After about 8 or 9mths of umming and ahhing I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Sigma 12-24mm. In the end I picked it over the other ultra-wide angle zoom lenses because it is designed for full frame cameras whereas all the other ultra-wides are designed for cropped sensor DSLRs. This means that the 12-24 also works on my film camera as well the three series of DSLRs that Canon has (1x, 1.3x, 1.6x).
After I had a little play with the lens on 350d, I put it on the Eos 300(the film SLR I inherited from Karl) oh my I loved it even more. It really makes me want a full frame DSLR, 12mm is pure ultra wide goodness! When I get the film developed I will have to scan them in as the perspective is insane!
Of course one of the best things about having an ultra-wide is it just “enhances” the funny faces that Pabbi makes even more 😀
… I proceed to take over the world under the tutelage of my Grandfather and today marked one more step towards that goal.
I’m famous. Well not quite. Well really not at all. I can still think I am pretty cool though and so can you, well if you are my family I guess because that is just a family rule.
What am I going on about and why is that photo displayed above? A couple of weeks ago I received an email from the Picture Australia people at the National Library of Australia asking me if they were able to use the image above in a press release for Australia’s Maritime World regarding the addition of new images to Picture Australia as well as the collaboration between Picture Australia and Flickr. Out of all the photos in the database, they picked one of mine 🙂 I can’t tell you how big of a smile that put on my face 🙂
Really enough said. Fireworks have put a grin on my face and a twinkle in my eye for as long as I can remember and I can assure that is a very long time because I can remember things that happened years before my birth 20 years and 3 weeks ago 😉 … well not quite.
I remember going to the Ekka when we were younger and sitting on Machinery Hill watching the entertainment after a long day of fun at the Ekka and the hush that came about when the fireworks started. I remember racing out to our back balcony on New Years Eve catching glimpses of the fireworks over the tree line. I remember going to RiverFire in year 9 with Mum, Karl and Grandmum and having a blast watching the fireworks and then ripping a ligament in my ankle (playing silly buggers with Karl) which still gives me trouble today. I remember spending New Years Eve in Germany ’02/’03 and watching fireworks going off meters in front of me and then finding rocket sticks in the backyard in the morning and thinking to myself, gee imagine if you were a dog in the back yard and got hit by one of these? I remember leaving a NYE party early this year with Mum to drive back into Hobart to take photos of the Fireworks. When it comes to Fireworks I will go just about anywhere.
I love Fireworks.
Just as we did last year, Mum and I made the trip into the Kings Parking across the road from the Ekka to enjoy the show and what a show it was. A good variety of fireworks and a clear night with just the right amount of wind to carry away the smoke.
The Rejects were great, way better than when we saw them last year with Simple Plan, I would say they have developed their stage show more. It was a pretty good night overall and the plus of it been an all-ages show meant that it finished nice and early but of course the minus was all the under age kids who need to take the “etiquette of a rock concert” series of lessons that include a study of how a mosh pit works and how to behave in one. 18+ shows are fine, people all play nicely, all-age shows are a whole new ball game.
One of my best buds had her 21st birthday party on Saturday and what an event it was. I met Sam during my first year at uni when we were in the same Indonesian classes. She is doing B of Arts/B of Education which means that in a bit over a year she will be teaching kids Indo, history and the like. In the past couple of years we have had plenty of fun filled times from concerts to nights out and just chilling.
Her party was a pretty laid back affair held at a local hall with both family and friends. The party did have a casino theme but I think we ended up playing more games of “Go Fish” then we did 21 🙂 Lots of little and not so little kids running round playing with balloons, making hand print memory pages, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, just all in general fun.
Sam is the queen of the jelly shot, I don’t think she has ever had a party which did not involve jelly and vodka. I didn’t have any of these as I was driving but they looked quite nice especially with the two layers of jelly, very tricky!
July 7, 2005.
The first item on the agenda this morning was to ring Karl and wish him a happy 26th Birthday.
Today Margaret and Mum attempted to walk over Kaldbakur which at 998m is the highest mountain in the West Fjords. Matthew, Pabbi and I left Auðkúla at a leisurely pace and headed into to �safjörður for a poke round whilst the other two did their walk.
These two photos are of the entrance sign to Auðkúla and a look back towards Auðkúla and it’s fjord as we drove up over the mountains (number 1 and 2 on the map).
Pabbi showed us sights and memories of �safjörður and after a visit to the grocery store for some lunch supplies we made the drive back to Þingeyri to have lunch. I forgot to mark it on the map where we had lunch but if you look at the map we had lunch at the end of the fjord that Þingeyri is on. We left the road where it crosses the new bridge and drove down the road that my parents used to have to drive on to go to �safjörður. After eating lunch in the car at the end of the fjord as it had started to drizzle we headed up to the spot where we would be picking Mum and Margaret up from their walk, on the way though we pulled into have a look at some fish drying huts (number 4 on the map).
Once Mum and Margaret had arrived we headed into Þingeyri proper and started to drive and walk around. It was really quite sad to see Þingeyri as it is very run down compared to the photos of when my parents lived there in the late 70’s. There were buildings boarded up everywhere, rust was growing over the town and as a whole the village was a quiet place. The village had a population of around 450 when my parents lived there but like many other fishing villages of the West Fjords had largely declined and is now around 360.
We passed the building where Mum used to live, we visited the church where my parents were married, we went past the places where my parents used to work, we stopped by the house across the road from where my parents used to live to see if anyone was home. No-one was though, which was a bummer because the daughter of the family who live there was who I was named after. Well not Helen but my middle name Þura. The last stop was of course to stop by the house where my parents used to live.
As we visited places and ran into people, it was quite funny to watch the exchanges that would occur as Pabbi would recognise people who were children when he last saw them and adults now and they would take a little while before it would click as to who he was.
After we had spent our afternoon exploring and talking we left Þingeyri and drove to the youth hostel where we would be staying the night (Korpudalur, number 6 on the map).
It was quite serendipitous to visit Þingeyri on the day which Karl was born 26 years before and on that note I leave you with this image of the town which I took from a hill just above the town.
