Victorian Photo Challenge

I'm heading over the ditch to Melbourne next weekend, and in the vein of the previous photo challenges I've tried, I thought for fun I'd revive the concept and ask for a hit list of things to photograph while I'm over there. Things must be readily visible, or not going to get me arrested by photographing them.

So, if you are reading, challenge away, and I'll post the results when I get back.

Marokopa

January and February go by so fast. We ended 2012 by hitting the road for our annual summer camping trip, starting at Marokopa on the Waikato coast. We'd been there a while ago pre-children, and it wasn't a hugely long drive, even allowing for Marokopa being a long way from anywhere, but two under fives in the back have a habit of drawing the journey out. They compensated by cuting the place up wherever we stopped. Like Taihape:

And Taumaranui (yes my daughter is picnicking on the footpath. That's where she decided the party was at):

It was getting to late afternoon by the time we arrived at Marokopa, and started putting the tent up in 30+ degree heat.

 That done we had a wee explore. This is pretty much it, and I like that:

After tea we retired to the cabin/unexpectedly plush guest house our friends (whose idea it was to go here in the first place) were staying at to hang out and admire the view:

Marokopa is all about the fishing, and this was proved when the campground manager wandered over to give us one of the two crayfish he'd caught that day. Cooked and ready to eat and completely free of charge. I didn't ask how big the one he kept for himself was.

As I said the essence of Marokopa is fishing. It's at the end of the road and there isn't much else to do there. It is also the quietest camping ground we have ever stayed in (apart from the ubiquitous quad bikes used to travel the beach) , since most occupants are getting up pre-dawn to catch the morning tide. So the next morning we joined our friends on the black sand beach to see what could be caught.

Nothing as it turned out. The crayfish would have to do (disappointing, I know). Charlotte did find a starfish in a tree back at the campground though, because that is where you would expect to find them of course.

When not finding sea creatures in weird places Charlotte practiced her horse whispering skills.

And Sophie practiced her photobombing skills:

And once they were in bed I practiced my handheld moonlight river photography skills.

Big Dry/Big Wet

After an epic unbroken run of nearly two weeks of clear skies, warm temperatures and no rain that saw us heading to the beach more times in the space of a week than we did for the entirety of last summer, on Sunday night the thickening clouds to the west, and a palpable increase in humidity suggested rain was on the way.

And on Monday it did, making up for lost time by delivering a month's worth of rain overnight. I was out on the motorway at the height of the deluge and it was some of the worst rain I have ever driven in. The 18-wheeler tailgating me so close all I could see in my rearview mirror was radiator grille merely added to the fun. When the warm front from the north eased off, a cold front from the south ramped it back up again. For a while the road outside my place looked more like a waterslide.

The Smiths and I

I've always had a love/hate relationship with The Smiths. Love the music, but the vocal stylings of lead singer Morrissey not so much. Morrissey's utterances both on and off the records were a major impediment to me enjoying the band (I have the same issue with Rage Against The Machine as well), and since The Smiths are one of those bands that many deem essential, I wondered if I was missing something.

Then it clicked. I didn't have to like Morrissey, as long as I liked Johnny Marr:

That riff is perfection.

Juice

Finally hopping on my bike today for the first time this year, on a perfect summer morning, on the ride to work this song came up on my mp3. It was just right.


I was playing that song on another perfect summer morning in 1995 when it was only a couple of years old. Some friends and I were on a roadtrip heading up to a music festival, and stopped in Waitarere Beach for a few days. Back then I was often an early riser on the road (by choice even), and one morning I woke before dawn, and headed to the beach while the rest of the camp slept.

I had made a couple of mix tapes for the roadtrip, and I walked out onto the sand just as "Juice" was playing on my walkman. It was a calm and clear sky and the sun hadn't yet crept over the distant Tararua range to the east. In the pre dawn twilight I could look out to sea where it was still night, look inland at the brightening sky where the new day was approaching, and look up the beach and clearly see Mount Ruapehu looming in the distance, more than 140 kilometres away. There was no-one around, just me, the beach and the scenery. It was a cool moment, and I'm reminded of it whenever I hear that song. The next morning I took my camera with me on my walk, but I was a bit later and the sun was already up when I got out there, rendering the mountain invisible. It's still one of my favourite old photos though. And it's still a great song.

