Robert's Ramblings

I took some quite ordinary photos at the beach yesterday and was about to throw them forever into the eternal pit of hard drive wilderness but then decided instead to play around a little first. Inspired by some of the photographic art of Stephen Kiernan, I took a very average JPG photo with blown out exposure and all sorts of other faults. The only thing going for it was that I liked the composition.

I then started plying around disrespectfully with the controls of my photo editing program. Colour saturation was the first casualty, set to maximum. I played around with the gamma on individual colour channels and finally did a little colour replacement. All very uncool things to do to a photograph but the result is quite interesting.



For some really stunning examples of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, visit Stephen's Flickr Stream and let me know what you think.

Until the next post, take care out there and keep doing stuff ( if that's what you do! ) ...Robert

Just in case any of you wondered, yes I do take photographs on dry land from time to time.

I had just finished a tutorial in lighting and was eager to try out some new ideas. Looking around the room I spied a beautiful vase of lilies Jennifer had bought to brighten up the house. A likely candidate I thought and started playing with various combinations of natural light, strobe light and composistion.

This final image was made using mostly strobe light bounced off the ceiling with only a small amount of natural daylight coming in through the windows. The dark background is from the dining room table.

Until the next post, take care out there and keep taking fantastic photos ( if that's what you're into! ) ...Robert

Photo: Robert Rath 40D 1/15s at f/6.3 ISO500, Zoom 73mm, Strobe + Natural Light

Well the new Rapid Bay Jetty has been open now for a few weeks and I can honestly say it is worth the wait and worth the cost.

I have been diving Rapid Bay Jetty for more years than I care to remember. I remember the long walk to the old T-section and the original diver's platform. Back then you would cart your day's diving gear out in the morning, set up camp and dive and enjoy surface intervals right there where you jumped in the water. All that came to an end with the closure of the old jetty some years back.

For many years now diving the jetty has meant an ankle twisting rocky shore entry and exit and a very long swim out and back leaving little strength or enthusiasm for multiple dives. That has all changed now with the opening of the new jetty along side the old one.

The new jetty runs parallel to the old one and for about half the original jetty's length providing a nice easy walk from the car park to the new divers platform. The divers platform has been staged so that there is 'walk in' access over quite a range of tide heights. On a really low tide you might need to use the ladder on the bottom platform. All this beats scrambling over an unstable rocky beach by far.

Rapid Bay Jetty is a wonderful dive and a photographer's dream when the visibility is good. It is famous as a haunt for Leafy Seadragons and attracts visitors from all over the world who come to see these fantastic creatures. With the new jetty they can now dive in safety and comfort.

Until the next post, take care out there and keep diving ( if that's what you do! ) ...Robert

Photo: Robert Rath C7070 1/125s at f/2.8 ISO100, Inon D2000 Strobe + Natural Light, Jetty - Courtesy ten.com.au

All my friends know I love gadgets and so it will come as no surprise that Jennifer gave me a very, very cool gadget for my birthday called a 'Chumby'.

What is a Chumby? Well it kind of looks like a little bean bag with a LCD screen. The real question is what can you do with a Chumby or more importanly what can a Chumby do for you?

Wired magazine dubbed chumby one of the cool gadgets of 2008, praising it for bringing "the friendlier face of the Internet into our homes...it did it while disguised as a teddy bear for the 21st century".

The first thing my Chumby did on being brought to life was to show the time in San Diego and stream snippets of late night American chat shows. Impressive but not useful. However after a short time my Chumby, renamed Scuby, was showing my Facebook updates and streaming my favourite podcast at Killer Innovations.

So a Chumby is a WiFi multi-media marvel in a bean bag. It will sit on your desk, the mantelpiece or by the side of your bed and do what ever you want it to do. Just install the widgets you like or roll your own as it is fully 'open source'.

Until the next post, take care out there and keep playing with gadgets ( if that's what you do! ) ...Robert

The Weedy Seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus , is also one of our two famous and unique Southern Australian seadragons.

There is much debate in our diving community here in Adelaide if the Weedy Seadragon is more common than the Leafy Seadragon. I guess that depends on where you dive. In my experience with shore based shallow diving here in South Australia I would say that the Leafy Seadragon is more common and the Weedy Seadragon is less common. On deeper off-shore reefs I have only ever found Weedy Seadragons. Even so, I have dived other parts of Australia where I have seen plenty of Weedy Seadragons in shallow shore based diving. In any case these dragons are hard to see even when right in front of you due to their magnificent camouflage.

This photo was taken at Victor Harbor a couple of weekends ago. It was a juvenile, around 10cm in length and was spotted by my dive buddy. Note that this little dragon is all covered in white silt! Many thanks to my buddy who left both of us in a cloud of muck and silt has he raced off after a cowfish swimming past. Note to non-photographer dive buddies; be aware of your fins and fragile bottoms!!

Until the next post, take care out there and keep diving ( if that's what you do! ) ...Robert

Photo: Robert Rath C7070 1/90s at f/8.0 ISO100, Inon UCL165AD Macro Lens, Inon D2000 Strobe + Natural Light