Weekday’s are always hectic: work; yoga; gym; personal projects; special events; and visiting a beach for 30 minutes every day. 30 minutes is only 2.5% of a day, and I’m glad each day that I’ve made the effort to take some time out and visit…
Muttonbird Island is accessed via the jetty at Coffs Harbour. Not exactly a beach visit. Just behind where I took this photo is the tiny (150m long) Gallow’s Beach and then the north end of Boambee Beach. I still need to visit Boambee Beach…
Being the weekend, I had time to explore beaches a little further from the usual. On Sunday I took a 15 minute drive south to Urunga. A boardwalk follows the breakwater from the caravan park in town all the way to the beach.
It was a warm day, but the sand on the beach was clogged with piles of driftwood – probably from the recent weeks of storms – and didn’t look very swimmer friendly.
Accessed via the highway directly opposite the Big Banana is the small Digger’s Beach. It’s in the resort area to the north of Coffs Harbour and is a very picturesque little beach.
This photo was taken from a lookout installed by Rotary along the pathway that extends along most of the beaches in the Coffs Harbour area.
I spotted an interesting headland to the north and went for a walk to try and climb it. After climbing some rocks to the north of Digger’s Beach, I realised I was now on a nudist beach (lots of oldies with their junk out) so promptly turned around and headed back to Digger’s Beach.
Sunset on Sawtell Beach at the beachside of Sawtell SLSC.
Today’s beach visit was later than usual. This meant I was in time for the sunset and some colourful clouds.
Click on the photos below to view the hi-res versions on Flickr. I really like the first one, capturing the motion of the waves breaking and the seagull strolling along.
I’m not happy with the result of this panorama, but it gives you a glimpse of the effect the sunset had on the sky late this afternoon…
Today the clouds were still a mess and so was the ocean. From Sawtell Surf Lifesaving Club I walked up towards Murray’s Beach (where I was yesterday).
I love the sound of the waves washing over the pebbles strewn across the shoreline. Adds to the meditative state that spending 2.5% of my day at the beach brings.
This isn’t a beach I usually get to. It’s all the way over the other side of the Coffs city centre.
When I first moved to Coffs Harbour in 2003 this was my local. Good to be back.
Rain, heavy at times. That was the forecast for today and that was what we got.
Today I drove towards North Boambee Beach which is accessed via the jetty area, but the Coffs Triathlon was on and the roads at the jetty were diverted.
So that’s day 2 of the 30 days / 30 minutes at the beach project.
The weather has been grim lately.
This is 5th week of grey skies and there is only more to come. It started with 3 days of torrential downpour on Australia day long weekend, with multiple severe weather occurrences since.
Sawtell Island at Bonville Head.
Headed to the south end of Sawtell Beach, to the start of the coral outcrop area known as Sawtell Island. The rain made a comeback at 7PM… time to head home.
After doing a van trip in North Queensland a couple of years ago, I’d always wanted to drive and camp across the great Nullabor desert of south-central and south-western Australia. Leaving Fremantle (near Perth) in mid May, my good friend Dave and I piled ourselves and possessions into a Lancer sedan for one of our most unprepared and unique camping trips yet.
Here’s what you’d see if you were driving from Perth to Sydney.
The 5,000km trip was a very indirect way of getting to Newcastle. Opting to drive an extra 1,000km for a bit of tourist action, from Fremantle we drove the: Eyre Highway to Port Augusta SA (route A1 – along Highway 1, the longest national highway in the world); Princes Highway to Adelaide (A1); Western Highway to Melbourne (A8/M8); Princes Highway (A1) to Bega NSW; Princes Highway (A1) to Sydney NSW; and finally the F3 Sydney to Newcastle Freeway.
Even though this was one of our most unprepared camping trips – we’d camped for months before and were on a whole different level of preparedness – we had a reasonably comfy time camping with little more than a tent/swag each, portable gas cooker and one huge esky.
One note on preparedness – bring your own water, about 4 litres per day was enough for us. Roadhouses along the Nullabor won’t allow you to fill up water.
Being late autumn and coming into winter, the days were crisp (around 20 degrees celsius) but the nights were very cold. We both had 5 degree rated sleeping bags, and needed very warm clothes and extra blankets to stay warm through the night.
We lit a fire every night, however with the sparseness of trees and their small size, it took much longer than usual to collect the necessary fuel for fire. I can’t confirm if it’s legal or not – but we basically camped anywhere. Most nights we would find a rest area – usually we looked for one that at least had a picnic table – and camped about 100m from the highway.
In South Australia the Eyre Highway touches the coastline and the days of endless desert are broken with some amazing views. A lookout at The Great Australian Bight Marine Park is the first place to visit the coast when heading from west to east.
Of all the views of the coast – the Bunda Cliffs are the most impressive. Jutting out along the Bight – for what seems an eternity – catch the best glimpse at the most westerly lookout along the highway. If you want to see it, plan ahead or get a map as the sign posts can be easy to miss.
