Northern Beaches

Dec

2012

Lens Testing at Oxford Falls Downhill Track

Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

A couple of months ago I handed in my 28-300mm L lens to my local repair centre. It had been a long time since it had been serviced and it certainly gets enough abuse. It had a broken roller and wasn’t moving through the focus range smoothly. They were quick and prompt with the service getting it back to me before the week ended. I was quite happy with the service until I actually came to use it. From what was a broken roller I now had issues with my aperture, my image stabiliser and the lock that let me keep the lens shut. After jumping up and down in frustration at the camera repair man who more or less told me it was all in my imagination I took my lens directly to Canon. Almost 4 weeks later and nearly $1000 out of pocket I got it back so this weekend was spent putting it through its paces to make sure that it was all running smoothly again.

I spent a few hours on Saturday and a few on Sunday up at Oxford Falls downhill trails just shooting with a few friends and a couple of random riders. Quite happy with the shots. It’s great to have my old faithful back again and Canon, despite taking a silly amount of time to repair the lens, have done a great job at fixing, it. Thanks to all who were there and let me shoot them.

Enjoy.

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

: Downhill, Oxford Falls, Australia

Sep

2010

Mountain Biking and Flashing

With studying lighting at school I thought I should take my new found knowledge into the field. A friend, John Harbord, has been kind enough to volunteer his skills on a mountainbike. We took the show up to Oxford Falls in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area. Also met up with another friend, Josh a BMXer, at the nearby Freedom Jumps. The following is a few of the shots.

: John Harbord hitting one of the jumps at Oxford Falls in Sydney’s North.

Mar

2010

Dirt Sessions

: Dirt Sessions, Sydney, Australia

Finally managed to link up with some guys hitting the dirt jumps on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and had a great day shooting with them. They had a bit of a jam session and invited me along to get a few shots. Around 30 people turned up at different stages throughout the day and a lot of riding done. Many thanks to Josh for giving me the heads up and thanks to all who were there and kind enough to let me shoot. Cheers guys. Continue reading →

Jun

2009

Out with the old…….but to where?

Finally, I have got a new computer. It has been a long slow painful wait for it to arrive but arrive it did and now I am trying to get myself back on track again. Not being a computer expert I am not quite sure what happened to my old one. I’m guessing the warranty had run out It’s usually around this time that everything starts to go wrong. It started with the keyboard falling apart, first the left click button and then the letter ‘o’ just ceased to work anymore. Then my processors didn’t seem overly happy to be working, taking around about 10 minutes to open up a photo never mind trying to edit it. To top it all off the drivers that ran the graphics started playing up and kept crashing my screen. I am sure there is someone out there who will read this and go “oh that sounds like a classic case of blah blah blah and all he really needed to do was blah blah blah and all would be right again.”

So far the only problem that I find with my new computer is the keys. After using a European keyboard for so long I tend to keep mixing up the Y and the Z button. All in all though i am enjoying my new toy.

You should expect to see lots of new photos on my website soon as I make a desperate attempt to catch up now that I have fallen so far behind. It’s really quite amazing how many little shortcuts and passwords are on your computer that you suddenly miss.

On an interesting note my local councils in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney have decided to stop collecting E-waste such as computers television and so on. This is an environmental initiative in order to stop the leaching of chemicals from resistors and chips as they break down in the land-fill areas. The councils believe that if they stop collecting the e-waste then the onus will fall upon the producers to stop creating said chips and resistors and replace them with environmental friendly ones instead. Although it seems like their hearts are in the right place there seems to me to be a few flaws in the councils plan. The companies that produce the computers and such are not based in my local. Sure there is a few offices nearby but the head are all in some other country and no doubt, at this early stage of the initiative, completely oblivious to the councils attempt at strong-arming them into action. The councils have offered no replacement for the collection of e-waste which means instead of being collected and stored together things will now just be dumped in bush, by the side of the road, wherever people can get rid of things. Surely if you remove a service like rubbish removal then it should be replaced with a solution and not just a statement to say “we are not going to collect it anymore” fullstop.

It is possible to recycle a large amount of E-waste. Granted not all. When then instead of refusing to collect it not set up a recycling plant or initiate a plan whereby it will be sent to be recycled. I think that instead of fixing the problem they have just washed their hands of the whole thing and that the best that we could hope for is that consumerism and wanton waste of such product would go decrease.