Anna & her mum are hard at work preparing & pebbling the courtyard. As well as the preparation, they finished the rock work: about 4 tonnes in all (very bendy ute suspension!)
Courtyard progress
All posts by irwin
Friends of Mt Leura Christmas Dinner 2010
What’s an end of year dinner without random unsuspecting photos. You know who you are…
It must be Christmas
Only the 3rd of December and already have been to 2 Christmas functions. At least the manic nature of being a retail proprietor is no longer on my shoulders (Christmas planning in the industry starting around June/July!) Here’s some sunset pictures from the northern shore of the lake at the Friends of Mt Leura Chrissy event.
DSLR homework – lighting
It’s probably not what teacher Rob had in mind, but I thought I’d try some different light effects by the full moon. And get some washing on the line. The pics were all taken around 10 on a balmy night, and purely lit by long exposure moonlight. Along the way, I got distracted and started pretending to be Luke Skywalker with my homemade astronomy laser.
Castlemaine weekend
Carsel-maine or Cassel-maine? Charnce? Darnce? Romarnce? I suspect I can get away with the mis-pronunciations with the Asian appearance. Whilst Anna’s off learning how to etch copperplate, I have been defying gravity in the interests of homework for week 5 of my DSLR course. All the much harder as I had to be both subject and photographer.
TARDIS doorjam & lightbox cutouts
A solid week at TAFE gave me the opportunity to make some progress on the TARDIS. The entry doors had a strap of timber attached which finishes them (except for the phone door which I won’t complete until after painting, and the repair of the phone door rear panel).
TARDIS roof
Finishing the roof of the TARDIS required a little more contemplation than just banging some bits of roughly triangular ply together. Teacher Pete suggested a hip & rafter design which is probably a bit more substantial than required, but in the name of learning a new skill: I’m game. It’s also good practice for the eventual gazebo that Anna wants.
Emirates Family Day
Desperate for some photos for photography homework, I decided to use Emirates Family Day at Flemington to test my shooting skills for the compositional section combining ‘documentary’ and ‘sport’. I wasn’t about to fork out whatever huge sum it was to get in for the day so I skulked around and got some general shots until a very nice security man showed me where I could get some really nice shots at the starters’ gates. There I was met by a not-so-nice security man who turned out to have a very low tolerance for the likes of me and promptly shooed me away with the use of many guttural mono-syllables.
Melbourne pic excursion
A last minute excursion to Melbourne to gather some homework pictures. The brief was to shoot in 2 styles unfamiliar to us. I read that as ‘uncomfortable’, so crowds and sports came up trumps. My train trip into the city was timed just right for sunset over Southbank whereupon I trekked around Fed Square, up Swanston Street, and mingled around Bourke for a bit. The trepidation of doing the DSLR thing around Melbourne was eased I think by the fact it was a Friday night and everyone seemed pretty relaxed about things. I’ll try my luck at Flemington tomorrow.
Leech Walk
Friends of Mt Leura had an excursion day to Pallister’s Reserve and even though it rained for three quarters of the trip there, the sky cleared enough for a couple of very nice walks around the reserve. Having not been there for over a decade myself, the surroundings of impenetrable bluegum forests was starling and jarring, not to mention water table depleting. I spent most of the walk time obsessing over the volumes of leeches and high pitch screaming as they found their way up my boots.
