random photo spam

Next time I go to passionflower, I'm getting this drink. I don't care that it's all red and pink. For all I know, it could be a girls drink, but I don't care. In terms of presentation, this drink has won me over. Looks so nice.

Anyways, after passion flower for Jill's bday, I took this picture of the skyscraper. First thing that comes to mind is Bleach, where Ichigo is standing on the windows. He does something like talk and talk and talk. And then fly away.


Then travelling underground, I took this a picture of the MX stand. For many Sydney-siders, it's the epitome of afternoon information intake.


Earlier that day, I saw an old lady dressed up inthe uniform just like the people below. I thought she was cosplaying something I didn't know about.My funny guess is that they were the Chinese ANZ marching band, taking over Westpac grounds.

Come on band!! MARCH!!!

Mini-it

What would things look like if they were miniature.

Tilt Shift Maker tries to make it quickly possible for the general public. By choosing which areas to focus on, it blurs everything else, giving depth of field, and hence, the illusion of miniaturism. Check it out!!

I did a couple of tests, and here's how it came out:

So what do you think? Do they look convincing?

I had to process them a little further in Photoshop because the online application has limits, such as, objects in the foreground that fall into the "focused" areas will remain focused, and break the illusion.

I think the program works by increasing the highlights, reducing the shadows, and bringing the saturation to +25. It then does a Gaussian blur and masks out the focused areas. A tip is to use nice landscape shots. The illusion doesn't work for portraits or macro shots.

I guess it's quite interesting. Kept me entertained for a half an hour. I guess you really have to make yourself believe they are miniature though, especially for the ones you made yourself.

But nevertheless, good fun :D

Happy 2009 =D

!!!~ Happy New Year ~!!!

I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Years Eve.

I watched the fireworks this year from Pyrmont, and WOW, I was still amazed by the view of the place. It's a marvelous site, and it's not very packed, so that's definitely a good thing.

This year's celebrations was spent with Florence's brother+family, who came all the way from Adelaide to see the majestic Sydney fireworks. I chose Pyrmont because it was the most "family friendly area" without sacrificing a great location. So win on both balances.

This image pretty much shows how vacant the area was most of the day (until 7pm-ish when it became moderately packed)

Of course we weren't alone, and our 'neighbours' gradually filled up around us. There are some worth mentioning too.
We named the yellow shirted lady on the left hand side, "klitty woman". Basically she undresed herself for a sunbathe, except for her skirt, layed on her back, and therefore, revealing her "klitty" towards us. We were wondering if we should go tell that she was revealing herself to the world. We decided to let her be, and hope that she would clothe up before the kids arrived.

Then there were the 3 people further in front. I thought the person in the green singlet was a guy. When they finally turned around, it was a girl~!!! Okay... not important. But hey :) ... goes to show never judge a person by their clothes.

Anyways, more 'neighbours' came in, and set up a really huge area.
They reserved it all with those two big tarpolines, and I thought to myself. Hey!! I should do that next year. One tarpoline was pretty much the size of my 3 picnic blankets together, and.. it also means I need less objects to weigh down each corner.

There was also this guy on our right with two full chip DSLRs, each with an awesome 400mm lenses, mounted on tripods. I was so intimidated/dribbling-over-it that I forgot to take a picture.
When I saw it, I was like "dude, I gotta get me one of those lenses." Second thought was "DOH!! I forgot to bring my tripod"

Later on in the day, a sky writing plane spelt out BOSE across the sky. I later checked it out, and it's some Audio Equipment company. (oh, by the way, if you are working at BOSE, and see this blog entry, can I get some money for giving you advertising?)

Another advertising campaign was from Telstra, spelling out "Call Mum". The message worked, and I did call my mum later that night, but I don't think it made me think of changing to Telstra.


I thought it would be funny to take a picture of the harbour bridge passing time. From the same spot, using relatively the same exposure, I shot an image of the bridge every hour starting from 3.23pm. The time varied, and at times I forgot to take the picture, like the 7ish, 10ish, and 11ish.
And it's quite interesting to see how a matter of 12 minutes, between 8:18 and 8:30, made the sky go much darker. Just surreal!!!

Staying there for practically most of the day gave me opportunites to take pictures I usually couldn't be bothered too.

Such as this shot.

The wonderful moon in the clouds.

And I guess I wasn't the only one who realised the beauty of the sky.

When heading for a toilet break, I managed to take this shot. I don't know, it just seems lovely to me. It also reminds me of an Italian city. Can anyone tell me why?

Anyways, then came the spectacular fireworks.
The ones below are from the 9pm family fireworks, which were a blast~!!!

During the 9pm fireworks and the midnight countdown, Florence and I spent it playing with the little kiddies. They were insane. lol. But cute at the same time.

Then came the new year, and sure was it spectacular. I spent half the time taking shots of the fireworks.





And yup. That's the pictures :D~!!!!!! Hope you liked them.
Also, thanks to Florence who had to put up with my jokes all day. You pawr girl (XD).... Hope you and your family had a blast anyways :D

This year I'll be blogging up photos just as a way to showcase my work. Also, it's easier because I don't have to think of anything to write. lol.

Okay, looking forward to the new year!!!