Tag Archives: Sydney

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

February 12, 2013 By in Cats, Photography Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Saffron making herself at home

Saffron making herself at home… on the quilt no less!

When I saw the weekly photo challenge was on the theme of home, I was kicking myself for not owning a pair of red sequined shoes. Even if I did own the right pair of heels I’m not sure where it would take me when I clicked my heels together. Sometimes I feel as if I have 3 homes: Mum’s place, Andrew’s place and here – with cats at every one!

So it seemed fitting when I decided to quilt this evening (yes, I’m still working on it!) that Saffron leapt up onto the table and made herself right at home. I had my weekly photo. Not to be outdone, as I write this, Licorice has curled up next to me encroaching as best she can on the keyboard.

Home is not where the heart is… for me it’s where the cat(s) is!

Make pet friendly accommodation the norm!

June 14, 2012 By in Cat Protection Society, Cats Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Over a year ago I wrote a blog post called “Beauty in Cat Poo“, in which I had a rather long rant about pet-unfriendly rental and strata accommodation.

So it is with happiness that I write 18 months later that the NSW government is calling for submissions asking whether people support a review of the barriers to cat and dog ownership in relation to residential tenancy laws.

I will be submitting my opinion with a resounding yes. I only wish I could tick a double yes, or a yes plus, a yes on steroids, a yes the size of a mammoth! A yes which is big cat sized!

While some may not go as far as to say that pet ownership is a right (I think it should be), I’m sure there are plenty of like-minded people out there who are unaware that the government is even considering the issue. I think it would be terribly sad if the opportunity to make some headway on this issue was lost.

So I’m making as much noise as possible about it. I’ve put it on my facebook. I’ve emailed almost my entire address book, and now I’m blogging about it. (I find myself at this moment wishing I had more friends so I could help make a bigger wave of support).

Here’s a snippet of what got me so hot under the collar 18 months ago:

The invisible rulemakers

…To be honest I often think of the body corporate and strata managers as figments of someone’s imagination. I acknowledge that one frequently hears of the body corporate. However have you ever seen one?

There’s no office with ‘body corporate’ signage. There’s no letterbox.

Forget the invisible man of politics the true mystery of today is the body corporate. Really, think about it… what does a body corporate look like? What makes a body look corporate? Is it the human figure which has been processed, streamlined, structured, and programmed to function off finance rather than more natural fuel?

However I will put aside for a moment the mysterious-ness of the body corporate or the strata management company and move on to the critical question at hand.

Why do these people get to decide whether you have a pet? In some situations, your landlord may be quite happy for your to own a pet, but this body with the corporate look has decided you cannot. Ah, I hear you all cry out… but of course they can decide this. Pets can be messy. True. However so can children and I’ve yet to see a complex advertised as ‘no children allowed’. (I suspect retirement villages are generally without children, although with the age of childbirth creeping ever higher who knows what may happen in the future).

In 2011, with more and more people remaining single, I believe pets should start to have the same rights as children – at least in the home. I get mad when I read on the cat protection society website that a cat was surrendered because of “unfriendly accommodation”.  

My home was ‘pet friendly’ when I moved in four years ago… Recently the strata management company issued new strata laws which said only fish and birds (in a cage) were permissable. I checked with the real estate agent regarding a grandfather clause. Surely if you have moved into pet friendly accommodation, they cannot suddenly become unfriendly and expect you to give up your pets? The answer I received was – as much as they knew – it was fine to continue as before. So while that’s good news for Licorice, Saffron and myself, I do feel for anyone new moving in who may be denied the chance to have a pet.

And why did they change their minds? Because some people had some dogs and they were irresponsible owners and the dogs made such a mess of the carpet that it had to be replaced. To this day I’m still puzzled how they went from ‘dog causes mess’ to ‘cat not allowed’.

Such a situation would be aided if the laws were changed as currently proposed. New South Wales would adopt the same laws as the ACT where

“the default position is that pets are allowed, with the onus on the owners corporation to not unreasonably withhold permission.”