Waitarere Beach, January 1995

Christmas and all that

Listening to: Explosions In The Sky - Those who tell the truth shall die (2001).

The Christmas break was a blast. The only problem with getting into the "what day of the week is it?" holiday mode, is that all of a sudden you realise its Sunday, the Sunday before the Monday you go back to work (today).

Christmas Day was cool, the decorated trees (props to my sister for coming up with that) outside the family house heralding a great gathering for lunch, presents and hanging out.

It was also hot and calm, the hottest day in Wellington for a long time (and the second hottest Christmas day since records began). It was certainly the hottest I have ever seen on my backyard thermometer of ish in the six years we have had it:

The heat induced both post Christmas lunch siestas and beautiful thundery cumulonimbus clouds popping up over the ranges:

By evening it still hadn't cooled off much so we headed to my favourite local beach for a paddle. Depite the promise of ice-cream the girls conked out in the car. They quickly revived though once they realised more fun was to be had.

Even at 8pm the the beach was still alive, with people still hitting the water even as the sun set (I went for a swim, it was blissful).

Perfect end to a perfect day.

Muggy Christmas

 It's Christmas Eve and Cristmas trees of various persuasions are blooming:

And after wreaking havoc in Samoa and Fiji, what's left of Cyclone Evan gave us a couple of early christmas presents in the form of yesterdays humid fogpocalypse (of which there is an awesome pic on facebook here), which wasn't altogether welcome:

 And a 30+ degree day today (seen here at my place at 4pm in the shade), which was.

 So from Wellington, Happy Christmas wherever you are :)

Music for the Mall

Much as you try and put it off, inevitably at this time of year you might find yourself at a mall, or a supermarket. These can be bad enough year round, but at Christmas they are boss-level.  To get through this while finding that perfect something and remaining sane, you need planning. The best way is to figure out what you are trying to get beforehand, exactly where you might find, get in, and get out. But, there will still be distractions. To get around those, you need:

-Focus

-Determination

-An MP3 player

-Beats

I found this a good track for the purpose at this time last year (not that you’d actually want to paint the mall walls black or anything. That might make the experience worse than it already is.)

You want to start while you’re still in the carpark (not getting to the carpark or in the car itself, you kind of want the opposite effect there, unless you drive a bumper car and have a very good relationship with both your insurer and local law enforcement). That way the track builds with your anticipation as you approach the entrance and you enter the building before the beat kicks in. That also gives you time to pause and survey the melee (action movie style, while the camera does a slow crab around you), steely of eye and grim of jaw, while deciding your course of action. Experience with sports that require dodging and blocking is a plus; you need to be able to keep a good pace while automatically moving around people without flattening them. Once the BPM goes up, you're off.

Having got amped up with the drum and bass, you want to keep the vibe flowing. Anything will do, as long as it is driven and loud, like so (some NSFW):

Etc.

Do this right, and you can shut out almost all distractions, including shop assistants, and particularly sales reps with stands you have to walk past. Whether or not you turn it down when actually purchasing is up to you, although it is useful to remember that if someone is staring at you while smiling politely they have probably asked you a question.

Do this right, and your shopping can be done before you know it, and you can play something like this in triumph as you drive away.

Summer Sunsets

Are the best, especially on a warm calm evening like last night

Not the Genie you want to dream of

A belated response to this video which did the rounds back in July, starting here it seems. I actually composed most of this IN July, but never got around to posting it until now.

The main reaction seems to have been "ZOMG they're standing under an A-bomb! That's CRAZY!".

I've had an odd interest in nuclear weapons and warfare since childhood (by-product of being terrified by them in the 80's), and from that perspective, there's crazy, and then there's crazy.

While it looks (and well, is to an extent) crazy, it isn't as crazy as it looks. For my money it definitely isn't as crazy as say advancing through ground zero, atomic interperative dance, or guys walking around with nuclear bombs on their backs, or even a nuclear powered aircraft (what could possibly go wrong?!).

