Day 309: End Of The Day

I had a big day at Philip Island today. It was a full day of California Superbike School with a heap of sessions on track and an equivalent number of session s in the class room. The weather was perfect, clear skies, sunshine and not too much wind.

The class room sessions are packed in between the on track time with barely 10 minutes for a debrief with the instructor before needing to be in class, this doesn't leave any time for putting bikes up on stands, fitting tyre warmers and plugging them in. I was a little worried about the effect his would have on my new rear tyre and also about how the first couple of laps would feel while the tyres were working their way up to the right temperature and pressure levels. It was ok, the tyres only felt mushy for the first half a lap or so and the wear seemed to be ok, certainly better than it was before I had the suspension sorted by Laurie.

Because it was so busy I really didn't have a chance to take any photos on my new camera, so tonight after a few beers with Pete & Andy and while getting organised for dinner I took this one. It's the view from the house we've rented, the sunset was pretty spectacular and the new camera has done a decent job to capture it. The best thing about today was knowing I'd be back on the track again first thing tomorrow morning.

Day 251: Daydream Dusk

After a full morning packed with corporate team building type stuff focussed on collaboration, lateral thinking, resourcefulness and a weird pirate/survivor theme, work put on a great lunch and gave us the afternoon to ourselves.

I spent most of my afternoon underwater on my first ever Scuba Dive, it was fantastic. Being my first time I had some extra briefing before getting into the water and also some extra attention while in the water. As we waded in, I was shown how to clear water from my goggles while still underwater and also how to blow any water out of the mouth piece (I'm sure it has a proper name...) just in case it came out of my mouth. Then there was the dive where I had to hold hands with the pretty Swedish girl who was there to make sure I was OK 10 meters under the surface. The visibility was around 5 meters (another reason I had to hold hands with the dive instructor) so a lot of the fish were only shadows until you got up close to them and could see them in their full colour, there were a lot of them too. Most of them would have made a decent meal too, I was surprised at how many and how large the fish were just off the shore in the coral at this end of the island.

My photo today was taken after the dive, a few quiet beers and a wander around the island. It was taken from the rocky bay that we waded into for the Scuba Dive. I took a bunch of these, playing with the settings on the camera but I chose this one because I managed to capture a seabird flying above the sun. This was, of course, pure and unadulterated fluke.

Day 172: Industrial Sunset

On the way to pick Henry up from daycare today I noticed the sky was looking particularly impressive so I pulled in at the new section of Fyshwick (where DFO is) and stopped where they've fenced off an area for a new building. There also happened to be a decent sized puddle in front of the fence which offered a nice reflection of the sky and the temporary metal fencing.

I didn't need to do too much to this photo because the colours were already so vivid, I did dial up the contrast a little though just to strengthen the silhouette effect and I adjusted the saturation a little to bring out a little more blue in the sky.

Day 75: A Mint Sunset

On the way home from the pub this evening having still not taken a photo for the day, I thought I'd take advantage a cloud formation that was obscuring the sun as it was setting. I was heading down Adelaide Avenue from the City so I decided to turn off toward the Royal Australian Mint where I could take the photo from the sport fields that adjoin the Mint's car park.

I felt a lot of uncertainty as to how the photo would actually turn out as I was shooting directly into the sun and the tiny little screen on the hand-me-down Canon gives very little indication. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the photo, of course I've tweaked the image with a little of Snapseed's Drama setting.