Day #1 New Guinea Adventure

Packed, cleaned, and packed some more until it was so late or early, depending upon your point of view, that it didn’t make sense to go to bed.

Our flight to Cairns was scheduled for an 8:45 am departure; we’d booked the car into the long-term parking and figured leaving by 7 am at the latest should give us plenty of time to make it to the airport, park, check the bags in and a leisurely stroll to the gate.

Is this starting to sound slightly like our experience at Johannesburg airport?

By 7:30 a.m., we arrived at the long-term park and were waiting at one of the many bus stops. About ten minutes later, a bus pulled up about ¾ full of people and bags. We struggled aboard with all our bags: two large duffle-type bags (with wheels), two North Face backpack bags, one backpack (with computer and gear), and one roll-on (with camera gear).

Unfortunately, the bus had to make a couple more stops until it was chock a block full of bags and people stuffed everywhere, but finally, it headed out of the car park.

We arrived at the terminal's arrivals level instead of the departure level just before 8 a.m. and joined the bag drop line. Both check-in lines were quite long, and we were getting close to boarding time by the time we had our bags heading down the chute.

There was a bit more stress, as the lines through security were long, but to cut a long story short, we made it to the departure lounge with a few minutes to spare. Of course, it was the one at the end of the terminal!

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Standing in the alley at the Cafiend Cafe in Grafton St, Cairns

We landed in Cairns to find one of the Gravis bags had lost one of it’s wheels. After a quick check at a local skateboard shop who were super helpful we found out that Ollie from the café across from the shop had had the same problem and had a spare axel the only bit the skate shop didn’t have. Anyhow to cut a long story short the base that the axel screwed into was shot, the whole thing was in vain but it taught us that there are some very nice and very helpful people living in Cairns.

View of Cairns from the Holiday Inn

Later that evening we enjoyed a wonderful dinner on the waterfront at the Waterbar and Grill. We indulged a bit in an amazing Chocolate Hazelnut pudding before retiring for the night.

The remains of a great Chocolate Hazelnut Pudding

Sigma 50-500 (was testing a Sigma 120-400 4.5-5.6 DG HSM)

Update 7/11/2012: Just got back from a road trip to Adelaide, Kangaroo Island and Mungo Lake. Here's some Sigma 50-500 images shot while on the trip.

Grey Kangaroo - f/8.0, 1/400, ISO 400, subject distance 19.0m, focal length 500 mm

Lizard - f/8.0, 1/500, ISO 125, subject distance 1.7m, focal length 500.0 mm

Bees - f/6.3, 1/200, ISO 100, subject distance 2.7 m, focal length 244.0 mm

Emu - F/8.0, 1/500, ISO 1000, subject distance 7.4 m, focal length 450.0 mm

Update 8/7: Well it's been a while since we arrived home but I took the Sigma 50-500 mm away with me on my recent trip to Papua New Guinea. Here's a few using the lens and in action.

Pic 1. Yours truly, the lens is great to lean on
Pic 2. My wife, Kelly, shooting with the lens in the village of Watam
Pic 3. Taken from a zodiac while motoring up the Sepik river, the kids were about 10 metres from the boat"
Pic 4. Woman with umberella
Pic 5. Young woman with T-shirt headdress

Update 29/3: After quite a bit of research I've gone with a Sigma 50-500 mm APO 50-500mm F4.5-6.3 zoom telephoto. It's a big beast but from the initial shots I'm very happy with it. Here's two shots of the tower on the Anzac bridge, the first at 50mm the second at 500mm.

Pictures from the 120-400 follow:

My good friend and bowling companion Greg Williams loaned me his Sigma 120-400 zoom telephoto, Nikon D90 and Manfrotto Monopod today to have a play with. Kelly and I had to pop down to a dive shop called Plunge at Chowder Bay to book in for a refresher course so I took the opportunity to have a wander around the area and take some photographs with the gear

 

1. Rabbit on the lawns near the Tea House

2. The following are shots taken at 400, 300, 200 and 120 zoom.

Blast from the Past

Kelly and I have been trying to finally sort out our bits and pieces and part of that process is cleaning out all of our storage spaces. Over the weekend I've been sorting through some old photos and I thought I'd post some just for fun.

Update 4/12: Well it's been almost 9 months since a blast from the past but today that's going to change. Kelly dragged out a couple of old boxes from storage and "oh my god" what did we find. These are some studio shots taken in the 70's during my modelling career in Perth. Love the hair.

That's what I call "Big Hair"

Love the cut of those jeans

Update 27/03: I've been down at storage, again, rummaging through boxes of old photos looking for some pictures to post on the Quantel Facebook page as it's the 30th Anniversary of the Paintbox when I came across this old modelling shot from the early days in Perth. This must be from around the late 70's, I think the Safari Suit gives it away.

(I'm sure Steve Whistler is going to love this one!)

Update 10/3: Oh oh, has the man no shame! Found another golden oldie the other day.  This time we go back to 1967 when I was a young art student at the South Australian School of Art. Now every year the University and associated institutions held what was called Prosh Day, see this Wikipedia entry for more info. Well I was coerced or volunteered, I can't remember which, and ended up in drag in the Miss Prosh competiton. This photograph, taken by The News in Adelaide shows me, in drag, sitting on the lap of a young man named Geoff Motley who just happened to be the coach of the Norwood Football team.

The prize was a full wardrobe of dresses from the shop of the lady sitting to the left of Geoff, and damn it but I almost won it. There was bit of an angry response from the crowd when the actual winner was announced and it wasn't me! Kelly says I look like a fat version of my daughter!!!

This is a picture taken on 16th March 1977 in Canberra, Australia during my modelling career. It was shot during a photoshoot for a billboard that read "Pick us up on 2CA!" Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the actual billboard and I have no idea who the young lady is.

For the next picture we travel forward in time to 1985, day and month unknown, but we definately know where we are, yes Tijuana, Mexico. My first trip from north of the border to south of the border with a dear friend of mine David Terrazas. David grew up in Southern California and his parents are originally from Mexico, so he was a great companion to travel with. The photo was taken on an old Kodak bellows camera attached to a wooden box that held the film. After taking the shot the photographer actually developed the film within the box.

 

 

360˚ Panoramas on Facebook

Hi,

I've been experimenting with the new iFrame app integration on Facebook over the weekend and I've set up a page Red360 with a modified version of the Ulusaba 360˚ Virtual Tour. In order to register the username for the page I need 25 "likes" for the page. If you can help me out to reach that goal I'd certainly appreciate your help. Just use the link above and if you like it "like" it.

Update: 15 likes - 10 to go!

Update: Thanks to everyone that "liked" the page, we've made it past 25 and I've registered the username. Unfortunately Red360 was already taken but Monzstro Man came up with a great suggestion 'redthreesixty' and it's done. You can now find us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/redthreesixty

thanks,

Tony