PIXelations

The latest trip Jayne and I made recently was to Australia. This was the trip of a lifetime for us, covering 16 days. Our travels included three cities and started in the northern tropics city of Cairns, with access to the World Heritage Sites of the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree rainforest. It is in this rainforest where it is said that a cure for one of the stages of AIDS was discovered based on the bark of some tree there. However, the scientists have never been able to find that tree again.

From Cairns, we flew down south to Melbourne. While there, we saw incredible wildlife (kangaroos, Wallabies, koalas, exotic birds, etc.). Two highlights were the March of the Penguins on Phillip Island and the koala preserve there. Another highlight was a drive along the famous Great Ocean Road and a visit to the 12 Apostles (huge sandstone mounds in the water just off shore) in Port Campbell National park. The last major highlight here was a visit to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary.

Finally, we explored Sydney and its famous harbor and harbor bridge, as well of course as the architecturally magnificent Opera theater. We also visited the Blue mountains and the mysterious stalagmites/stalactites of the Jenolan Caves.

I brought an Epson P3000 40gig viewer (like I usually do) to off-load the day’s pictures so I can reuse my cards. For the first time, I actually filled the viewer with 2 days left to the trip! In all, I took some 3000 pictures, roughly 46 gig worth!

This was a different kind of shooting experience for me than our past trips, especially since we did mostly bus tours with limited shooting time at stops. While 90 percent of the pictures I took were of snapshot quality, I did manage to capture some interesting and very satisfying images for me, exploring the abstract sides of Australia.

I found that using aperture-priority accounted for most of my success this time. I usually shoot in manual mode, setting both the aperture and shutter by hand, but because I had to shoot quickly I needed the semi-automatic approach. So, I just boosted the ISO so that my shutter speed was as high as I could make it to accommodate hand-holding the camera. There just wasn’t time to set up a tripod. And frankly, the shooting seldom occurred during “golden hours” anyway.

I will post some picture samples here and a more specific report on each of the three cities we visited coming soon. G’day, mates!