A few photos on a beach between rain clouds

I took teachers from our sister school on a short Perth tour on Saturday.

They are having a miserable weather for the past few days unfortunately, and Saturday was same in this regard.  The wind was blowing hard enough to drop seagulls from the sky, and the rain was coming down like a waterfall.

I tend to have a good luck with weather (my name means "sun boy" in Japanese), and I have been just wondering if they have brought a bad karma with them from Osaka to have such a terrible weather while they are on oversea trip.

Anyway, I took a few photos on a beach on Saturday while the sun was showing between thick rain clouds momentarily.

Photo workshop on speedlite

I went to a photo workshop on Sunday. It was run by SHOOT photography workshops, and it was a half day workshop for people to learn about the use of speedlite (I didn't know that Nikon spells it as "speedlight", while Canon spells it as "speedlite").

I haven't used a speedlite much before as I have never owned one. So, I thought it won't be a bad idea for me to attend a workshop to find out more especially when our school is covering the cost of the workshop as a part of my professional development. For the workshop, I borrowed 430EXII from our photography class at school.

I thought the lecturer was very knowledgeable and patient, and his presentation was interesting and easy to follow.  However, it would have been much better, if the contents of the workshop had been thrown at a higher pitch.

The bulk of the workshop was spent on very basic things like how to set up the flash unit on cameras and to learn different buttons, and so on.  People can learn these by reading a manual or get some ideas from youtube videos, I thought.

I was more interested to learn about how to use multiple flash units to achieve different lighting effects for different settings as opposed to using bigger strobe monoblocks for instance. I was also hoping to find out how to use a speedlite for action shots and so on.  The lecturer talked about these things briefly while he was doing his power point presentation, and he did a few demos outside, but I thought that there wasn't enough time spent on learning actual lighting techniques. 

Another bummer part was that my EOS 6D was being pretty much useless during the workshop as the camera doesn't have a function to control external flash units on its own. While those guys with other camera bodies like 60D were being able to control a group of flash units from their camera bodies, the only thing I could do was to play by myself with the 430 EXII sitting on top of my camera. 

 

Anyway, I would still recommend the workshop for people who got absolutely no idea on how to use a flash unit.  As I said, the lecturer was great and you always pick up some skills just by watching how a professional person works.

For others who already some ideas on how the speedlite works but want to explore further, it would perhaps be better off to spend the same amount of money to hire a couple of units of speedlite with a wireless flash trigger from Camera Electronic, and spend one weekend to work out how to use them by yourself.

Before returning the speedlite back to school on Tuesday, I did a bit of experiment to see how it works on different subjects around our house. Here are some photos.  

Shot under natural light. It sows a natural transient light. It is kind of Zen aesthetic.

Shot with flash.  Lift the shadow but it looks wired as the direction of the light and the shadow doesn't line up

My grand father's old camera.  Too bad it is broken.  Shot with ambient light at f/3.5 @ 1/25 sec on ISO6400

Shot with a speedlite. The light was bounced against the ceiling. The camera looks flat without shadows.

Shot under ambient light.

Flash + defuser. Leaves look very waxy unlike how they really feel

Fishing on a chilly winter weather

It was bloody cold today.

My fingers and toes were gone numb while I was fishing in the late afternoon.

I was getting many bites, but fish were really committing to grab my fly.  May be they were feeling cold too.  I also missed chances because my fingers were dead cold and I was too slow to react.

I got two fish in the end just before the sun hit the horizon.  I was still getting hits here an there, but it became just too freezing to be in the water, so I left.  I love fishing but it's not worth loosing fingers with frostbite.

Curiosity Mars Rover in Perth

We went to see Curiosity Mars Rover at a local shopping centre yesterday. 

Well, it was actually a replica of the rover built by QANTAS for their Frequent Flyer TV ads. The ad itself looks like something that the QANTAS PR team copied WALL-E as well.

I thought the rover looked realistic (although I haven's see the real stuff, so I could only guess), but it would have been better if we were able to see it moving. My wife crushed a boy's dream by saying that it wasn't moving because it was probably made of cardboard.

火星探査ローバーのキュリオシティーを見るために、近くのショッピングモールに行って来ました。と、いってもカンタス空港がテレビのCM用に作ったレプリカです。ちなみに、このCM自体もなんとなくディズニー・ピクサーのウォーリーのパクリという感じが否めません。

レプリカの完成度は高いと思いましたが（それでも本物を見た事が無いのでなんとも言えませんが）、実際にローバーを動かすデモンストレーションが見れるのかと期待して行ったので残念です。ちなみに、うちの奥さんは、「動かないのは、張りぼてだからよ」と言う、大人の意見でした。
 

Another winter sunday afternoon

Strong North Westerly wind was blowing on Sunday, and the sky looked to be unpredictable.

My friend and I were talking about to test his new inflatable kayak, but we thought that the wind would be too strong for that. Also we weren't sure if the rain was coming down hard later. So we decided to stay on shore instead.

