Went down to La Perouse a little whie ago with a friend to kill some time. Took a few photos, but never really looked at them after they were uploaded onto the computer. The other night i stumbled across them again, and thought i’d try out some funky post processing on them. My skills with photoshop are very limited, as i dont spend much time on it at all, especially editing photos. I usually lose interest after about 5 minutes. Thats what attracts me to film photography, all the work is done for you! haha.. well not exactly, but you know what i mean.
Anyway, so this is one of the pictures i was working on. It’s still not 100% but thought i’d post it up anyway, as i kind of like it.
Oh, and if you dont know anything about La Perouse, here is some light reading for you : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Perouse,_New_South_Wales

Been going through the restored files on my old hard drive today and found some pictures i had totally forgotten about. They are all from my Asia trip last year, mostly in Japan though.
Its a nice finding old pictures you’d forgotten about

Yep, got another Olympus camera. This deal was too good to pass up. Its the OMSP (spot/program). Quite similar to my OM2n, however this has a few extra nifty features. First of all the most obvious one is that it has a spot meter for tricky lighting conditions. Yeah, its not as advanced as modern day metered cameras, but its still pretty decent. I’ve managed fine without spot metering in the past, but this new addition will create a few more opportunities now. Secondly it has an an LCD meter display instead of the meter needle in the OM2n. This should make things a hell of alot easier when shooting at night, as it’s given me problems in the past. Also it has a built in hot shoe, as opposed to the removable ones that were prone to cracking (mine never has though). Plus a full auto and a program mode, which i’ll try out eventually. Oh and last but not least, its black, which is just cool All of this, and its still the same size as my OM2n. The OM2SP (or OM2S) have never gained the same popularity as the OM1(n),OM2(n),OM3Ti and OM4Ti series cameras. They have the reputation of being unreliable, or eating up batteries etc. But im not sure how accurate these claims are, and i’ve spoken to professional camera repairers who in their far greater experience than mine agree. It may of got this reputation because it’s more or less based on the OM4 which contains some circuitry that cannot really be replaced if it fails. Because of that, it all of a sudden becomes a camera prone to faults, which is false. They do drain batteris doing nothing however, but i never store mine with the batteries in them anyway.
I think alot of the time camera geeks like to rubbish brands, models, techniques, etc for the sake of it. This is pretty clear on just about any camera forum or bulletin board you visit. The general consensus decides “yeah thats rubbish”, then opinionated keyboard warriors perpetuate the misconception, so someone says “i heard this isnt any good” “yeah i heard that too, must be true”. The Internet never lies hey! Generally these are same type of people who enjoy taking photos of brick walls and comparing barrel distortion and pixel density(for digital cameras), instead of going out to take photos of things with any real value/interest. Sure theres nothign wrong with comparing and testing equipment, but if thats all you do then you need to get a life. Anyway, enough talking crap. The more people think they’re no good, the cheaper i can get them for Here it is here, with a pristine 35-70mm zoom & lens hood, and pristine Sunpak Auto flash.. Actually everything is pristine, i doubt the camera has been used more than a few times. It also came with a huge amount of brochures and booklets all in this awesome retro bag that i’ll have to try and get a photo of.
Here are some quick photos of it all
Group shot:

New camera = new light seals… Actually these ones were pretty decent and probably would of been ok, But i had all the stuff infront of me so decided to change them all. Used nail polish remover this time to get rid of the old stuck on foam which worked so much better than the stuff i used last time…

Was pretty late at night, and the light in my room is useless so i had to shoot this at 800 iso.. Ugly digital grain galore… (You may notice i took the Gold sticker off the body, it was shitting me)

Well yep, it’s 2008 now… Where did 2007 go?
I hope everyone had a good time over the Christmas/New Year period. Mine was really good, and i’m now looking forward to all the surprises and challenges the new year will bring. I have quite a few personal goals that i hope i get though. I also hope this new year can allow me to take more/better photos. I have a few little projects i will be pursuing, so hopefully they turn out ok!
Oh, and i had a good end to 2007 when i found out one of my photos won a monthly challenge at Australian Photography.net
It was a really big surprise for me as i’ve never won anything (big or small) when it comes to photography. What was also more of a surprise was the fact my picture actually had the highest votes. As usually the most popular photographic subjects on the forum are landscapes and wildlife. Street photography isn’t very abundant.
Well below is the photo that won the November challenge for “slow shutter speed”. For a prize i’ll be getting an A1 photo print of my choice, just have to figure out what i want printed though!

Did this when i found my Kyoto photos the other day.. Similar style to my Shibuya street series.

Just stumbled on some pics i took when i was in Kyoto so thought i’d muck around with them a bit. I quite like how they turned out.

Just got a quick shot of the sunset out the back of the house the other night. It was pretty stunning. Spring and Summer always bring some very colourful sunsets. They’re usually quite impressive, and a nice end to the day.
I’m curious as to what the shot would look like with some HDR processing. Might give it a try when i get a shot with a more interesting composition.

I still have heaps of photos from my asia trip i havent really gone through yet.
These are some i took in Shibuya in Tokyo. Its a crazy place, so many aspects of it seem like you’re in the movie Bladerunner. There is so much activity goign on. People everywhere, TV screen flashing at you, the sound of seizure inducing Pachinko Parlors, and the alleys filled with “Love hotels”. Its a sensory overload and i thought it was fantastic
I tried out a Cross Processed effect with these. I found a Cross Processing action which worked ok, but i still did a fair bit of my own fine tuning..
I quite like how they turned out, hope you like some of them too.
I think they look considerably better in a larger size, but i just used the automated flickr resizing to post them up here.

These first 2 photos were taken from Starbucks above the intersection. It has the best view, but unfortunately alot of people bumping the bench i was resting the camera on!

EDIT : I’ve uploaded bigger versions now, and will do so with all of my future posts.