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Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

Reflections of a heterodox conservationist

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Introduction

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This site largely reflects my interest in wildlife and its conservation, and tends to have an NZ and Australian focus. I tend to have a fairly pragmatic view towards conservation- and have often ended up playing* with the less iconic species- crocodiles, creepy-crawlies etc

I'm also taking a more serious interest in the photography of nature and wildlife. I'm in the process:smile: of making some of my popular shots available on a different site- just follow this chthoniid link.

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*Technically not playing, but researching and studying, often in the more obscure and humid parts of the world.

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See which countries I've visited so far

map below

Read more...

Dady-long-legs Photos

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A couple of the introduced, cosmopolitan and completely harmless Pholcus phalangiodes

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Some portait shots from Friday morning

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I organised a photo session on Friday morning of some of my colleagues. I've put together this little flash-show of the results.

Click "play" if you want to see :smile:


30th anniversary of the Walkman

The original Sony walkman went on sale on 1st July in Japan thirty-years ago.

I'm still using the walkman. I bought myself a new MP3-style Walkman just before Xmas (not an Ipod).

I went for the 8 GB, video version. Great choice, albeit I would skip the noise-cancelling version. That function isn't really worth it.

The nice things about the player is the grunty battery life (better than the equivalent Ipod) and pressed aluminium shell body. This is intended as a travel companion so I didn't want anything plasticky.

It is also multi-format. It plays MP3, AAC (for Itunes) and WMA. Likewise the video formats include WMV, H.264 and MP4. Powers up nicely on just a USB cable.

Sound quality is also very good, and being an old hand with computers, lets you use a simple drag-and-drop system for moving files over from the computer.

The main idea is that it replaces my PSP as a multimedia tool when travelling. Seriously, I can't cope with more than about 10 minutes of poppy Chinese pop music. So, the walkman lets me bring (in a much more portable fashion) the music that keeps me sane.

The video is not as good as the PSP, but the PSP is a lot bulkier and with a lesser battery life. The reality however, is that most of the time I listen to music when travelling- not watching videos. And the walkman has a far better music management system and better sound quality. So it wins out where it matters the most.




twitter

I've also joined the weird and wonderful..and weird, world of twitter.
Lets's see how long it lasts :smile:

You can follow me at twitter

Closeup Beetle Shot

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Just to give you some idea of how much detail can be captured with the gear I use.

Night photos- beetles

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A couple of beetle shots from tonight.

All I needed was my α700, a Tamron 90/2.8, a Raynox 6x magnifier, a Sigma EM-140 ringlight flash, a Sony HVL-58 flash, a Sony HVL-R20 video light and a Manfrotto 330B macro bracket. See, taking nocturnal macro photos is easy :smile:

My preferred shot


The three reflective hot-spots in the eye correspond to my two flashes.

Nice pose, but too much reflection on the head

Work-In-Progress: The Bride v3

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Okay, for this shot I've gone for a 3:2 aspect ratio (like the original), masked the bride while blurring the background, added a slight glow in a new layer, then a smaller white vignette in a third layer (but applied a graduated mask to preserve the detail of the dress).



Still need to do some work to get the colour balance right, and have some more work on the masking of the bride to preserve the details of the hair and earrings (the last part takes a lot of patience).

Mucking around with old photos

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Last year I got a nice shot of a Miao bride in Yunnan, but in the quest to improvise a reflector, ended up with a very ugly background to the shot. (Lighting was very dim, but I didn't have a 'fast' prime lens with me.)

Original


I've been trying out the new Tiffen Dfx filter software, and this looks a little more promising. Here I blurred the photo, added a mask around the subject, and then softened it further with a vignette.

New


I still need to work on the masking in the second shot, but I think it's already improved this shot immensely :smile: