Perth’s Wild Weather

Perth was hit by a severe storm on Monday March 22 which finally brought the 107 day drought to a end with just over 40mm of rain recorded in the city from the downpour brought on by the storm. There was allot of hail in the Northern suburbs and around the Central part of the city which caused allot of damage to cars and property, fortunately by time the storm passed over where I live, we didn’t get the hail, but we did get allot of rain. This was the worse storm to hit Perth since 1994, and it has been declared as being a natural disaster.  The storm hit Perth around 4pm, but didn’t reach my suburb till just before 5pm. It made things really bad for all those peak hour commuters who had to deal with the massive downpour and stormy conditions while making their way home. Fortunately, I was home before the storm hit so wasn’t out on the roads.
My Suburb is still looking a bit worse for wear, with allot of fallen trees and storm debris still waiting to be cleaned up, and a few fences blown down, my next door neighbours gazebo became airborne and ended up across the fence of the house behind them (it landed in our back yard during another storm a few years ago). My back yard was flooded, and the gutters couldn’t handle all the rain and was overflowing during the worse of the storm. We lost power in our area for about 15 hours due to a mini tornado severely damaging the local power sub station, and it took a while to repair it because the storms had done so much damage to the power grid during the storm around the entire metropolitan area, and knocking out over 100 sets of traffic lights, with a few intersections still out 3 days after the storm.

The local shops were pretty much closed the day after the storm due to the lack of power, and only the major supermarkets were opened, but they were only selling limited stock, with all the fridges not running due to the power blackouts.

The storm clear around sunset, and there was about 10-15 mins of sunshine as the clouds opened up creating some great lighting conditions, and creating a spectacular rainbow.

Here are a few pics I took during the storm:

Perth’s Wild Weather

For Lovers Of Canon And Coffee

I picked up a 24-105 replica lens coffee cups off ebay last week, and it arrived today. The seller sent the cup via EMS express shipping, and it was posted on Friday from China, and arrived the following Monday to me in Perth, Western Australia.

24-105 Coffee Cup

The cup is made of plastic, and unfortunately doesn’t include a lid/lens cap, however, a regular Canon 77mm lens cap can be attached. This cup isn’t really designed to be a travel mug like the Canon 70-200 lens mug that is just starting to become available, though in very small quantities, and at the moment, it looks like it’s only available in Canada, though I’m sure it will go on sale in the US soon enough, and then though ebay sellers.
The cup is a nice novelty for Canon fans, and makes a great addition for those long nights sitting in front of a computer while working on your photos.

Perth Australia Day Skyworks 2010

I wanted to try something different this year, so I revisited one of the freeway overpasses that I had previously visited on another photo shoot.

My original plan was to shoot alongside the river, but the tide had come in late in the afternoon, and there wasn’t anywhere good to stand since the water level had covered the beach and it was hard to get a clear shot of the city skyline so I decided to shoot from the overpass to take advantage of the traffic travelling along the freeway resulting in a combination of the fireworks and traffic trails.

I can’t believe the amount of stupidity I witnessed last night. I was taking photos from a freeway overpass over the Kwinana freeway and before the fireworks started, 4 men ran across the freeway (And crossing the train lines) and then back again, and if that wasn’t stupid enough, they were completely naked! LOL

I can’t believe that despite all the warnings about parking your car on the side of the freeway and how police were going to crack down on it which was on the news and on the radio all day, we witnessed cars all stopping in the Emergency lane, and within 15 mins of the fireworks, there was a line of cars parked along the emergency lane. To make matters worse, it was where the lanes merged up, and yet 4 cars decided to park where the lanes merge up, and we watched as 2 cars decided it was time to go, and as they were pulling out of the emergency lane, they nearly got cleared out by traffic travelling along the freeway! Eventually the Police came and told them all to clear off. I counted 25 cars in my final photo before the police arrived!

The thing was, where they all had decided to park, there was a big sign saying “Emergency stopping lane only” Absolute stupidity!

Overall it was a good show even though it got a bit windy around sunset, at least the temperature wasn’t to high this year.

