Wordspeak (Posts about Photography)

Disincentives and Photo Hosting

Edwin Steele — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:01:16 GMT

I've been searching for a simple, scriptable photo hosting tool so that I can move off Flickr, and I've found one. Photo hosting tools don't seem to have evolved much in recent times, which is unsurprising given social media does the job of photo sharing for most people. There are a few tools, for sure, but there's something fun about hosting my own photos so I can optimise, meddle and learn and still have the joy of sharing (and indeed sharing without ads).

So it's time for me to say goodbye to Flickr. It's been a good technical platform and seems to have a community in it, but I didn't like Flickr's injection of ads in my galleries and the platform does feel irreversibly stagnated - I was excited while when Yahoo gave it some focus a few years back, but there's nothing to indicate anyone's committed to developing it.

So I've moved my photos across to a self-hosted instance of Sigal. Performing the move was a delightful task as I relived some of the memories that I've previously published, and then discovered albums that I could have published, but never did. I realised my reservations about Flickr were a subconscious disincentive for publishing.

So, with this renewed vigour, I've published photos from my 2016 trip to Cyprus along with the rest of my photos. I hope you enjoy them.

Avalon Airshow 2015

Edwin Steele — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 07:27:47 GMT

Recently, my wife and I took our boys to the Avalon Airshow and we had a great time. We stayed in South Yarra, which had lovely views of Melbourne City.

The food was wonderful too - the best coffee was from Elephant Stamp Espresso (Yarra St, South Yarra), my favourite food was a Kong Pau from Dainty Sichuan (Toorak Rd, South Yarra) that transported me back to Shanghai. My wife loved the Carbonara from Versachi's.

As for the Airshow, we had fun but the boys ran out of steam before the day was out so we missed out on some close-ups of the combined assault simulation that showed all the Australian Defence Force (ADF) aircraft in action. I saw it at the 2011 Airshow and it's one of the highlights - if you find yourself at an Avalon Airshow and there are ADF planes listed back-to-back on the program, chances are it's one of these simulations and you should make your way forward so you can get a good view.

Here's a few shots to give you a feel for the day. The whole album is available (23 photos) as is the 2011 Airshow Album (33 photos).

An F-22 static display:

Formation flying by F-16s from the Singapore Air Force:

The KC-30 aerial refuelling plane (that flew later in the day):

A quick trip to Shanghai

Edwin Steele — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 21:40:44 GMT

My employer is hiring in Shanghai, so I did a quick trip to conduct a bunch of interviews. The food was sensational. The pollution... not so much. Here are a few of my favourite photos (click through for the full size on Flickr).

A view from the office on a relatively unpolluted day. The fine particulate matter reading, PM_2.5, was 90μg/m³ when this photo was taken.

The same view 2 days later, with PM_2.5 at 146μg/m³. It peaked at 271μg/m³ with a corresponding Air Quality Index of 321. This level is deemed Hazardous - "Everyone should avoid all physical activity outdoors; people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should remain indoors and keep activity levels low". Ugh...

A panorama from the Bund, looking back to downtown Pudong.

The Shanghai Maglev Train, just before we boarded. We caught a slow service, which ran at 300 km/h; the fast service runs at 431km/h. I loved the ride.

Videos on Vimeo

Edwin Steele — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:09:26 GMT

I've been looking for a place to host my videos in the wake of my move from Smugmug, and I've settled on Vimeo. They don't flag my videos as breaching copyright simply because I use a commercial song as a backing track and their interface is nice enough so I'm in.

The software that I use to publish this blog, Nikola uses a form of plain text called reStructuredText to define the contents of the web pages and it didn't have an existing method to display the Vimeo embedded video player... so I adapted the existing YouTube one, and the author of Nikola integrated it. Hooray. One more little step.

So here it is in action, showing one of our videos from our time in the US a few years ago.

The rest of the videos are over at my Vimeo page. Hope you enjoy them.

Our Chicago video and photos are up

Edwin Steele — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:38:47 GMT

It seems I process photos in fits and starts. I'd like to say that I got inspired to do this batch but the truth is that I was bored of all the other activities that were within reach, work was intense and I needed to do something, anything to get my head away from planning technical changes, people management issues and whether my team was getting through enough work, and the right work to keep our traders happy.

So I sat down to sort, sequence, prune and geotag the photos from our time in Chicago. As is often the case, the memories flood back, the details resurface from the depths of one's mind, the travel sites are loaded and the planning for (or is it dreaming of?) the next trip commences.