After 3 days of desert camping, we stayed at a caravan park in Ceduna SA (the first real town you’ll encounter since Norseman – 1200km back towards Perth).
On the 4th day we reached Adelaide. It was a Tuesday night and the first time either of us had visited – we attempted some shenanigans until the doldrum of a cold country-city night moved us to rest.
Terry kept his tantalising tenue tightly targeted at bigger things…
After 5 days of driving we enjoyed a placid night with Dave’s friends in Melbourne. I used to live in Melbourne and it felt great to get back to my favourite Australian city – even for one night.
On the way to Sydney from Melbourne, we stayed a night at my Dad’s place – an old butter factory – just outside of Bega on the NSW South Coast.
After Bega we arrived in Sydney to really relax. We spent a few days here, visiting friends and generally enjoying the comforts that come with living under a roof. It took 7 days of driving to get to Sydney, driving between 500 and 800km per day.
Not to degrade the enjoyability of the journey, I’d love to do it again and take twice the amount of time to visit some of the amazing places along the way.
This article shows you how to make High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos, and shows 6 HDR photos I made in minutes with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. Includes a guide on how to make HDR photos with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 digital camera.
This article will not give advice on the setting to use for your shots, this is something I always struggled with.
(Update 8 months after this original post: I’m not struggling with getting good shots anymore, after continually experimentation and keeping an eye out for good scenes, the HDR shots are getting better. Take a look at my HDR set on Flickr, all taken with my DMC-LX3).
What I find works best is if there is a large amount of contrast. For example, in the the photo by the river below, the sky was bright but the trees were not. Taking an ordinary photo of this meant that the sky was blown out (too bright) as the auto-focus would meter on the trees. Best way to discover this is just to experiment lots. That being said, I’ve found my most successful photos were those taken at dawn or dusk.
First, let’s start with some examples of HDR photos taken with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. There are a lot of awesome HDR photos to be found on the net. I like to use the HDR method on my favourite personal photos to bring them to life. My HDR photos below have not been Photoshopped, I don’t like the over-saturated look, it stands out too much, so I’m not interested in spot blending or anything similar. My method is to get the photo as good as possible in-camera, take the series of photos and then compose them with HDR software.
That’s it for the photos, I have taken 2 or 3 other attempts which totally failed (the setting was all wrong). For higher resolution photos, take a look at my Flickr gallery of HDR photos.
(Update 8 months after this original post: I’ve been living in Japan for a year and taken a lot of great HDR photos of some amazing places in Japan. For 20+ more HDR photos, take a look at my HDR set on Flickr, all taken with my DMC-LX3).
Here is my method, it is quite simple yet works time and time again for me.
Part 1: Taking the photo in-camera.
Part 2: Using HDR software on your computer to merge the photos and produce the final image.
From here, I use a Mac application called Hydra. I’ve tried Photoshop but never with good results, I’ve heard you can use Lightroom, Aperture and more but Hydra is the one that works for me.
(Update 8 months after this original post: When I originally posted this I was using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the Automate HDR function was poor. Now in Photoshop CS5 the Automate HDR function is very impressive – I don’t use Hydra anymore, but it’s still a great option!).
Here are my new wheels… oh yeah… This is a company car, my commute to each of my two schools is 15km and 20km. The Mitsubish Minica has saved me from an extremely lengthly journey of multiple bus and train rides. This is a 7th generation Mitsubish Minica. Under the hood is a 657 cc three … Read more
With a departure from Sydney, 1 hour stopover in Singapore and lugging a 30kg + suitcase, so begins round 2 of my Japan adventure… This time it is Toyota city for me. Toyota city is about 30-40 minutes from Nagoya in Aichi prefecture. It is about 250 kms from Tokyo. I’ve been considering where to … Read more
After exactly two months in the van, and the departure of two fellow convoy members, it was time to drive home. The drive was a big one, 2150km and we travelled from the camp at Gordonvale near Cairns to Surfers Paradise in just 10 days.
Free camping just 20 minutes south of Cairns. We spent a while at this spot, and the one previous post ‘Free camping at Gordonvale, near Cairns’ just doesn’t show how great this spot was. Beautiful spot, just be wary of crocodiles and rain as this area can flash flood.
Quick montage of the trip so far… Large high quality images showing the highlights of our trip.
We have stayed here for a few days and could stay for many more. Beautiful scene, river beside us and safe swimming holes. Take a look at the HRD photo of the Mulgrave River at dawn.
There is no camping except for caravan parks, within 15kms of Cooktown. With some local knowledge we headed to Annon Gorge and found a spot on top of a hill on the other side of the river from the main access point (tour groups showed up there everyday).
About 60km from Cooktown just past Lakeland, a secluded off-road in-a-ditch style camp.
The world’s oldest rainforest. We have the privilege of camping in this amazing place. First night stayed at Noah’s Beach camp ground and then found a secluded off-road spot where we could stay for two nights, near Cow Bay.