First, we went to check a sandbar where my friend saw a school of fish on the last Sunday during the club's field day, however the water was too choppy to spot fish because of the stiff wind.

We then moved to a jetty nearby where we caught fish before.  We found some fish hiding under the jetty, and I hooked one up on my second cast.  I managed to pull it out from the jetty, but the fish made its last run for freedom, and it cut my tippet with a jetty pylon in the end.

A few casts later, my friend hooked up another one, and he did a better job to keep his fish away from the pylons and manged to land one fine fish.

We tried a few other places after that, but we didn't have any success. Perhaps, the air pressure was falling rapidly as the storm front was approaching and fish had gone into their  sleeping mode.

日曜は、朝起きてみると怪しい空模様。友達と、彼が買ったインフレーターブル・カヤックの試し乗りをしようと言っていたのですが、風が強すぎるので中止です。

近場で釣りをしようと出かけましたが、さっぱり釣れません。前線が近づいているため、気圧が下がって、魚もおやすみモードに入ったようです。

ようやく桟橋の横に毛針を落とし込んで良いサイズの魚を一匹かけましたが、桟橋の足に巻かれてラインブレイク。 友達の方も、ベイトフィッシュのパターンからカニのパターンに変えてからの２投目でフッキング。運良く魚は桟橋から離れる様に走り出したそうで、ティペットを切られずランディングできました。

桟橋の様なストラクチャーに付いているクロダイは、最初の１投か２投目が勝負。その後は、すぐにスレて反応もしなくなります。こんな時は、今回の様にベイトフィッシュからカニの様に見た目が大きく違う毛針に変えると、クロダイが思わず反応する場合があります。回転ずしで魚ばっかりが回って来る所に、だし巻き卵が回って来て、思わず皿を取ってしまう様な感じでしょうか。

My Saturday rubbish collection

While I was waiting for my friend to show up, I spent a bit of time to retrieve some rubbish from the river, and there were all kinds of rubbish that I found. 

My friends and I fish different places around Perth, and everywhere we go around the Perth metro area, we see a fair amount of rubbish on the river these days. I now use my landing net not only to land fish but also to put those pieces of rubbish in. Some of them are found in the water and others are left on the river bank or got trapped among tussocks after a high tide.

Apart form being an eyesore and epitome of stupidity and selfishness that some people seem to posses, I don't know how much of these rubbish will end up in a stomach of dolphins and fish.  Breams are scavengers, so I am sure that they will chew up a piece of plastic while they are crushing some crabs and mussels.

Anyway, the river goddess must have been watching me showing a good karma, because she let me catch one fish in the end.  It was the only fish we got on Saturday.

ここ数年、川で目に付くゴミの量が増えています。空き缶やプラスチックのゴミなど、子供の頃の東京の川の様になって来ています（まあ冷蔵庫や自転車などの大型のゴミはまだ見かけませんが）。

この１０年間でパースは経済的な発展をしましたが、その結果がこれです。川に住む魚やイルカに申し訳がありません。とても残念です。

背中にぶら下げているランディングネットは、魚を取り込むだけでなく、拾ったゴミを入れるゴミ袋としても機能しています。酷い場所だと、５分もあれば、ネットはすぐに一杯です。

Rain clouds in the sky

I ordered a set of filters (a couple of new PL and ND filters) from Japan.

They arrived yesterday,  so, I went out to do a test shooting today.

Olivetti Valentine

I saw a beautiful typewriter at an antique furniture store in Mosman Park yesterday.

They also had a few nice pieces of furniture as well, although their prices were not something easily affordable with an ordinary teacher's salary. 

But then, beautiful things always cost more whether it is a type writer, car, chair, or fly fishing rod.

ちょっと覗いたアンティーク家具屋に赤いオリベッティーのタイプライターが置いてありました。

エットレ・ソットサスとペリー・キングというインダストリアルデザイナーが１９６９年にデザインしたヴァレンタインというモデルで、あのMoMAのコレクションにも含まれているそうです。

他にもカッコいい家具が数点ありましたが、どれも良いお値段。

家具にしても、カメラにしても、釣り竿にしても、やっぱりカッコいい物は高いです。

July Field Day

There was the July field day of the local fly fishing club.

It was the metro fishing day and the club members fished around the city on the weekend. We had a nice weather but fishing was lame.  While some people got a small success, our group got none.  

Anyway, while we were gathering at the end of the day, I had a chance to compare my friend's SAGE TXLF 7'10" #3 and ONE 7'6" #3. Although I loved a casting feel of both rods, ONE was just exquisite.  I think it is a sort of rods that I would want to cast the whole day just because it feels good.  It is wonderful for a plastic rod.

MoMA at the Art Gallery of WA

We went down to the Art Gallery of Western Australia to see the exhibition called, "Van Gogh, Dali, and Beyond" from MoMa of New York.　Here are some photos.

 
西オーストラリア美術館にて、MoMA所蔵の絵画や彫刻が見れる美術展が開催されています。先週行って来ましたが、その時の写真を数点。

Dog and hot dog