The Bad Astronomer gives a good explanation of the technical aspects of why it wasn't so dangerous as it looked here, but the short version is it was a little bomb and they were a long way away from it due to the detonation altitude. How little? A teeny 1.5 kilotons, equivalent to 1500 tons of TNT (the NPR blog figure of 2kt is wrong, among other detail errors). There have been bigger man-made explosions that were non-nuclear. Thanks to the curious but slightly creepy Nukemap app, this can be represented graphically using the effects on poor old yardstick-of-doom Hiroshima. The effects of the 1945 bomb are here, and the bomb in the video here. See? Tiny.

As an aside, just for comparison/perspective this is what would have happened had Hiroshima been bombed using the strategies and weapons of the early 60's (sliiight overkill), and what a medium size strategic warhead would do to the place now (you need to adjust the scale a bit). Not so tiny.

So that's one bit of crazy. Another is that this was an era when nuclear weapons were openly tested above ground, by the dozens around the world. There are some who would argue that perhaps we should go back to the occasional above-ground demonstration, just to remind the powers that be what they are dealing with (many of those who witnessed tests maintained it was the only way to truly appreciate the power involved).

Another bit of crazy involves the reason for the test itself. It was for a defensive weapon (ponder for a minute the sort of situation where using nuclear weapons over your own territory becomes not only acceptable, but a good idea. . . ). In an era when accurate guided air-to-air missiles were in their infancy, someone reasoned there would be more return with a bigger bang. The weapon that resulted was the AIR-2 Genie, basically an unguided atomic skyrocket that would go off a certain amount of time after launch, hopefully somewhere near its intended target. US and Canadian interceptor aircraft would carry one or two of these should the need ever arise to knock incoming bombers out of the sky as quickly as possible (the Genie wasn't the only weapon built to this philosophy; defensive nuclear armed surface to air missiles were developed and deployed by both East and West in the Cold War).

Part of the reasoning behind placing the volunteers at ground zero was to demonstrate it was safe to use over friendly places, since inadvertently nuking your own cities in the process of preventing others from nuking them isn't that great a defensive strategy. You also want to keep the interceptor crews actually launching the thing alive as well though, which places another limit on the warhead size. While it's easy to think such a weapon might have been quickly rendered obsolete (perhaps by something that could actually be guided rather than aimed) and remained in the 50's and 60's, it actually stayed in frontline service until the mid 80's.

Partially eclipsed

 Image credit NASA, Nov 14 NZ Time, click to enlarge

The partial eclipse today was AWESOME. We didn't get treated to the full total thing like Cairns, but even at 76% obscuration like we had in Wellington it was spectacular. Which is good, because it will be 2025 before we get another one here anything like it :).

 Image credit Stardome

The further south you went the less eclipse you got, but to make up for it we had a perfect day, the only clear sunny day I can remember seeing an eclipse on, and this was the best I've ever seen. As not quite totality approached, there was a distinct sudden chill in the air to go with the eerie not-quite-right light level for a bright sunny day. Being able to both see and feel the eclipse was amazing.

Since direct observation with the naked eye is not an option with these things (unless you want to risk permanent eye damage, can't stress that enough), indirect viewing was in order. Around the science establishment I work at there were a few methods being demonstrated.

My attempt at making a pinhole viewer using a piece of paper on a clipboard and a piece of cardboard was successful, but unspectacular (although still cool since it was my first glimpse of the eclipse):

A colleague made a more effective one (I think the key might have been a thinner piece of cardboard to act as a lens).

Failing that you could always just use your hand, making the "OK" sign and allowing the sunlight to pass through the gap between your thumb and forefinger.

