We are back blogging!

So we’ve been a bit light on in the blogs lately. Many apologies and as the buck stops with me I accept all responsibility. However we have been busy, very busy, in other areas.

We’ve been delivering a wide range of workshops across many regions, preparing for some OS soon: roll on Siem Reap at the end of June, attending a few ourselves, doing run throughs for new offerings here at Bluedog and plugging away at contracts, travelling, and having some fun exploring with photography.

Over the past 7 weeks we have entered the video world and let’s say it’s been an interesting little foray. We are trying to produce a weekly Vlog, ‘Kennel TV’, maybe a big ask weekly, but anyway we are trying.

To check it out click Bluedog Kennel TV we’re now up to#7! You can subscribe to it so an email alert comes into your in box each week when we upload.

Along with that we’ve started uploading tips, reviews, tutorials and even some funny ones like our D4 unboxing.

Popular ones have been the first of our Rainforest Photography tips, What's in the Bag and the promo on our new specialty workshop High Octane and the first of our Australian Wildlife Photography Tips. We look forward to bringing you more soon.

Anyway back to the blog. We have not forgotten you and coming up soon is: ‘M’s fulfil local Photographers Passion’, a review on the Leica M9 and the Fuji X-Pro 1Fujifilm ISO comparison (you'll find our video review here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4K50n3riuQ), planning a holiday for safety and well that for starters.

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing you soon!
Danielle and the crew in the kennel at Bluedog Photography and Travel

CHASING YOUR DREAMS

Guest blog by David Alexander

“Don’t be afraid to chase you Dreams”. I have heard this saying all my life but only in the last few years have I realised how much satisfaction you can get by doing exactly that, your outlook on life will change.

With determination, hard work, support from family and friends and the right guidance/teaching from Bluedog Photography I have seen my dream of calling myself a photographer coming to fruition. I have been offered the opportunity to have one of my photo’s (taken at a Bluedog Test Workshop) made into a poster that will be handed out at V8 Race Meets during the 2012 season.

The SP Number 9 car is driven by Shane van Gisbergen who is currently running fourth in the 2012 V8 Supercars Series. The young Kiwi has driven the SP car for SBR racing since 2008 and is one of the up and coming stars of the V8’s.

So what I have discovered is don’t be afraid to step-up to the plate – tell the world you are a photographer (if that is your dream) be proud of what you produce and keep learning your craft and your dreams can come true.

 Image by David Alexander

Who is the Cunnamulla Fella?

Stan Coster was ‘ringing’ (working as a sheep-shearing “ringer”) around Cunnamulla in the 1950’s when he wrote the words of the ‘Cunnamulla Fella’.  Slim Dusty later recorded the words as a song.

So who is he? Well locals in Cunnamulla say he is the larrikin in all Australian’s. When Stan was in the region working on stations during the 1950’s and 1960’s Cunnamulla was enjoying steady prosperity due to high wool prices and increased demand for the fine merino clip produced from the Mulga country. It was the days, they claimed, when Australia was riding on the sheep’s back. Wool was fetching a pound for a pound and cattle were worth their weight in gold.

Friday and Saturday nights saw the young ringers and shearers hit Cunnamulla for a weekend of ‘drinkin, lovin and fightin’. After a week of working hard – 15 or 16 hour days were not unheard of - they also played hard. 

Mike Nicholas, an artist, was based in Cunnamulla as a policeman in the 1960’s and these young men inspired his drawing of the ‘Cunnamulla Fella’. A young man with pannikin in one hand, sitting on his rolled up swag having a yarn at the end of the day. He later recalled seeing boys as young as 14 sitting on their swag waiting for the grazier or mail truck to pick them up for another jaunt on one of the huge stations.

Since then the character The Cunnamulla Fella has grown into the legend it is today. So when you next venture west into the mulga country with its orange tinted soils and friendly outback folk check out the huge bronze statue sculptured by Archie St. Claire. He sits on the green lawn in front of the Paroo Shire Council gazing down the main street. 

There may not be as many ringers, shearers or even pubs for that matter that once overflowed with these men cashing in the weekly cheques as back when Stan was amongst them but one thing is for sure, there are still the larrikins, the yarns and the colourful characters out there.

‘Well I’m a scrubber, runner and a breaker too,

I live on damper and wallaby stew,

I’ve got a big cattle dog with a staghound’s cross,

I never saw the scrubber we couldn’t toss,

Cause I’m the Fella from Cunnamulla

Yes I’m the Cunnamulla Fella”

Easter in Australia!

