Small Snapshots: Patriotism

Whee, Small Snapshots time again!! :D

Apparently I completely vagued on the theme for this week, so didn't take any new photos for this week. Whoops. Although considering it's been raining since Sunday, I doubt I would have gotten any decent photos anyway!! 

The theme this week was patriotism - appropriate, given it was Canada Day on July 1st, and Independence Day on July 4th. Considering Australia Day is in January, there's not much of a connection there. BUT July 1st was Dorothea McKellar's birthday, and you can't get much more patriotic than My Country! 

In case you haven't been exposed to it a million times since childhood, Dorothea McKellar wrote a poem called My Country in 1904 when she was in London and homesick. The second stanza has become ridiculously famous in Australia:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain-ranges
Of drought, and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me. 

Anyway, I figured I'd dig through the archives for some stuff that could fit with McKellar's work.

I love a sunburnt country - Parliament House, Canberra

A land of sweeping plains - Uluru and Kata Tjuta, Northern Territory

Of ragged mountain ranges - Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Of drought, and flooding rains - Kings Canyon, Northern Territory

I love her far horizons - Uluru, Northern Territory

I love her jewel-sea - Sullivan Bay, Victoria

Her beauty... - Opera House, Sydney

...and her terror - Freshwater crocodile, Healesville Sanctuary, Victoria

The wide brown land for me - Portland, Victoria

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Movement

Yay, it's time for another edition of Small Snapshots! 

The theme this week is movement. Given that I completely forgot to take pictures at the weekend like I'd intended, I was originally planning on just digging into the archives again. But then Carissa reminded everyone in her post that Small Snapshots is about taking NEW photos. Suitably guilt tripped, I grabbed my camera when I got home from work and took a bunch of shots. They're far from perfect because it was freezing cold outside and I was hungry, but considering I haven't done much night photography before, I think they turned out pretty well! 

(Also? Thank God I remembered to bring my trusty tripod home from work. It gave me the chance to play around with long exposures!)

The clouds moving (ha - see what I did there?!) in front of the full moon:

Here we have an attempt at photographing the traffic going past on my street. I probably could have done a much better job if I'd gone and stood on the street corner rather than in the garden. But I felt enough like a Creepy McCreeperson already without standing on a street corner with my camera and tripod! Sure, it's not exactly the most scenic view. But I kind of like it all the same:

Next up, we have me playing with birthday candles. Cos I'm cool like that...

And finally, just for something different, I feel the need to include the one from the archives that I was originally planning on using. I took this back in April when I went to see the Hockeyroos play Argentina over the road from my apartment:

If you click through to the photo, you can see the water splashing up off the pitch (it's waterbased astro-turf) where the stick's connected with the ball.

Clearly, my night photography needs a lot of work. And for me to not worry so much about being a Creepy McCreeperson!

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Macro

Wow. I'm crazy late with this week's edition of Small Snapshots! 

The theme this week is macro, and I'm the one who suggested it, so the fact that I've been slacking on posting this is pretty bad... Clearly, I didn't think the time of year through very well when I suggested macro. Because I'm a sucker for macro shots of flowers, and winter in Canberra is hardly conducive to the presence of flowers *sigh*

Still, I made the most of what was in the garden, and came up with these:

Who doesn't love a spathiphyllum in their living room?

Some kind of mysterious berry thing in the garden

Rose hips

And now for a confession: I really hate that I can't seem to take decent macro photos with my SLR. You CAN take macro photos to some extent. They're just not as tight as I'd like them to be. I had to use my old crappy Olympus point and shoot for these. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these - the macro capacity on my Olympus is pretty awesome. I'm just having a whinge about the limitations of my SLR lenses! 

You know what? I just looked back through my archives and last year was able to take a ton of good macro shots with my SLR. 

See?! I'd had my SLR for about 2 weeks when I took this.

Clearly I'm blaming my lenses for something that's entirely my own fault... I think my pending unemployment might be the perfect opportunity for me to kick my arse into gear on this!! 

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Sun Flare

Holy Hell. The gallery opens tomorrow. TOMORROW. The GALLERY opens TOMORROW. The gallery OPENS tomorrow.

TOMORROW.

You have no idea how insane that is. Anyway, with all the stress and all the preview events and the last minute changes and the blah blah blah-bitty blah, I haven't had a change to see the sun, let alone take photos of it. Regardless, it's time for another edition of Small Snapshots!

The theme this week is sun flare. Thankfully, I had this in the archives:

I took this photo of the guard tower at Port Arthur in February last year. The sun flare was completely unintentional - I'd only had my SLR for a couple of weeks and had pretty much no idea what I was doing! - but looking at it now, I really like it!

Next week's theme is macro, and was suggested by yours truly. I have high hopes for actually being able to take some new photos, as next week should be (please God, let it be) a bazillion times less busy than this week!! Plus, I love love LOVE macro shots. So I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with :)

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Letters

Sorry guys - I'm kind of phoning it in this week. 

Considering my whole weekend was taken up with Little Miss A's birthday party and associated family nonsense, I didn't have the time to take my camera on a search for this week's theme: letters. I did briefly have a grand plan to make Little Miss A stand like various letters while I was babysitting her on Saturday night, but then she went to bed at 6.45, which kind of threw a spanner in the works. 

So instead what I have is this:

Once again, I took it at work. It's kind of hard to see, but the top of the museum building has giant Braille on it. Not ENTIRELY what Carissa had in mind, but I didn't want to skip Small Snapshots due to lack of time! Kind of cheating, but still within the topic for this week :)

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Reflection

Yes, it's time for Small Snapshots again! In case you missed it last week, Carissa over at Kissed a Frog has just started a new weekly feature to encourage us to use our cameras more - you should head over to her blog and check out what other people have taken! Actually, you should head over to her blog full stop, because she's awesome.

Anyway, this week's theme was Reflection. I thought about what I might do for most of last week, and decided on an idea at the weekend. I've been carrying my camera around at work for three days now waiting for the opportunity to take this:

The walls of the main hall at work are glass, and they've got some kind of reflective film on the outside. From the deck you get amazing reflections of the sky! I rather like that there's a vapour trail from a plane - it adds a touch of reality to it.

I also wanted to feature a photo from the archive this week:

I took this on a family holiday to Skene's Creek in January 2009. We went for a walk to a nearby waterfall, and along the way I saw this. I like the reflection of the gum trees at the top and bottom, with the reflection of the log in the middle.

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Small Snapshots: Blue

I've been trying to blog for two days now, but the Blogger template has been playing silly buggers. But that's superfluous information, because it's all fixed now. HURRAHS!!

Ahem. Today I'm playing along with a new feature that Carissa over at Kissed a Frog has just started called Small Snapshots.

The idea is to get our cameras out of the cupboard and actually use them. Considering I seem to mostly use my DSLR for taking photos of baked goods or book covers at the moment, I think it's a wonderful idea!

This week's theme was blue. I didn't get a chance to go outside and take photos because work was crazy and I was sick at the weekend, so I had to search for things I could do in the house. I came up with this:

Have you ever dropped food colouring in a container full of water? It makes the most incredibly patterns!

This week's is open until Sunday, so head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx