Waaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddddduhh in Brisbane

Hi ho neighbourinos,

Thought I'd test out my brand new (and by brand new I mean second hand mint condition) 14-24mm f2.8 lens that I bought from a man in his black mercedes by the side of the road of the Melbourne museum in Carlton, Melbourne - cause thats how I buy..... legit of course ; )

BTW: I f you think I'm joking.... Im not - thats seriously how I bought it. I visited Camera Lane (Top quality Second hand heaven if you go there in person) and was referred to this merchant banker dude who happened to be selling it and yeah I got it for a pretty awesome price, while all at the same time looking real dodgy like some kind of drug deal. It was an experience that I won't forget in a hurry.

Anyway I thought it wouldn't be proper if I let it collect dust so I decided to try it out on someone's balls:

At the treasury! So my mate Dan and myself went into the CBD to take some shots. I first started playing around with the zoom a bit - turns out that once you have a super wide lens you tend to just start zooming all the way out at 14mm, cause is just Waaay too irresistable to do so. I thought I'd try getting in close to the balls and see what would come of it - and I really liked the way they turned out:

It sorta looked like something from transformers or Tron (or other machinery type movie for the sheltered uninitiated people out there) So what I did is under exposed by a stop/stop and a half and just snap away. All of these were at f2.8 @ ISO 1000.

Then I got the idea that would make it look like an egg from Alien or something...

And here it is more exposed

I then thought of using the opening lines to make it look like the spine of a monster - seriously these balls are sort of a stainless steel colour and look pretty during the day. 

 Afterwards we headed to King George Square to take a shot at City Hall

The thing is I took quite a few shots here, but I just thought the deep blue looked the best against the orange/red light of the hall. Had to wait about 2 mins for the colours to fully cycle around. Then after awhile I thought of using a technique that I hadn't used in ages (since I last owned a point and shoot) and that was shutter drag..

I really liked how this last one turned out.  It reminds me sorta of those long exposures at night that you see with the circular light trails in the sky from the earth's rotation.

This has also reminded me on some of the crazy techniques that I tried out in my fledgling photographer with a point-and-shoot days. You know every photographer has that similar experience when they first start liking photography and they start taking close up photos of flowers and think "Wow I'm awesome!"  when "really its not" - Stages of a photographer 

Anyways thats it from me - Gotta look at fixing the car now :S I think its gone to greet its maker*sniff*

Az