until 12:31am

Hopefully more to come soon!

Melbourne in Pictures

I've been poking around town lately with my camera enjoying the warm and clear weather and grabbing some photos around town.  I've also been playing around with HDR photography and different exposures.  Here are a few shots that I've taken lately:

Melbourne Skyline from Abbotsford (standard exposure, no HDR, taken on Feb 13)

Melbourne skyline from St. Kilda pier (HDR shot taken today)

Sunset behind the city with the Abbotsford convent in the foreground (HDR shot taken on Feb 17)

St. Kilda Pavillion on St. Kilda Pier (standard exposure, no HDR taken today)

I'm still honing my skills, so I'll post some more photos soon.  Next up will be extra long exposure and timelapse videos after I purchase a timer remote.

Melbourne Sunset

This past Sunday, Lydia and I went to one of our favorite spots overlooking the city to watch the sunset and enjoy dinner and a bottle of wine.  I brought my camera along to get some sunset photos, and ended up shooting a quick clip of the flying foxes as they make their way towards the city for dinner:



The bats are pretty incredible, and surprisingly large, not to mention great in number.

From Wikipedia: Characteristically, all species of flying foxes only feed on nectar, blossom, pollen, and fruit, which explains their limited tropical distribution. They do not possess echolocation, a feature which helps the other suborder of bats, the microbats, locate and catch prey such as insects in mid-air. Instead, smell and eyesight are very well-developed in flying foxes.

It was a picturesque Melbourne summer evening!

5 Minutes or Less: I'll be home for...Software?

Courtesy of abc.net.au

News.com.au is reporting that it would be cheaper to pay for a round-trip ticket to fly from Australia to the States to buy Adobe software than it would be to purchase the software here in Australia.  From the article:

The Creative Suite Master 6 Collection in Australia costs $4,334. The same software carries a price of $2599 in the US, Gizmodo reported. That's a $1,735 price difference.... A return flight to Los Angeles costs $1147.58 on Virgin Australia.

Talk about lessons in arbitrage. Pretty incredible, although you have to ignore the social costs, including negative externalities of CO₂ emissions of the flight, the lost work product of time spent travelling to and from, and the additional costs borne on US and Australian immigration.

Is it really that surprising to software vendors that software piracy is so rampant? Why not save the cost of the ticket and the cost of the software and just use bittorrents?