here are three photos of uluru (“ayers rock”) and kata tjuta (“the olgas”) at sunset. i have seen many perfect pictures and postcards of uluru before finally visiting the place, but it took nothing away from the sense of marvel and appreciation when we were actually standing in front of these massive rock formations!
vivid is a 3-week winter festival of outdoor lighting in sydney, where landmark buildings and popular places throughout the city are brought to life at night.
here are some impressions from vivid 2016:
during two recent trips to tasmania, i had the opportunity to discover the beauty of the island and its amazing wildlife. while the australian and tasmanian fauna generally receives much attention, the plant life here is not less extraordinary.
with this post, i’m using the opportunity to briefly introduce some trees and other woody plant species i encountered on the island. while some of these species also occur in a wider range in australia, some others represent the species’ last/only occurrence in the world, and a few of them date back to the supercontinent gondwana and a time before even the age of dinosaurs. tragically, most of these old species are very vulnerable to bushfires, and a large area was struck by widespread bushfires in january 2016.
on a recent beach stroll on the northern new south wales coast, i came across small weird-looking blue-and-white creatures with lots of appendages. having washed ashore, they looked more like unshapely blobs, but as soon as they got into a bit of water, they unfolded into a beautiful combination of shape and colour.
common names of this creature (glaucus atlanticus) are blue dragon, sea swallow or blue angel. [more...]
here are two customized picasa buttons to automate things that i’ve done manually for far too long. i’m publishing these mostly so i’ll find them in the future myself, but they may also help others looking for a way to do something similar.
sortfiletypes moves all raw files (.arw) and video files (.avi, .mp4, .thm) of the current directory into their own subdirectories, respectively, and deletes .lrv low-res video preview files.
syncraw compares the .jpg and .arw files in the current directory and moves raw files where the corresponding jpg file has been removed to a new subdirectory “deleteraw”, so you can easily delete or move them. [more...]
here’s a “tiny plot” render of a photosphere (android’s take on 360 degree panoramas) recorded in the conservatory at the royal tasmaian botanical gardens, hobart:
here are a few impressions from a recent field trip to outback australia, more precisely western new south wales. our route included stops in toorale national park, wilcannia, broken hill and mootwingee (mutawintji) national park and kinchega national park.
i’ll let the pictures and captions speak for themselves. [more...]
