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Tragedy

For the last few days she’d been feeling poorly – not focussing properly, running a bit hot. Then today it happened. My little buddy who’s spent the year so far at my side for my 366 project, my beloved fuji x100 camera, came down with the dreaded sticky blades syndrome.

A common issue with this camera, the aperture blades have a tendency to lock open at the widest aperture and cannot be stopped down. As a result all images are taken at f/2 regardless of the settings and exposure readings at other aperture settings are incorrect.

In keeping with the ironic sense of humour possessed by the universe, my camera is two months out of warranty so I may be without my snappy companion for awhile. I’m hoping that the fact that this is a common problem will lead Fuji to be good guys and fix the problem for me.

In the meantime i’ll be taking the opportunity to do some iphoneography and film shooting while my main camera is out of action. As there is usually a couple of weeks turnaround in my part of the world for film developing there may be some delay in posting pics but I fully intend to keep snapping each day.

Get well my little Fuji, I hope to see you soon.

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bigraf
project 366 (2012)

#68 of 366 – lemon lane

I stopped by the brilliantly named Lemon Lane this afternoon for a coffee. This little lane tucked away in Claremont exudes coffee aromas and is adorned with colourful art – a very pleasant place to savour a hot drink.

Only a short walk away is the relatively new Claremont Quarter shopping centre. Drawing the ire of the roaming security guards I took a little time to grab some shots.

This chocolate cafe will be my first port of call next time I’m down that end of the world.

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waterbridge
project 366 (2012)

#66 of 366 – water under the bridge

The final release of Lightroom 4 hit the interwebs today. I’ve been an Aperture man for a couple of years now but am finding the new beta version of Lightroom very impressive.

I blew out the grass for my shot for today in this pic. In camera the whole area at the end of the bridge was nothing but blown out highlights. Using the RAW file in Aperture’s recovery slider only turned the blown highlights a dull grey but failed to return any detail. With the new highlight and shadow sliders in Lightroom I was able to bring the grass out of a white nothingness and then paint in selective exposure levels from the RAW file.

Other than these features, the brilliant noise reduction, and the closer tie to Photoshop in Lightroom there don’t seem to be many differences between Aperture and this program, but damn those features are drool worthy. I’m pretty tied to Aperture through a photo library built up over the last few years and a decent understanding of it but I’m very tempted to make the jump across.

Anyone else been lured across to Adobe’s new beast yet?

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project 366 (2012)

#65 of 366 – gingerbread men

A public holiday today, so I had time to do some cooking with the kids. We decided to play god and create our own gingerbread man army in the kitchen. Here was one of our new recruits ready to undergo his basic training (aka cooking).

The volunteers get ready to hit the oven.

Getting a tan.

Fresh out of the oven and smelling mighty fine.

Finally cooked and ready to eat.

Our gingerbread army tasted great as we quickly devoured them. I didn’t take any pictures of the carnage as the sight of missing limbs and half chewed buttons may offend some people.

 

 

 

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project 366 (2012)

#62 of 366 – attack of the killer bees

While playing with my kids in the backyard yesterday afternoon I was set upon by a rabid, bloodthirsty bee. I don’t want to downplay the vicious battle we engaged in while I fought for my children’s safety but I put up a fairly decent defence. Unfortunately he found my (almost) achilles heel and managed to plunge his poisonous barb deep inside my foot. That’s how I choose to remember it – its much better than admitting that I didn’t look where I was running and stepped on a bee.

In any regard, by this afternoon my foot had ballooned to the size of a basketball giving me first hand experience in the suffering of victims of elephantiasis. My first aid training reminded me that stings should be iced and honey should be applied if available. Fortunately I had a honey beer on hand and swiftly applied the cool, sweet deliciousness to my swollen hoof.

The coolness quickly helped with the swelling but the temptation  of a cold beer proved too strong to resist and the contents of the bottle were rapidly imbibed. This also seemed to help – maybe not with the swelling but definitely in promoting a more mellowed me. I think first aid manuals should be adapted to recommend the drinking of beer when bitten or stung by wild beasties.

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