Or just find a tree, where the gaps between the leaves can be just as effective as pinhole lenses,  a phenomenon I'd heard about but never seen before today:

Pinhole viewer using just a tree (evergreen preferred) and a piece of paper:

A slightly more elaborate setup involving bigger cardboard, a tripod and binoculars also yielded good results:

Nothing was quite as good though as (safely) looking right at the sun and moon through a suitable filter, in this case a handy piece of mylar film that another colleague had thoughtfully prepared:

And this was the icing on the day for me, since when I put the mylar in front of my telephoto camera lens the result was spectacular (disclaimer, be very, very careful when you do this. Never ever look at the sun directly through unfiltered optics like telescopes, binoculars or camera lenses). With the settings adjusted you could even see sunspots (the little dots) and mountain ranges silhouetted on the moon.

One of the coolest things I've ever seen, let alone been able to photograph

Mosquito Spectacular

 The Mosquito Launch Spectacular the weekend before last was, well, spectacular.

-First display of a flying Mosquito in NZ since the 50's.
-The only display in NZ for this particular Mosquito after it's first much anticipated post restoration flight in 60-odd years a few days beforehand.
-The only flying Mosquito anywhere in the world.

So rare type, public debut, never seen before for a lot of people and attracting worldwide interest. This event was the most anticipated show I can ever recall among the NZ aviation community; if it were a concert it would be the sort of gig people would want to say they were at years afterward. Being held up at Ardmore aerodrome in Auckland meant a bit of travel for my lifelong airshow companion father and I, but it wasn't something we were going to miss.

The de Havilland Mosquito was a world war two legend, gaining notoriety for being a hugely successful despite the anomaly for it's era of being made of wood, in an effort to conserve strategic alloys. The resulting design was light, fast and lethally effective. While designed as a light bomber, the twin merlin engines allied to a slick airframe resulted in a top speed equal to or faster than many contemporary fighters (as well as making it sound awesome), and it went on to excell in a number of other roles. Being made of wood though didn't make for good preservation, so there are only around 30 left of the nearly 8,000 built.

The Mosquito is a significant type for New Zealand as well. They were flown with distinction by NZ aircrew during the war, including the movie-script spectacular (again) Operation Jericho, and a squadron of them were flown at home by the RNZAF after the war before being retired in the 1950's.

The only Mosquitos I had ever seen before were in museums. I'd never seen one fly, and given none had flown in NZ since the 50's, and none anywhere since the 90's, neither had most of the people at the event. It was an exciting prospect (if you don't get why, well, you just don't get it :) ) And it didn't let me down.  Having ditched the car due to the traffic jam of likeminded people we were still walking toward the airfield when it took off for its first flight of the day. At first a slim but recognisable silhouette disappearing into the distance it returned to flash between the trees ahead of us, presenting a plan view as it flew low across the road and creating both a lifetime memory and a grin from the buzz. For its second flight of the day we were on the field and another wow moment in a day full of them, the Mosquito flying straight at us from a moody sky, with the distinctive merlin growl suddenly increasing as the pilot throttled up before passing right over our heads. Awesome.

Later the Mosquito was joined aloft by a cousin in the form of a de Havilland Vampire from the same manfacturer. While one is a jet fighter (that replaced the Mosquito in the RNZAF at least) and the other a piston twin that look radically different from each other, they are actually a lot closer than they appear. They are only about five years apart chronologically, the Vampire has a significant amount of wood in it's construction, some of the same armament, and in the trainer version here even the same basic design for a couple of elements.

Another cool moment was when the Mosquito was joined by the other WWII fighters at the show, a Spitfire, Mustang and Kittyhawk, four Merlins and one Allison making beautiful noise.

The three Merlin bearers shown here were all in NZ or NZ related markings too.

 A section of unrestored fuselage was on show, both do demonstrate how it was put together and just how much work was needed to make it airworthy again. The entire fuselage wound up being built from new.

At the end of the day's flying an unusual thing happened. After all the VIP photos were taken, the barriers were dropped, and the crowd allowed to inspect the machine at close quarters. It's a rare privilege, and the crowd respected it. In a few months it will be in the US with it's owner (he put up the money for the restoration, NZ warbird restoration company Avspecs provided the skills), likely never to return here, and this was the only planned public outing for the aircraft.

It was a fitting end to a great day. I've been to a lot of airshows, and seen a lot of cool stuff, but this was right up there.