By Danielle Lancaster

Tomorrow is Good Friday and the start of the Easter holidays for those on our time clock down here in Australia. Some of you may already know that those of us here at Bluedog Photography support Easter: specifically, the Easter Bilby!

You see, a while ago we adopted, along with many others, that it should be the native Australian Easter Bilby hopping into our children's lives here in Australia not the feral rabbit.

Did you know bilbies breed like rabbits but it's the unfortunate presence of the fox and cat (and once man) that forced the lesser Bilby to extinction and the greater Bilby to  within a breath of it: by the way we have no malice to cat owners either. They are just best indoors at night).

My personal story with the Bilby was kicked up a gear on a trip to outback Queensland, some 18 years ago. I'd been showing my children the work being done through journals, scientific papers, news paper and magazine clippings and a very different internet than we have today about this cute little animal. We had the fortune to call into Charleville EPA headquarters and catch Peter McRae, the scientist behind the long hard studies and attempts to save the Bilby there.

 Peter and a Bilby at Currawinya National Park

John, my eldest son, a mere 8 at the time, emptied his entire pocket money and savings that day into Peter's palms. As the coins dropped onto Peter's work ridden hands, the skin creases encrusted with dirt from a good days hard work in red soil country, there was a moment. Peter accepted this stream of coins with as much dignity, as I later saw him accept thousand dollar cheques.

In the recent opening of my exhibition 'Across my Path' Peter features checking out the Bilby Fence within Currawinya National Park. And he is happy to report that inside the fence the Bilbies are breeding like rabbits!

So if you don't do it already consider changing to the Bilby for Easter. And make saving the bilby one of the most delicious things to do. Australian chocolate manufacturer and retailer Darrell Lea has been making chocolate Easter bilbies since 1994 raising in excess of $225,000!

Did you also know that in 2003, bilbies outsold bunnies by eight to one here in Australia! But be aware: it's only Darrell Lea bilbies that donate sales from their bilby chocolates back to the fund.

Have a safe and happy Easter everyone!

 Peter checks out the Bilby fence at Currawinya National Park.

Canon versus Nikon on Moreton Island

Guest blog by Sheryn Ellis

After a recent trip working on Moreton Island I have a lot to share.

Don’t be alarmed my Canon friends, but I found myself asking Danielle if I could use the Nikon to shoot! Danielle just smiled and said, "I’ll even let you use my favourite old girl," and handed me the D3. Why? We were in very low light, heavy cloud covered, rainforest conditions and the aim was to freeze action! I dialed in ISO 1250 and started shooting. Crystal clear action images – easy!

I hear you say ‘you can shoot that high on the Canon 5D MII’ and yes, I know I can, but I also know that in post processing I need to do more in the noise reduction slider than I want too. Besides, it’s fun to have a play with other cameras and to let Danielle think there is a chance she will turn me to the ‘other side’.

 Nikon D3; ISO 1250; f5; 1/80^th

My aim with this shot was to capture the sense of ‘movement’ and that is the reason for 1/80^th shutter speed. I did get in ‘trouble’ for not polarizing this shot!

Another time I reached for the Nikon was while standing on the roof of the car (yes, I’m constantly climbing on the top of vehicles) and wanting the beautiful 14mm lens that was producing some spectacular wide shots all day. 

 Nikon D3; ISO 800; f10; 1/1000^th , polariser used;

It was spitting rain and as we were driving towards a flock of seagulls I thought I’d try to freeze them fleeing the path of the vehicle.I have blown up a section of this image to show how little noise there is.

 

At the end of the day, Canon still triumphed in one area at least: while ‘playing’ with our macro lens shooting some incredible star fish specimens - here’s where I am happy to say, I could get in closer with my old Sigma 105mm macro mounted on the 5DMII than the trusty Nikon 105mm on the D3. As always it is a friendly rivalry and one that will continue to provide hours of entertainment in the years ahead.

Canon 5D MII; Sigma 105mm 2.8 macro lens; ISO 400; f10; 1/100^th

To say I took a hundred photos of starfish would be an understatement.

What’s wrong with my colour?

Ever noticed the colour of your printed digital image looks different from what you see on your computer? This is called colour management and a new ‘thing’ we have to contend with in the digital era.

It is basically all about the colour of light and how our different devices record this: some are better than others and hence that is always reflected in price.

Our digital images are made up of pixels and each of these pixels is described by a set of colour numbers. It’s all very mathematical and something most of us, including me, have struggled to understand.

