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?

This is a composite of Fanny Cove, Roo Sign and Frame Heads. It is going to be used as a design for a Stubby Holder which is a neoprene sleeve which Australians use to keep their beer cold and hands warm. Although all the images are from Western Australia I have tried to make it as generic as possible so it can be sold all over Australia. Any comments are welcome before it goes into mass production this week.

We have been quite lucky recently as every time we have had a Friday off together it has been the hottest day of the week. This week Chris and Carole from The Deck gave us use of their 4×4 for the day so we could explore some of the more remote areas East of Hopetoun. This is Fanny Cove in the Stokes National Park which can only be reached via a 4×4 track. I’m sure our van would not have got far and given the lack of traffic it could have been a long wait for rescue. The Toyota Landcruiser made light work of the terrain giving us the chance to snorkel this secluded cove.

This was taken at the groyne in Hopetoun yesterday. Fishing is a popular sport in Australia and there are usually around a dozen people fishing at sunset in Hopetoun each night. The time here has flown by and its hard to believe we are half way through our six weeks work here. We have both really enjoyed working at The Deck and will miss it when we go. I’ve been updating The Decks Website this year and have just put the new site online. I have a few more bits to add but most of it is there. Let me know what you think.

This is Native Dog Beach in Bremer Bay which we visited after Christmas. Bremer is the nearest coastal town to Hopetoun if you travel west. It looked close enough on the map but involved a 320 mile round trip around the Fitzgerald National Park. In hindsight it was a long way to go when Hopetoun is surrounded by miles of white sandy beaches. It was good to give the van a run as its not moved for a fortnight but we will probably stick to more local attractions for the rest of January while we are living here.

We saw this stingray on our walk along Four mile beach on Sunday. I followed it for a while trying to get a good shot of it. They have the ability to disappear under the sand at a moments notice. This one did not seem to mind me snapping away as it glided along the shallows at a slow walking pace.  One problem with shooting through a zoom lens is you have no reference for how close you actually are to the subject. I had to keep peering over my camera to make sure I did not step on it. Although not generally aggressive towards humans they are related to sharks and if they feel threatened they can strike out with a venomous barb in their tail. Fatal attacks have been known, most famously on former Aussie crocodile wrangler Steve Irwin, but generally a stingray attack will only result in a severe disinclination to boogie.

Stingray Video

This is Sammy the sealion, Local resident of Esperance who comes ashore around midday to look at the tourists on the pier. Other residents include the remnants of Skylab which crashed to earth here in 1979 (The Australians fined the Americans $400 dollars for littering) and Doug and Ettie who were good enough to let us stay in their gorgeous home for a couple of days. Thanks to you both. Since the last post we have both been offered a job at The Deck in Hopetoun for six weeks. It was a hard decision as it meant giving up fireworks in Sydney which we had both been looking forward to. As we are not here for an extended holiday we could not justify turning down the work and it does include a nice little cabin near the beach and free internet. This change of plan also means we can spend more time in Western Australia as the job does not start for 3 weeks. From here we are going to do a big loop inland to Norseman, Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Southern Cross and Merredin before heading back to Hopetoun. We should start crossing the Nullarbor in February next year.

This image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for high resolution download here.

This is Stockton Lake near Collie which was our third camp site after stopping at Ironstone Gully Falls last night. Those of you who know Australia will realize the meandering route between sites. This is largely due to the need to pick up various provisions and water as well as the occasional desire to use toilet more substantial than an eco hole in the ground. We have found all our fellow campers to be very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. So far they have also all been Australian. This is a big advantage of camping over the backpacker hostel route. This lake was created from an old coal mine and is now a Recreation Area for all manner of water sports. I only know this from our camp site neighbour who worked here when it was a mine. As I write this we are heading towards Pine Plantation Picnic Area Camp site. I am planning to fit a cigarette lighter socket to the second battery in our van so I will not be limited to posting images while Karen is driving. I suspect I will not be forgiven if I flatten the main battery with my laptop and we are unable to start the engine in the morning.

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 was taken on a family holiday to Wales in 2010. I used Camera RAW to process this image. I like to show what setting I use for each post unfortunately “Print Screen” does not record anything when the Camera RAW dialogue is open in Photoshop. I’ve managed to get round this by using “Problem Step Recorder” This is a bit of software which is included in Windows 7 and takes a screen grab each time the mouse is clicked. It saves them as heavily compressed jpegs but it is the only way I can show the settings I have used. I replaced the sky with part of this image because I wanted some more blue in it.