Another Safari

Dave ran another Safari down to the Autumn colours of the New England Ranges on Sunday (poor me, widowed at home… ;)) The weather was a bit meh, but at least they didn’t get significantly rained on.

Here’s some photos from the day:

How to take a pano is one of the techniques David teaches

Tenterfield has some gorgeous Autumn scenery

No star trails this trip – the sky was meh. Instead they stopped for a shoot at St Mary’s Church in Warwick.

St Mary's Church, Warwick, all lit up at night

You can read more about Dave’s Autumn Safaris if you are interested, but this was probably the last one for this season (although loud demand would probably have him run another!).

If you are interested for next year, or other classes the boys run, you should sign up to the newsletter to get early notice of scheduled classes.

Late update – Allan wrote a review of the course. Thanks again, Allan! 🙂

The Kilometres increase

The ‘photo bride’ thing was wrong this weekend, it was more of a ‘photo widow’ thing 🙂 Dave ended up having two full day gigs on the weekend. On Saturday he left at the crack of dawn and headed north to Mundubbera, which is near Eidsvold. You don’t know it? Between Biloela and Dalby. Still not with me? Its prime farming country, north-west of Brisbane. That’ll do. The gig was to shoot a fruit farmer for a not-to-be-named major retailer. Shame there was no fruit on the trees yet (someone’s bad planning) but he got some fun shots of the farmer riding a tractor and the farmer observing his fruit, and so on. A nice day, apart from the 800 km round trip wrapped around it, my poor tired man.

Then on Sunday, Dave and Kane were running their famous Autumn Safari down to the New England area. The trip we previewed last week. And that was an even longer day – out before 6AM, back after 10PM. A very tired photographer has headed off to the day job this morning! But they do have fun!

Training session in the field - photo credit Allan Neilsen

Tenterfield and more

Dave has an Autumn Safari class booked for next weekend, and, autumn occurring but once a year, he hasn’t been down to Tenterfield in a while, so we thought we should trip down and check that all the Good Spots were still, well, there and good.
So we left at 8am, thinking we could do the round trip and get back with takeaway to feed the kids dinner – but this was not to be – I shall explain…

We left Brisbane, drove through fairly poor weather, but no actual rain that I recall and got down to Stanthorpe and were very good! We only stopped at one winery as we were completely out of White Chocolate Liqueur, so a quick walk around the entire huge range they have and short chat with the host – took no time at all!

Castle Glen Liqueurs - the premises are spectacular!

Then we were off again, running south. We reached Tenterfield and lunch was a big feed at the Blue Belle Cafe… so full! No colours on the trees yet. Damn! So we decided to continue a reasonable distance to see where the colours start. Bungulla, Bolivia, Deepwater and Dundee showed nothing and finally Glen Innes showed signs of colour, and its clear that there is a good chance of colour for next weekend. Phew. From there we *should* have headed back into Tenterfield and checked out some details there. But we got distracted – oops!

Firstly, we had come too far and were unable to get back to Brisbane in time for for the planned take out with the kids session. Damn. A quick phone call fixed that.

Second, we realised that east of Glen Innes there are a whole bunch of National Park areas! So, eastward, heading for Grafton we went. We drove the absolutely beautiful Gwydir Highway through gorgeous country. We stopped at various points in both the Gibraltar Range and Washpool National Parks, including the lovely Boundary Falls and the spectacular Raspberry Lookout, but they were all brief stops as we had a long way to go and really didn’t want to sleep in the car!
Eventually we reached what is called ‘civilisation’. Apart from flush toilets, I much prefer the bush! But we drove through Grafton and Lismore and Casino and as darkness was falling we decided the Summerland Way wasn’t a wise choice, so we headed out to the coast and the Pacific Highway in the hope that the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. We did fairly well – only one traffic pile up around roadworks which only delayed us 10 minutes with selfish people who insist on whizzing ahead to merge, rather than just getting in the only open lane.
A quick dinner of Pizza Capers at Robina (yum yum!) and we headed home.
A wonderful day – 10PM and 947km later and we were home, to sleep in our own bed…

Track of scouting trip, March 4th

We Went To Brisbane To Visit The Queen

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where have you been?
I went to London to visit the Queen
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, What did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under the chair.

I’ve been quoting this to the kids for days.

Today the Queen visited Brisbane, and we made the trip down to town to have a look see. I’ve never seen the Queen in actual person, TV only and given its likely she will never come to the Antipodes again, it seemed sensible to take the opportunity to let the kids see their monarch.
So, I phoned the school absence lines to say they wouldn’t be there.
Dave parked at the office, mucked around there for too long a while and then we walked from Milton to South Bank – with all the road closures it seemed the most sensible way to do it, but it must be 5 km and not a cool day, so it was a little wearing. Maybe I should have lightened my handbag…
So we arrived at 10:30 at Southbank, for Her Majesty’s 12:20 arrival, but it wasn’t early enough.
We were 3 rows back, and people really need to learn that you take your hat off when the event is on so the people behind can see.