Photos from the night can be seen over on my redbubble page:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/EOS20

Happy New Year!

I just like to wish all the readers of my blog a happy new year,  and hope you all come back and visit my blog in 2010.

Don’t forget to take a look at my 2010 Calendar:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/calendars/4102239-2-2010-calendar

Merry Christmas!

I would like to just wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope you all have a great day, and get everything you wanted.

Merry Christmas!

Flying under the radar

I was going through my redbubble photo folio looking at possibly cleaning up my folio for the new year and I feel that some great work has gone unnoticed, maybe this is because my folio has grown quite a bit throughout 2009.

You can see some of my unnoticed work by following the link: http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/journal/4333127-my-unnoticed-work

Canon EF-S 15-85 IS Lens Review Posted

I’ve just posted my Canon EF-S 15-85 IS Lens Review, you can read it by following the link.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/journal/4270608-my-canon-ef-s-15-85-f-3-5-5-6-is-usm-mini-review

Saturday December 5 – Star Trails Over Lake Clifton

It was a rather warm Summer night on Saturday here in Perth and we had clear skies, so I decided to head out and spend a few hours shooting some star trails. I decided to head down to Lake Clifton http://www.lakeclifton.com.au South of Mandurah, and about 100km South of Perth. On this visit, there was no moon not like on my last visit http://eos20.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/august-7/ so conditions were ideal for shooting star trails, but having some moon light would have been ideal so I could have used the ambient light from the moon to illuminate the Thrombolites http://www.lakeclifton.com.au/yalgorup.html so had to use my spotlight to bring out the detail of the Thrombolites. I brought along two cameras on this visit, I bought my EOS 7D and used my new EF-S 15-85 IS lens, and I also brought along my old EOS 300D and 18-55 lens, and I also brought along my 50mm f/2.5 macro to use as a large aperture lens. I set up both cameras on tripods with shutter release cables, and I shot a series of 30 second exposures and combined them using the Star Trails stacking software http://www.startrails.de/ which I find does a better job then shooting a single long exposure which tends to result in a image full of long exposure noise which can easily ruin a nights work, and by using software I can delete frames if necessary (Planes flying though the exposure, camera shake, etc) and I get a cleaner final result and can shoot star trails pretty much anywhere without worrying about getting a over exposed shot when shooting near bright light sources such as in the city.

On this night it was pitch black, with no ambient lighting out here, since it’s located a fair way away from the nearest towns, which meant the stars were easily visible with very little light pollution other then headlights of passing cars off in the distance. There was a bit of lightning off towards the horizon East of my location when I arrived, but that only lasted about 30 mins and didn’t affect my shooting since I had the cameras pointed South to try and get the best star trail patterns, unfortunately I didn’t end up aiming the cameras directly at the Southern Star, so I was a bit off, and didn’t get the full circle I was after, but the results still came out well enough.

It was windy on this visit, unlike on my first visit where it was relativity calm which resulted in some nice reflections on the water, and the tide was coming in which meant the Thrombolites were submerged again on this visit, and I ended up getting wet to set my camera up low enough to get the composition I was after on my final star trail series, but I think it was worth it for the shot I ended up getting. Here are a few of the photos from the night:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/art/4261586-2-star-trails-over-lake-clifton

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/art/4261582-2-star-trails-over-lake-clifton-thrombolites

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/art/4262314-3-star-trails-over-thrombolites

New Canon EF-S 15-85 IS – First Impressions

I received my Canon 15-85 IS lens today, you can read about my first impressions of this lens by following the link:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/journal/4184256-another-new-lens-canon-ef-s-15-85-is

Christmas Gift Ideas

Christmas is on it’s way, and it’s that time of the year when we all are starting to think about what to get for our family and friends. What about giving them some unique artwork that will last them many years, and won’t be forgotten a week after Christmas?

Check out some of my art that is on sale on redbubble.com and specially priced for the Christmas season!

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/journal/4101658-my-favourites
Or pick up one of my 2010 Calendars:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/calendars/4102239-2-2010-calendar#comment-22371095