Category Archives: Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge

Looking out our tent: the view to the left - trees
Sally D's Mobile Photography Challenge, Travels

Sally D’s mobile photo challenge: Travel

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Challenger’s Choice. Sally has a fascinating pair of photos in her entry this week (as usual)

 4th Monday Challenger’s Choice (Pick One: Abstraction, Animals, Architecture, Food Photography, Night Photography, Objects, Panorama, Portraiture, Still Life, Street Photography, and Travel).

I took three cameras with me on our recent holiday to Condo – the Nikon D3000 DSLR  and the Nokia Lumia 520 & 530 window phones. I use the 530 as a phone and camera, and the 520 as a camera only. I used to be satisfied with the macro images produced by the latter before the Nikon arrived.

Condobolin is near the geographical centre of New South Wales and is a six hour drive from my home in Central Victoria, plus stoppages.

 

Our tent

Our tent, displaying our rubbish bags (yes, we recycled). We sort of spread over sites 9 & 10. My sister-in-law gave me an Elders (a stock agency) chair when I had mishap with mine. We didn’t set up facing the river because it was more private facing the other way.

 

 

We set up our tent in the Condobolin Caravan Park, arriving the Thursday afternoon and leaving Easter Monday morning.  The bathroom facilities were clean and modern and the grounds well maintained. The Lachlan River frontage was a bit of a disappointment, though the weir was pretty. Our power lead was too short to set up the tent beyond the range of errant tree limbs so we set up on a caravan site.

We could have had a concrete patio, but didn’t think of that. The featured image (top) shows you the view on our left as we looked out from the front doorway.

My brother turned up to help put up the tent. A little awkward – apart from those valuable 45 minutes last October, I hadn’t seen him since 1988. Neither of us really knew what to expect from the other. A few phone conversations isn’t the same as the reality of face-to-face. We have lost two siblings now. We needed this time together before it was too late.

 

 

looking towards the amenities

Looking to the right . We didn’t have lush green grass under us. The caretakers were a bit zealous: mowing and whipper-snipping on an Easter Sunday!

 

Below is a very happy me on Easter Sunday when we had our photo session. I really must do something about getting new dentures, and it is always a shock to see how much weight I carry. I also must learn not to talk when people are taking pictures. Just shut up woman!

 

me

a very happy me, with my very tall bro’

 

Easter Chocolate?  I had one block of 70% cocoa chocolate. I managed to make it last several days. I indulged in a bottle of Merlot given to me at Christmas, and had the obligatory stubby of beer after setting up the tent.

You can expect more  about my trip tomorrow.  

I haven’t done a thing with my novel for over a week. I can’t see how I will meet my self-imposed deadline mid-April. Yeah … bet not one of you is surprised.

Have a good day.   🙂

(All images taken with the Nokia Lumia 520.)

 

 

 

 

 

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FastStone: Cockatoos with Frames and Bump Map effect
Birds, Sally D's Mobile Photography Challenge

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Cockatoos

I know, I know – I’ve already posted today and I did Sally D’s challenge just the other day. I’m trying to stay on top of things (in other words I’m putting off my editing until later).

4th Monday Challenger’s Choice (Pick One: Abstraction, Animals, Architecture, Food Photography, Night Photography, Objects, Panorama, Portraiture, Still Life, Street Photography, and Travel).

5th Monday: Editing and Processing with Various Apps Using Themes from the Fourth Week.

 

cockieseffects

This is the original photo, I thought the sharp contrasts could prove interesting (Nokia Lumia 530, cropped in IrfanView)

I’ve played about with the effects one can get with IrfanView on the PC before. I don’t use phone apps, except for cropping and sending direct to the blog sometimes, or to Instagram now and then.

I decided to have a play with the FastStone Image Viewer (free) and am rapt with the results.

Continue reading →

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Historic Buildings, Sally D's Mobile Photography Challenge

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge (B & W): Helenslee

The first time I laid eyes on this building in our main street, I thought Bates house. I had no actual memory of what the Psycho House aka Bates Motel really looked like, but something from the single viewing of that movie stirs whenever I see this building.

The timber sections of this building are to be demolished. I worried that I wouldn’t get around to taking photographs before that happened. I eventually pulled up on the way home from work and got out the trusty Nokia Lumia 530 windows phone.

house

You can see the old wood lath construction in the walls where some outer cladding had been removed.

house2

This stone section  is the only part of the building under protection. One of the first buildings built in Heathcote, it will be repurposed as a Cellar Door for a local winery. A new accommodation wing will be joined via a glazed section. Sounds interesting, and it’s wonderful that this old building gets restored to its former Georgian grandeur. (The Heathcote Region produces some of the best Shiraz in Australia.)

house3

The Victorian Heritage Database says …

The former survey office at Heathcote was built in 1854 for Phillip Chauncy (1816-80), who was sent to the McIvor goldfield district in 1853 as surveyor-in-chief. … Gold had been discovered at McIvor Creek in 1852, there was a short-lived rush to the area in 1853…  After 1860 the survey building became redundant and it was bought in 1872 by Frederick Spinks, the owner of the local store, who made substantial timber additions to the stone building for use as a residence, which he named Helenslee. It was described then as having nine rooms, a cellar and outbuildings, a notable garden and a tennis court. In 1896 it was bought by a local doctor, Alfred Esler, who made further additions, and from then until 1968 it was owned by a series of medical practitioners who used it as a residence and surgery, following which it again became a private residence. …

 

house4

I converted these images to black-and-white for Sally D’s Mobile Photography challenge. and optimized them for the web. I was reluctant to do any cropping, so I didn’t.

I hope you are having a good day.   🙂

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