Oh, what a delight if that were to occur. Had the strata remained resolute that no pets were allowed, I would have moved back to mum’s place rather than surrender Licorice and Saffron, yet I know that some people don’t have that option up their sleeve. According to Cat Protection NSW, up to 20% of adult cats they take in are victims of pet-unfriendly rental and strata accommodation.

That’s 20% too many.

Please take a few minutes to answer the survey and please, vote yes in question 18.

For more information see: www.dlg.gov.au/CATaskforce or contact Cat Protection Society.

I thank you all for your support in advance and the kitties thank you too!

Sydney’s Vivid festival

June 9, 2012 By in Photography Tags: , , , , 5 Comments

There’s a vivid festival of light. At night the opera house becomes the ‘screen’ for many images. Custom house lights up and installations spotted around the harbour do their thing.

So Andrew and I went during the day!

Courtesy of a public holiday, an RDO and me just being tired enough to put in for another day, I’ve got 5 days away from work. Mister decided that he’d surprise me on my first day off with an unexpected outing. Only problem was that I had a massive headache and was very cold, so the first part of the outing was me behaving like I’d drunk too many the night before… at least until the headache tablets kicked in.

‘And where are we going?’

‘To see the Sea Shepherd! And to the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art)! And then boot shopping!’

Yes, girls. A man volunteering to take me shopping. I swear he’s the woman in our relationship. He cooks. He cleans. He complains if I put something someone it’s not supposed to go. He’s eager to go shopping – IKEA, freedom, shoe shopping – all good things. Lastly, he sings while cooking breakfast – this morning he had a duet with Billie Holiday.

Meanwhile, I groan at the thought of shopping. I’d like it if I could remove all the people and find shoes which fit my feet!

Sea Shepherd Crew Member

Sea Shepherd Crew Member. Circular Quay, Sydney.

Sea Shepherd

It was a boat.

I find it hard to get excited about boats.

They are big things which float (or not if it’s the titanic), rock and generally make me want to throw up over the side.

Yet I can understand Andrew has a particular passion for this boat and it’s mission to stop Japanese Whaling. It was clear that passion was present in the gaggle of Sea Shepherd Crew members scattered around the harbour.

I don’t have any decent photos of the boat. I did like it’s adaptation of the ‘pirate logo’ and the painted shark jaws on the front.

Vivid Festival

Viewing the vivid festival in the daytime was not such a silly exploit. There are many installations aside from the light shows, not least of which is a giant chandelier built around a pole near the jetty.

Vivid V

It’s not often you get to photograph the Sydney Opera House with a giant chandelier in the foreground

Vivid VI

Light source or UFO?

Vivid II

A giant cube of colour

Vivid III

The opera house taken through an installation of metal and green string

Vivid I

High in the air: a metal and balloon bridge

Vivid IV

My favourite – the white bubble poles

Genre a Month Photography Challenge: Travel

February 29, 2012 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

As February draws to a close, I think it’s about time I post my travel photographs for the month. During the month I’ve read a few articles on travel photography. All recommend trying to capture the essence of a place or a moment in a new way.

I have tried to take photographs during my travels (from Sydney to Brisbane) which sum up that place and that moment in time. Here are five of my favourites.

The Foggy Early Start

Foggy Morning
Andrew and I left Sydney at 4:55am when it was still dark. By the time we got to Newcastle the sun was finally making a decent appearance; hampered all the way by heavy fog.

Refuelling

Refuelling

It’s an obligatory part of every road trip: refuelling. Whether it’s just collecting petrol or stopping for some much needed food, there’s a certain atmosphere which comes with the ‘pit stop.’ It usually goes hand in hand with bad coffee, the smell of bacon and eggs and a feeling that everyone walking through this door is a transient.