What happens is every device (camera, monitor, printer, scanner) interprets colours in its own way and therefore gives different colour numbers for the same colour pixel. And this is when your images start to look very different from your computer to your print. Even each camera interprets colour in its own way. For example look at this same colour numbered pixel and the colours it displayed as:

 

Pixel from camera
93R 154G 186B

Same pixel colour number printed at Lab ‘X’ 

 Same pixel colour number printed at Lab ‘Y’

So what do we do? Our best bet is to try and manage our colour workflow. 

It is a complex area and at each level there are numerous things you can do: colour management is a field of its own and for many that’s a mine field not a daisy covered one!
Here’s a couple of tips to get you started.
Start with your camera settings and ask yourself where do you want your images to end up?

sRGB is a good place to start if your images are going to be used for the internet as it’s the colour space of an average uncalibrated computer.

Adobe RGB is at present, the largest colour space available to most DSLR cameras so is a good starting point for those who want to process their digital files and output to a printer as in make prints to hang on your wall.

If you are using Photoshop choose Photoshop to Manage Colours' in the Color Handling options to print from your computer to your printer.

If you are using a printing lab to print images, ask them for their printer profiles and match your screen to that.

Best of luck!

 

These two images below (both scanned off the prints) came from the same digital file yet printed totally different at two different printing labs.

It's vintage time in the Granite Belt

It's vintage time in the Granite Belt and Sam has a grin across his browned Italian face. 'The grapes are looking good this year,' he tells us as we load the camera bags and jump in the back of his 4WD for a tour of the vineyard.

We're at Golden Grove Estate Wines, south of Stanthorpe and just west of Ballandean, at the home of the Costanzo family. Growing grapes in this region is nothing new, it's been going now since for quite some time. The Granite Belt is dotted with wineries, enough to take up more than a day for a serious wine connoisseur. Luckily we found the time to pop in on one or two while there for some work recently. 

The cool summers and the high altitude of around 820 metres provides ideal growing conditions for many of the classic wine grape varieties Sam explains, as his voice is almost lost in the wind and the 4WD clunks into another gear as it climbs the first ridge. Sam is a keen photographer and also a Nikon use and being tempted, on the odd occasion, to a fermented grape juice, I think I may like Sam a lot.

Proud grape grower Sam shows off this years prime crop
near Ballandean in the Granite Belt

 

 The ripening grapes set to make a fine drop of red wine.

Across the road is a long time favourite of mine, Ballandean Estate Wines, Queensland's largest and oldest family owned and operated winery. The Puglisi family are seeing in their sixth generation soon and have much to be proud of.

It's good to catch up with Angelo's and Mary's daughter Leanne again after many years, though I initially think I have timed my visit too early as I suspect a slightly sore head from entertaining in the cellar the night before. As usual though Leanne is her bubbly self and we venture out to where the wine is being bottled, casks emptied and readied for the crop coming in.

In an unfortunate accident last year Ballandeans' storing cellar burnt to the ground taking with it 180,0000 bottles of wine and some of the best vintages seen from the property. As we chat i-phone photography (yes Anita that's right) Leanne is not so quick to show me the images of the smouldering, devastated mess the family were faced with in the early hours of that shocking morning. In true Puglisi style, the smile returns to her face and the attitude of 'things could have been worse' takes over. 'On and up as they say, at least no lives were lost, and this vintage is looking pretty good,' she says.

I spot a bottle of the 2007 vintage, another acclaimed year of which all but a few bottles were lost to the flames and purchase it. With this and along with my couple of bottles from Sam and his crew, I'll toast the Granite Belt, its wineries, fun loving families and high trap rock country.

If you have never been out this way do yourself a favour: there's loads more to do such as great bush walking, wildlife, National Parks, four wheel driving and heritage and history.

We'll bring you more over the next few months from this truly unique part of Queensland.

 Tasting at Ballandean Estate with Leanne.

Want more info

Ballandean Estate

Tel: (07) 4684 1226
www.ballandeanestate.com

Golden Grove Estate
Tel: (07) 4684 1291
www.goldengroveestate.com.au

Southern Downs Tourism
www.southerndownsholidays.com.au

Granite Belt Wine and Tourism Inc.
www.granitebeltwinecountry.com.au

Check out these events they hold:
Ballandean Estate: Opera at the Vineyard

Golden Grove Estate: Sicilian Vintage Lunch

View these giant historic casks at Ballandean Estate.