Where's Wally style shot of Queen Elizabeth II arriving at Southbank during the Queen's visit to Brisbane, Queensland, October 2011

I held up master 9 (and *sob* he’s the size of an 11 year or 12 year old!) so as he went up I sank down and didn’t see a thing.
Oh, well, at least I saw that Anna Bligh knew to wear a hat, unlike our glorious leader the other day.

Queen Elizabeth II and Anna Bligh, Premier of Queensland, arriving at Southbank during the Queen's visit to Brisbane, Queensland, October 2011

Pizza Capers for a late lunch after! Score. But now we aren’t hungry, so its dessert for dinner! Double Score! What a good day 😉

Caloundra Music Festival

Well, what a big weekend!
Dave shot the Caloundra Music Festival and *wow* what a great festival it was! I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:

Joe Camilleri and the Black Sorrows

Hayley Mary of The Jezabels

Heather Shannon of The Jezabels

Alan Boyle

Diesel

Suze de Marchi of The Baby Animals

Holly Findlay of Stonefield

Missy Higgins

Booker T Jones

Bluejuice

Rai Thistlethwayte of Thirsty Merc

Iva Davies of Icehouse

A week at the beach

We are back from a week at the beach, and a lovely little break it was (could have been longer!)
Not much was done photographically, it was more of an R&R thing.

Dave did go birding once and caught the great sunset shot:

Dave’s Dad caught a nice shot of him on the beach beside his beloved Prado:

Dave and his father also did a shoot of a local band, The Cavanaughs, who were after cover shots for their first album. Its under cover for the moment, but I’m sure we can release something eventually, as it was a really good shoot.

Brisbane Riverfire!

Well, what a big weekend we have had – first Riverfire was on on Saturday.
I was abandoned for the day again, and Dave spent form 5am to about 8pm on the banks of the Brisbane river, as the boys had a fireworks photography class and needed to make sure they had a position for good photos. Apparently it was a little quieter than last year, and around 8am would have been early enough to be there. If only we could know these things in advance, eh?
Dave got a decent photo out of it (isn’t it sad when I get so blasé about things, that a gorgeous photo like this can be called ‘decent’!!)

The iconic Riverfire Falls

Apparently it was an excellent evening and the students, as usual, were wowed 🙂

Then Sunday was Father’s Day, after a tour around the local countryside looking for a dusk shoot location for a class in a couple of weeks, we took Dave out for dinner at Ahmets Turkish Restaurant on Southbank (food just to die for!), then we saw the laser lightshow afterwards. It was very, very good, and I think I might have preferred it to the fireworks. (I love fireworks, but after all these years of them I am getting a little bored with them)
Dave got a particularly spectacular shot, IMHO.

Brisbane Festival - City of Lights

So, that was my weekend – what did you do?

Rain, yet Startrails

Saturday saw Dave up the creek with Allan and Mel. It was a grey and miserable day and I thought they were insane for going up, and I was absolutely right – they all came back completely soaked 😦
A couple of nice shots, though…
I fed them hot tea and coffee to warm them up 🙂

And then Sunday – after much umming and ahhing over the weather, Dave decided his night sky photography course could safely run. I was a bit worried because it was still a bit cloudy when he left, but Lo! Around 7pm, the clouds all disappeared and a glorious clear sky was apparently had.
Dave claims this night sky panorama he got is old hat, but I’ve never seen anything like it and had a big “What The?!?!” moment when I first saw it. Dave explained it as an arch from horizon to horizon.

The Milky Way

See there is land at both ends? Very nice!

Abbey Medieval Tournament

What did the wife see?
Not much – I got to stay home with the kids.
Ah, well – one of these days they will be big enough that I can go and volunteer and camp with the boys, too. 🙂

Dave has only posted one photos so far, of a very nice Masked Owl:

Photo of Masked Owl – Tyto Novaehollandiae

More to come, I’m sure, with some 48Gb of photos in the camera (thats more than 2000 photos)!

History Alive, 2011

Dave was out shooting History Alive Saturday and Sunday – we stayed home.
Madness started the day, with smallest having a friend for sleepover and they getting up to play computer games at 6am. I’m not sure the sun was even up, the little lunatics. Then the place got quieter as they went for a reverse sleepover at the other lad’s house before lunch. This calmed down the teenagers a bit.
Me? I got some work done, then started my sewing for the Abbey Medieval Banquet. All my gear is Renaissance, so I need something medieval – sideless surcoat here we come! I was going to do a proper fitted underdress, but its a bit tricky to do on one’s own, and a little beyond Ms 16 – so just a straight smock it is.
The surcoat looks good so far 🙂

The results from Dave’s History Alive trip look good so far – I’ll post when the photos are online 🙂