Roadworks

Yet another lot of roadworks
Another inescapable experience of the road trip is the lollypop man. In the case of the Pacific Highway from Sydney to Brisbane, make that lollypop men (PLURAL!). Roadworks are more common on this stretch than roadkill. At one stop where we had to wait quite some time, Andrew took the opportunity to post a picture of one of these guys on facebook with the caption: ‘He wasn’t impressed when we offered him $20 to dance around the pole.’

The final two photographs I took at Bombah Point while waiting for the Ferryman. (He was reading the newspaper. You can’t rush a man doing that). I like these two shots as they were not only taken during my travels, but they are a means of travel in themselves.

So here are the last two: the Rusty Truck and the Bombah Point Boat

Bombah Point: Rusty Truck

Bombah Point

Valentine’s romance for $6.50 each

February 14, 2012 By in Life, Photography Tags: , , 5 Comments

In 2012, Andrew and I proved that you don’t need a big budget to have a romantic Valentine’s day. We had a lovely evening watching fireworks for $6.50 each! (The $6 each was for parking; the 50cents was for a McDonalds ice cream).

Darling Harbour

Darling Harbour Sydney pre-fireworks

This was Sydney’s Darling Harbour before the fireworks. We’ve attempted before to go watch the Saturday night fireworks, without success. This time we researched parking stations in advance.

Darling Harbour Fireworks IV
The only downside was that I’ve misplaced by release plate for my tripod. I was therefore relegated to shooting using a ‘gorillapod‘ sitting on the ground. While it’s a fantastic little light weight device pointing the camera toward the sky is difficult and making it vertical near impossible. With the tilt it wasn’t that steady so most of my exposures were around 1/6 sec. Andrew on the other hand has brilliant shooting lines from 2 and 3 second exposures.

Darling Harbour post fireworks

Darling Harbour post fireworks

After a third and final search of everywhere I could think of, I’ve ordered a new release plate for the tripod. Mr cynic says, ‘congratulations, you now own 2 because sure as eggs you’ll find the other one now.’

I love the night lights

February 5, 2012 By in Photography Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

I spent a rainy Friday evening undertaking a 3 hour ‘night lights’ photography course. While the course is run by Sydney Photographic Workshops, I purchased it via Red Balloon using a voucher I was recently given. Despite some nervousness related to walking around the city following a week of consistent rain, I had a fantastic time. While it did continue to rain, it was light and I managed not to step in any large puddles so my feet remained relatively dry.

We undertook a series of exercises at different locations through the city. These included

  • shooting a bracket to check which level of exposure we liked
  • making people ‘vanish’ through adjustments in aperture
  • ‘torch writing’
  • extremely slow shutter speeds to get ‘trails’ of traffic
  • using exposure adjustment to turn night into day, and
  • shooting crazy lights with lots of movement

We really didn’t go far in 3 hours. We started at the Opera House and made our way up to the Cahill Expressway where there was a fantastic view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We ended in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art which gave us another view of the Opera House and the bridge. In the end, it didn’t matter that much where we went or how far, or even how good our photographs were. The night helped me get a better grasp of the three pillars of exposure – Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. Previously I was a ‘change the shutter speed’ junkie. I finished the evening with a new found appreciation of what I could do with aperture. That I could set the aperture to F22 and almost make people walking through my shot vanish was really pretty neat!

Here’s a few of my shots from the evening.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

18-55mm lens at 55mm, f/5.6 for 1/2 sec, ISO 1600

Capturing the mood

18-55mm lens at 18mm, f/4.5 for 1.3sec, ISO 400

Sydney Harbour Bridge from Cahill Expressway

18-55mm lens at 18mm, f/5.6 for 1/2 sec, ISO 1600

2012 Genre a Month Photography Challenge

February 1, 2012 By in Life, Photography, Photography Challenge Tags: , , , , , , 5 Comments

Ok, a quick recap.

I’m picking a photographic ‘genre’ each month for the next 12 months in the hope that I will learn more about this media and different styles. I’d love people to join me and thanks to those who already have. For more on the rules of the challenge, how to participate and the topics, I’ve set up a separate page here.

