20 INCH MUD TIRES

Even though my cameras changed, shooting condition changed, the Lightening that 6 yrs ago & 6 yrs later aren't different. Me either. But through these two far away places, Northern China and East Australia, I realised someone care this a lot. Because I just love this activity.

The second half picture which I was taken days ago that just recall my high school memory, shooting my first lightening picture in my life ever. That's a alone midnight, mum n dad were sleeping. while I plug my camera in the power and stick in the front of my little window. I used Firework mode in my SONY P-10 camera which have smaller aperture, longer shutter and lower ISO. I push the shutter every 30 seconds, where the camera has to process a little bit between two shot. After one hour, the time was 2:32AM in the mining. I felt tired checking the screen showed black sky again and again. Really I wanted to give up. But once I started sth, I have to finalise a result which would satisfied myself. I was lucky. Suddenly a lightening flashed right there, at that moment my camera was exactly exposing! omg! I almost shout out to check out the picture in my camera. Then I simply put a "lock " on it to make sure its secure. Thank god! I smile, only give myself a big smile, really pleasant smile before I went to bed. Efforts turns into happiness. Although I forgot to setup a high resolution (the original photo size is only 300kB w/ 1280*960, very similar to a downloaded wallpaper lol), but it just worth it! :)

There is another story behind the second half picture. I had been looking for while in that crazy lightening raining to make sure which place could have the most frequency of lightening. Then I picked two chars and bridge half of my house window between them to make a temporary Look-through-roof safe house in my front yard. Yes, the glass window in the wall that you pull again and again day by day. Seriously if my room mates see this, they will call the cop really. But sometimes people have to make decisions by their insane thoughts and they had fallen asleep at midnight time hopefully. I squatted under that roof for one hour (w/out food and water lol), shooting w/ SONY A300 & TX5 camera. While I was waiting noise reduction process after bulb shutter, I used TX5 taking some videos photos dick around a little bit although I got wet. All weather camera performs so nice in bad weather! Lot of fun have to say! Due to my DSLR's screen had broken for almost two years, I took quite a lot of pics which I though there should be at least one has captured a lightening. That's the one you saw above. Thank god, I'm lucky.

There must be something drive you to be active everyday, maybe your nice girlfriend, your silly assignments, your crazy avocations. For me, it's photos. I learn a lot from my photos, during making photos. There's one guy I'd like to mention, who leads me into the world of photography, although he said shooting photos was affecting my major subjects. Thank you Dad!

Ears erect, and twitchy...eyes following my every step - ready to throw the emergency switch and bolt if I step too close - which is all very un-necessary as all I want to do is to take photos....but he doesn't know that
Look at the size of his thick tail! Extremely powerful and muscular, as is the trunk of this magnificent Eastern Grey kangaroo.

I had ummed and ahhed about going for a walk this afternoon as it was a cool day, with a cold breeze and threatening skies (and I was quite tired) but was very glad I did walk - to see this fellow and his missus and child was a treat.

This series of shots was taken at distance - probably 30 metres away, as these Eastern Grey kangaroos are wild and free, and extremely wary of people - and will bolt if they feel remotely threatened.

I did extremely well to get this close! They saw me and I saw them from perhaps 100 metres away - the HUGE male, the tallest Eastern Grey kangaroo I have ever seen - I'm guessing about 1.8m tall (6 foot) was standing fully upright in the middle of this very large open field when I came from the Pound Bend river track to the bottom corner of this field.
There was no way to sneak up - it saw me before I even opened the gate, so all I could do was to walk very very very very slowly......and keeping my head away from the roos, all the time hoping that this would allow me to get close enough to camera range.
This strategy actually worked! I was able to close the gap between us to about 30 metres, still too far away with just a point and shoot camera, and no tripod, but at least I could get some shots!
I was walking along the walking track on the western edge of this field, so I was only indirectly approaching the roos, who were some 30 metres from this edge.
In fact I overshot the best position to try to convince the roos that I was not interested in them at all….don’t know that it worked that well, but I did get much closer than I thought I would!


Warrandyte State Park, Pound Bend, Victoria, Australia