I took this shot of the Melbourne Skyline last night. As all Australia’s cities are on water I tried to get the same type of shot I have for Perth and Adelaide. Maybe in 2013 I will publish an Australian Skyline calendar with all the cities in it. We decided to go in on a Sunday as it was the best chance to get free parking near the city. We parked near the Kensington train station and as it was a nice evening we chose to walk into the city. After taking this shot we wandered around the city for a while and found a very reasonably priced place to eat called Equinox. We are now back at our usual truck stop between Melbourne and Geelong and are making the daily pilgrimage to nearby libraries to use their free internet and look for work. I got a response from one today. Its a freelance photography position for the Australian National Construction Review. They seemed more interested in the quality of my camera and if it had a full frame sensor than if I knew how to use it. So its lucky I upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark II before I left for Australia or they would not have been offered me the job.

We have fixed our van and are preparing  to leave Adelaide tomorrow morning. We have had a great time here and have been made most welcome by Val’s friend Blan who took us for a wonderful dinner at The Hackney Hotel. We can highly recommend the Windsor Caravan Park as everybody was really helpful and the setting is lovely. We are looking forward to the Great Ocean Drive down to Melbourne.

We have been living on the edge of Adelaide for a few days now. As with any city at festival time, accommodation and parking becomes more scarce. I have done my first big service on our van as we have done 10,000km since buying it in Perth. With help from generous fellow travellers I changed the oil, oil filter, air filter, points, spark plugs and generally lubricated the van. It’s running so smooth now it keeps going after I take the key out! This problem is yet to be solved. Any advice? Yesterday we moved from the free campsite at Parham 70km out of town to a paid site 10km from the city at Glenelg. This is partly due to the overwhelming need for a shower and also to be on a bus route into the city. We have been into Adelaide twice now. One quick drive through and walk through the Botanical gardens and last night for some food and to check out the Fringe. Tonight we hope to go to Womadelaide to celebrate my birthday.

This is Twelve Mile Beach. It is the campsite we stayed at when we first arrived in Hopetoun. Like many places in Western Australia there are no free campsites within a certain distance of the town. Twelve Mile is far enough out of town that you can stay there for free. I had to wait a couple of weeks to get a shot of a full moon to composite in. As it is a local shot I may get it framed for The Deck Gallery but I do not know how well photoshop trickery sells in print. What do you think?

We have gone inland to the Goldfields of Western Australia. This train passed by our outback campsite last night pulling 135 cars full of ore from the Kalgoorlie mines. We celebrated Karen’s birthday by checking in to a powered campervan site in Kambalda with hot showers. Tomorrow she has been promised a shopping trip to the gem stone and gold capital of Western Australia. It’s a good thing I start work in three weeks.

This shot of the Perth Skyline was taken at the end of our first day in Western Australia. The 30 hour journey to Australia via Singapore went fairly smoothly with the exception of Heathrow security who almost caused us to miss our first flight by holding us up when they discovered the metal in Karen’s leg and then swabbing my phone for explosives. It was raining when we arrived at 1am but it had all cleared by the following morning. At this point I would normally go into the all details of how this image was shot and processed however while we are travelling this Photoblog will be more of a Travel Journal like the Egypt Blog rather than A Photoshop tricks and tips study. If any regular readers wish to know how images were created please leave a comment and I will be more than happy to go into the details and the Photoshop layers used.

After removing all the logos and trademarks from the building this image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for high resolution download here.

This lucky shot was taken on the way home from the Ferry Meadows firework display. The only reason the four figures are not blurred in this 1 second exposure was that they stopped for a moment while their friend in the centre took a shot. Anyone in the right place at the right time with the perfect light has the chance to capture a great shot. As you learn more about photography you can increase the frequency of capturing these images. If you are an amateur photographer you could benefit from selling your work online. It is no coincidence the rise of micro stock agencies has coincided with the increase of the photography hobbyist. I can understand why professional photographers would be concerned with current changes to the stock industry. Crowd sourcing images has inherent advantages. Stock photography sites never reject images without a reason and suggestions to improve your photography. If you can take criticism it can be an invaluable learning tool. Professional photographers would probably find rejection far harder to stomach especially if they had been used to selling their work for much more at traditional stock agencies. The image below greets you when you login to shutterstock as a submitter. It shows where your latest sales have come from. Interestingly none of them have sold in the countries they were taken in.

This image shows what you can do by compositing images in photoshop. I started with a shot of me biting into a ball. This shot of the moon was added on a layer above and a mask was applied to reveal it where necessary. A quick google search for “star field” found the background. Another mask was applied and the composition was complete.

This was taken near Luxor in Egypt. The image was processed using Photoshops Camera RAW developer. The effect was created using the inbuilt split toning feature in Camera RAW. You access the panel by clicking on the icon which looks like an = sign after you open your RAW file. It’s useful to know when adjusting the saturation slider it acts just like an opacity slider. You can blend it between original image colour and the hues you have set for the highlights and shadows. The balance slider is really a midpoint. It defines the crossover between highlight and shadow. In this case a warm hue was added to the highlights to give the effect of sunset. A subtle blue was added to the shadows. Finally a vignetting was added.

This was the venue of my cousin Nikki and Paul’s Wedding reception. This shot of the Carlton Mitre was taken from the bridge. I tried a few settings and found a 1/6sec produced the best results getting sharp reflections and enough light. A small tripod was also used to get this shot.