So, 1 down, 11 to go.

February 2012 = Travel Photography.

Now, if you were planning on joining me but you’re not expecting to ‘travel’ anywhere this month, then I hope you’ll take on my ‘travel with a twist’. Whenever I think Travel Photography, I immediately think rich colours of countries far away; the bright colours of Indian Sari’s; the grittiness of some American cities; the historic buildings of the UK with some gloomy weather thrown in.

Travel photography for me until recently would have been impossible. I didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t until I met Andrew that I started exploring places; first on short day trips and then overnight. We are about to embark on 9 days in the car together in mid February. (If I suddenly stop blogging, then check Australian newspapers for a story about a girl killed by her partner where he’s claiming justifiable homicide as she told him one too many times what the speed limit was!)

People take holidays for all sorts of reasons. Whether it’s to relax or trek the Inca trail (I don’t think the two can co-exist) people take a camera. Why? For the memories. To say ‘I’ve been there.’

What does this have to do with those of you not taking a holiday this month? Well, there’s another definition of travel. It is simply ‘to go from one place to another.’

Now unless your planning on confining yourself to your home for the next month, I’m presuming that everyone is travelling somewhere.

If I wanted to be especially pedantic I could claim that going from the living room to the bedroom constituted travel; it is afterall going from one place to another.

Travel Photography is often about memories and capturing the essence of a place. I think that’s what’s at the heart of travel photography and why I believe you can do a lot of travel photography in your own city. Indeed, your own street! When was the last time you really tried to capture the essence of those places? Well, February may be your chance! Become a tourist in your own city.

I’ve included a couple of photos I took at Bondi Beach this week. When people come to Sydney, Bondi is usually on their list. As someone who turns bright red quicker than you can say ‘cheese’, I’m not a fan of the beach. After this week, I’ll admit that it is a fantastic place for photography, particularly at dusk. There is so much on offer; so many ways to capture that place; Bondi in that moment. I’m quite happy to stand along side all the tourists with my camera and look like a blow-in from pommy land (I doubt they’d think I was from the tropics with my lily livid skin).

Bondi Beach Feb 2012 II

75-300mm lens at 190mm, f/5 for 1/125 sec, ISO 800, monochrome setting.

It seems the Bondi locals are very used to amateur photographers. No one seems to pay any attention to what you’re photographing. Their eyes are on the kid running through the sand; keeping the dog from inappropriately sniffing other dogs on the promenade or keeping your head above water.

So who’s up for the challenge?

If you are participating in the February Travel Photography Challenge, please go to this page and add a comment with a link to your efforts. 

Bondi Beach Feb 2012 I

75-300mm lens at 130mm, f/5.6 for 1/125 sec, ISO 800, monochrome setting.

2012 Genre a Month Photography Challenge: Nature’s final call

January 30, 2012 By in Photography, Photography Challenge Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Here is the final instalment in my January theme of Wildlife and Nature Photography.

It seems only fitting to end with nature ‘on its way out.’ After a very hot day in Sydney of about 33 degrees, I’m not surprised this agapanthus was looking a little worse for wear. Despite the wilted blossoms, the colour is still so rich. I am delighted with the photo, which I took while stopped in a traffic jam. We were creeping rather than driving and the road around Centennial Park in Sydney has beautiful houses and plenty of dog walkers.

Most of the dogs were too fast for me to get a clear shot. This flower on the other hand was fair game. I’m not sure why I’m so taken with it. Perhaps it’s because in a moment when I expected nothing, I got a photograph which surprised me in its simple wilted beauty.

So here is the last shot of the month. February’s theme is Travel Photography… let’s see what that brings…

Wilted agapanthus

75-300mm lens at 210mm, f/5 for 1/1000 sec, ISO 3200.

If you’ve participated in my Genre a Month Photography Challenge please post a comment with a link to your entry on this page.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 124 other followers