Blue Mountains

Kathryn and I recently spent a few days down in Katoomba, NSW. We did a crapload of walking and had a great time scoping out the excellent Blue Mountains scenery. Note: The Blue Mountains aren't traditional mountains - it's actually a large plateau that was torn apart by geologic shifts thousands of years ago - creating huge sinkholes in the plateau with steep, rugged cliff edges hundreds of metre's high. The result is stunning vistas, towering waterfalls (albeit with barely any water), brilliant rock climbing/abseiling, and great bushwalking.

The best thing about the bushwalking is how close you can get to the edges of the cliffs - really makes things interesting. You may notice the majority of the pictures with us at the edge include fences - except for one. That's because I actually hopped the fence to get closer to the edge and a true 'out there' kind of picture.

Also, for anyone wondering about the blue haze present in a lot of the pictures: The haze is created by the oils from the Eucalyptus trees interacting with the sunlight. The result is the blue haze in the air that gives the Blue Mountains their name!

Lastly, I tried combining a few of the pictures into panorama's with Photoshop, but they didn't come out as well as I was hoping because of the different exposures at the different angles - I tried to adjust the settings to compensate but you can still see the differences in the joined shots. Kind of sucks, but the panorama's are still pretty durned cool.










Blue Mountains - Jenolan Caves

Here's a few shots I took while at the Jenolan Caves. It was a beautiful area and we thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the Lucas Cave and our unguided walk around the Nettle Cave. Unfortunately I had a hard time getting quality photos in the Lucas Cave because the lady wouldn't let me use my tripod. Nevertheless, we can thank the rails for some shots, and the excellent High ISO setting on the camera for some others.

The third shot down from here was on our tour of the Nettle Cave - that huge open area is called "The Devil's Coach House" because some joker was in it and heard all these keening sounds (likely owls) and thought he saw the Devil, awesome!

Family Pictures

I was recently fingered to be the photographer behind the most recent family photos for the Kremastos crew. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I took on the task. I was worried because first off - I'm not a professional. Secondly, though my camera may be a great compact digital (one of the best), it's still just a compact digital. As great as it may be in its own realm, there's simply no competition when compared to an expensive DSLR.

So, to try and cover for my poor photography skills I spent a few dozen hours working through the 140 pictures on the computer. When I finished, the list had been whittled down to 40 finalists. Here's a small sample of the pictures. A pair with just Kathryn and I, and then another pair with Kathryn's family - featuring some extensive background editing.

By the way, does anyone know of a more efficient way to remove a person from a complex background than spending half an hour with a clone stamp?

Went to Stanthorpe for the weekend and bought a bunch of wine. Stanthorpe is a bit south and inland so the temperatures were a bit lower than it is here in Brisbane, as a result the girls were a tad cold (if covering up in 3 layers of clothing quantifies as being just a 'tad' cold). But I must say - even though they have poor tolerance for cold weather, some of these Aussies make some fine wine! :) I picked up an absolutely wonderful Chocolate Port (17%alc) that I can't wait to get into, along with an excellent Muscat from Ballandean. Kathryn bought five bottles of Golden Gleam - a premium liqueur muscat that tastes like alcoholic lychees. Yum. All in all, it was a productive weekend :).

Here's a shot of the wine the five of us bought.