Abandoned Mansion (Perth, Australia)

Last weekend I went on my first DSLR aided urban exploring adventure. It was good fun and I learnt a lot, but looking back on the photos there are some things I want to do better next time. For example I feel a lot of these photos are overexposed. It was an uphill struggle for a novice such as myself as bare concrete covered in paint, mostly surrounded by white sand in the middle of the day turned out to be quite a challenge.  Also for some reason the picture style was set to faithful the whole time, making them even more washed out. Ah well, it was all a learning experience I guess.

A bit of back story so I stop ranting about my skills; about 10 years ago the person who owned this estate was done for tax evasion. It seemed easiest for whatever reason to just walk out and leave, and it's been empty ever since.
The place has been heavily scrapped. There are no windows, doors, light fittings or anything like that. One room I found had the remains of carpet, but the rest of the place was more or less an empty concrete shell covered in awesome graff and lots of shitty tags. Also on the property were several lakes and a shed.

This will all soon be a new housing development. While we were there the construction was literally across the road, if we left this a few more weeks we might of been too late. A shame really as Perth isn't exactly known for its abandoned properties.

Standard Nature Pics

Taking photos of nature is hard. Whether it's animals (who are indifferent to your skills and won't stick around as you fumble with settings) or plants (which can be just plain boring) taking pictures of either strikes up a challenge.
Last weekend I went camping again, but luckily this time I had my DSLR. Last time it was still coming in the post, and I had to make do with my point and shoot. The whole trip was a learning experience as it was really the first time I've gone out into the wilderness with a high powered camera.
First off I was just taking pictures of the hills and what not, but that turned out to be a bore. It was a little while until I realised that the photos had to have a focus. The hills and sky made an excellent backdrop when the photos focus point was something else. For example, people:



Or a mushroom growing out of a tree...



I also figured that if I took photos of the adjacent hills using my zoom lens (at 75mm plus) I got a sense of vertigo. It may just be me though, as I'm quite terrible with heights.

The only standard hills shot I'm half happy with is this photo:

I do like how the composition gets split up by the railway tracks, but there is one obvious problem; the sky. 

I pretty much had two options while talking this picture; I could have either had the sky exposed properly, or everything else. Since the hills are suppose to be the focal point and all that, I went with those. What I got is a terribly overexposed sky. This could have been fixed with a HDR, but I had stupidly left my tripod back at the main camp site and I was in too much of a rush to improvise. Thinking back though there were lots of huge rocks around, any number of them would of been a suitable unmoving surface.

Doesn't matter now though, all that matters is that the whole thing was an awesome learning experience. I look forward to next time where I can apply what I learnt again, and hopefully learn some more. 

Final TAFE 3D Renders (Semester 1)

I've been posting so much photography in this blog recently, so I might go back to its roots for a post. Not too long ago I did posts detailing my 3D projects that I was doing at the time for certain 3D classes at TAFE. I talked about starting them both in this post, and then a little bit more about Jake Blues over here.
A few weeks ago I finished up for the semester so those projects were completed with the always fun turn around renders. Today I finally got around to uploading them to the Tube, and I can now showcase them for everyone's enjoyment and praise ;)

Rendering was full of joyness like usual. 

First of, we have Mr Blues:

Future City:

Photos! June 2012 Wrap-up

Recently I have been reading a great little e-book called Getting Out of Auto, which is rightly so all about getting out of the auto mode on your camera. It's only $10 American, and is worth every penny (I've never been able to accurately use that saying before).
I've learnt a lot and I plan to buy more literature, most probably in the good old fashioned paper way which I'm led to believe still exists. While that e-book is great and taught me a lot, it will be nice to have something that I can easily check without booting up my computer.
Either way I've been having a fun time using my camera in manual mode; it really reveals a new layer to what photography is all about. Here are some shots I've taken this last month:

I waited out in the cold and dark for 20 minutes waiting for a car to drive past.

My set-up.

My fat ass birds.

Strange things happen in my shower at night... 

Big ambitions.

Wasn't me. 

An abandoned vineyard. Probably my most favourite thing I've photographed yet. 

Another shot of the set-up, because why not?

The time?