Kings park is really quite unique among the worlds cities to have a native bushland park that over looks the whole CBD. It is possible indeed quite easy to walk from the city centre and be in dense bushland within twenty minutes. Other parts of the park are in the classic English parkland style while other areas are flower beds and specimen plantings of rare and endangered WA natives.
In the absence of a normal full colour sensor camera on the weekends I have been looking for ways to use my use of the infrared converted Canon 5D mk1. The only other choice is to return to film which I have no problem with other than a shortage of time to do the development and the scanning. I have a bit of commercial work on this week so I will have the Lumix back for that! In the meantime we paid a visit to Kings Park in Perth today. Many Western Australian plants are very hard and woody so therefore have very strong lineal and textural structures this being the case this is what I have been looking for because it can make for interesting IR images. The other things that can look good in IR is landscape and shadow because all detail is seen unlike with normal mono or colour work were strong shadows for the most part obscure detail. I captured a few images that I am happy with. The first is a member of a wonderful Australian genus the Banksia.
I was very fortunate to be lent a new Leica M over the weekend with a couple of lenses, an unbelievable 900 grams of glass and metal an f.95 50mm Noctilux and an f2 35mm current aspherical Summicron lens. I trailed these two beautiful lenses and my own rather humble, in comparison collection of M and Canon FD lenses. The New Leica M is something of a universal full frame digital camera it can use all the following legacy lenses Canon FD’s, M42 mostly Zeiss, Pentax, and some really exotic German lenses, CY – Contax Yashica, Exacta, Hassleblad Leica R, Mamiya 645, Minolta MD, Nikon, Olympus OM, Pentax 6×7, Pentax K and the venerable Visoflex II & III lenses. I am somewhat uncertain why anyone might to use a Mamiya 645 or Pentax 6×7 lens on any Leica as they are in many cases larger and heavier than the Leica M itself. However I can vouch for the quality of the 6X7 lenses there has almost never been a bad one made but the weight is another matter. Some of these lenses can be had at bargain basement prices and yet under the right circumstances can deliver brilliant quality particularly the quite elderly Canon FD and M42 lenses. The above Hibiscus was shot with a 34 or 36 year old 100mm macro with a Novoflex LEM-FD adaptor. Buying adaptors is a bit hit and miss, there are good Chinese and even American examples but I have the odd bad one of each. I don’t particularly like ‘slagging’ any one company but I am quite prepared to relate my experience if any one is interested and is prepared to email me! I have never had a bad Novoflex adaptor.
A couple of days ago I wrote a post about Adobe’s declaration of cloud only support for CS6 in the future that means all the Adobe CS6 applications will be available in the cloud and not on your computer. Many photographers have justifiably got very hot under the collar about this (yours truly included) bold, and lets face it, arrogant decision.
Anyhow, I just signed the petition “Adobe Systems Incorporated: Eliminate the mandatory “creative cloud” subscription model.” on Change.org.
It’s important. Will you sign it too? Here’s the link:
Wandoo winter woodland near Clackline. The Avon Valley is pretty most times of the year except in Summer when it is just too hot.
A few months ago the tech trilogy of Adobe, Apple and Microsoft got hauled in front of and tried to avoid the ACCC Australia’s corporate watch dog. (Australian Competition & Consumer commission) After they had been summoned their day in court came and went all three of the corpulent corporates thumbed their nose at the ACCC. The issue at hand as you may be aware is that these three (and they are not alone) gouge the consumer and the government like the corporate arrogants they are. More Info
In the case of Adobe it was possible to take a budget flight from any of the eastern states capitals to Los Angeles or San Francisco buy the Adobe creative suite and fly back to Australia cheaper than the suggested retail price for Adobe CS6 in Australia. To rub salt into the bleeding wound Adobe charged not much less for the downloaded version and the great Australian Taxation Office also lost out on the the GST. If that is not price gouging I have no idea what is.
I personally started using Adobe products in 1986-7 with Illustrator and Page Maker then Acrobat. When Illustrator became too expensive at one point and I switched to Freehand because there was a ‘Deal’. At a rough guess I have probably spent about AUD12,000 over the years with Adobe in original S/W licence costs. Adobe have always produced good products there is no question about that but they have had their problems with piracy and their support system. I remember being in KL in the 1990′s and seeing on open display pirated broken fully operational copies of Photoshop 3 for about $20 and that was without bargaining. And with regards to support don’t ever, ever loose a serial number…
This news today is a real kick in the guts for Australian photographers, artists designers and creatives in general because at the present time the broad band system here is so hopeless. It’s good thing I live in W.A. because my broadband slows to crawl and hiccups when it rains. For my American readers W.A. is one of the driest places on this island continent, it doesn’t rain much.
The overall costs for the S/W works out to be less than the two yearly upgrades but as all the serious processing takes place in the cloud the work speed rate will slow with crappy telephone lines. Wireless! Been there done that, almost no service between 6am and 9am and 3.30 and seven! I’m guessing that there will be less need for high spec’ed computers with all that really slow cloud processing, that could be a saving over time. More on creative cloud Just read some of the letters phew…
Adobe Lightroom users don’t seem to be affected as LR is not included in Creative suite and the fact that users libraries will reside on local drives. I’m comfortable with back ups in the cloud but not everything!
Adobe again kicks sand in the face of the ATO by actually saying on their site No GST payable. When American (republican?) corporations don’t like a foreign governments policies they really like to rub their noses in the poo.
It was silly short sighted John Howard and Costello that gave us the GST. Why the heck didn’t they make it a percentage transaction tax so that every bank transaction and online payment collected a few percent. That would have curbed the rorting generally and especially the corporate arogants like Adobe.
If and when the Liberals come to power in September their half baked fraud broad band solution will likely not provide the bandwidth necessary to run big applications like Photoshop and inDesign with Fibre To The Node. So we as creatives will be forced to run optical Fibre To The Home where most small photographers and creatives work from. At five thousand dollars for the installation it could likely prove to be a big financial obstacle which will be hard for many us. Who ever said the libs were pro small business, but then again they have not been known for any degree of creativity. So between arogants like Adobe and half baked fraud broad band solutions the future is starting to look a bit murky. On the other hand if enough of us decided not to take on the cloud solution and stay with our present versions it just might send a message to Adobe and their share holders might not like it!
Addendum. In the Petapixel report Adobe state that Adobe Camera Raw ACR will have major upgrades but only on creative cloud. This would suggest to me that it is possible there will be no more support for any new cameras. Hmm I think we are really having our arms twisted.
After looking at yesterdays IR conversion into monochrome. I really thought it needed a touch of colour, so by switching the intensity of the red and blue channels it produced a blue sky creeping through the trees and also coloured the the shadows. As it was late afternoon the high lights are also slightly yellowed by the setting sun, this against flashes of the blue sky creates the complementary colour effect gives the image a greater depth
Zamia palm and Xanthorrhoea or black boy are two of the oldest plants in the plant kingdom Both of their ancestors known to have existed from the times of the dinosaurs. Zamia palms are known to exist in the fossil record two very old plants.
Wandoo woodland looks like perfect habitat for emu farming it offers some shade so the birds don’t get heat stress. Their normal habitat is further to the east in the dryer more arid region. There when drought conditions persist the emu’s often thousands of them come in from the bush and get stopped by the #1 rabbit proof fence which runs from the far north of the state near Eighty mile beach to the south coast just west of Esperance. At times they have been known to die in great numbers due to drought. Many pasturalists also contributed to the deaths by culling in the belief that it would help maintain more pasture for sheep which is the main source of income. Some more informed farmers have taken to rearing emu instead of sheep. This particular farm is the oldest in W.A.