Here's the result. I hope you like it: image gallery

Finding a new home for my photos

Edwin Steele — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:38:31 GMT

I love sharing my photos. I'm not kidding myself that I could take photos professionally, but I do think I have an eye for some aspects of the craft and besides, I'm proud of my photos. In the last few years I've found that friends and family have responded well to my video clips as a way of sharing the photos. I choose the best images, sprinkle in a few seconds of video and tell the story of the event with the aid of a soundtrack in the background. I enjoy creating the clip and I think it's low-risk to agree to a 5 minute video of our trip to Hawaii as opposed to seeing our photos and video from our trip to Hawaii (which could be completely unedited and run all afternoon!).

The most enjoyable way sharing these clips is with a cup of tea in our lounge room. The most effective way is through the internets, so it was time to work out an effective method of doing so.

My requirements:

Photo sharing (der!) for many hundreds of images, grouped into tens of separate galleries
Support for displaying geotagged images on a map, automatically
Sharing of videos of a few minutes in length, preferably at up to a reasonable resolution (720p)
Sharing videos where I'm using a soundtrack from an album in the background
Photos and video in the same place, not on two different sites
The interface looks stylish
Low cost - \$50/yr is OK, free is better

Shouldn't be too hard, should it?

Here's what I found:

Flickr Pro: Videos are limited to 90 seconds. It's a non-starter.
YouTube: Flags my videos as violating copyright. Meh. It's a personal video for goodness sake. Fail. (and there's no image support)
Facebook: Also flags my videos as violating copyright. No geotagging support. Fail.
Google Picasa Web: Nasty terms-of-service (I won't grant Google the right to use and redistribute my photos). Google owns YouTube so I expect the copyright issue that spoiled my YouTube experience would apply to Picasa too. Yuk.
Photobucket: Takes the worst of MySpace '08 and Angelfire '98 then adds even more ads and visual clutter. It's about my photos, not your ads. Next, please.
Gallery: I have pretty decent web hosting and could probably set this up again, but couldn't be bothered. I'm a user, not a sysadmin. I just want things to work these days.
Apple MobileMe: Looks polished and professional and works seamlessly with my standard tools (iMovie & Aperture). I really wanted to try this, but there's a long-running, known problem with using MasterCard to setup the MobileMe trial. I only have a MasterCard. Seriously, Apple, I wanted to give you money but you stopped me.
Smugmug Pro: cha-ching. It costs \$60/yr, but works a treat so I don't mind. It's easy for me to upload from Aperture and has the added bonus of being able to appear within my domain.

Note (Feb 2013): While I did choose to host my photos and videos at Smugmug after this exploration, I recently moved photos to Flickr and videos to Vimeo. I guess having everything in one place really wasn't that important to me.

Stone Churches in Western Sydney and Blue Mountains

Edwin Steele — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:06:06 GMT

Old stone churches are beautiful and Sydney has its fair share of them. My fiancee and I recently scouted out the churches from the foot of Sydney's Blue Mountains to the top at Mount Victoria. I'm hoping this will be a useful summary for others. Our methodology was comprehensive, if not a little unimaginative, and involved setting aside 2 weekends, pulling out the UBD map and visiting every little church icon in the areas of interest. I've listed the ones that caught our eye. If you're after stone or a cute rendered church, this list covers just about all your options.

For convenience, I'll describe a church that looks like it'd hold less than 100 people as small and more than 100 as large. My estimate is based on a vague estimate of the number of rows of pews and might be a little off but should be helpful. Most, if not all, churches that we called required the minister of the church to take the ceremony. If you have your own minister, they may be able to do a small part of the service but don't hold your breath. We only obtained hiring charges for a few churches and they were of the order of \$650 to \$800 (thank liability insurance for a slab of that).

Penrith Area

St Stephen's Anglican, Penrith: Large grey rendered stone/concrete church on a main street. The stone/rendering isn't in the best of shape, in part due to a few pieces of graffiti that have left marks after removal. It has plenty of parking though the grounds aren't particularly pretty.
St Thomas' Anglican, Mulgoa: Lovely, small-ish, yellow sandstone church set way back from the main road, surrounded by bush. Mid 1800's era building, full of character. The grounds were locked when we drove by but the minister was very friendly on the phone.
St Paul's Anglican, Emu Plains: Cute, classic, small-ish, yellow sandstone church on spacious grounds in a residential area. Has a little grove of trees. Based on our conversation with the minister, is only available to parishioners or local residents (Emu Plains to Lapstone).
Christ Church Anglican, Castlereagh: Very small, white-washed, rendered concrete church with brilliant views over the Hawkesbury. Very cute and well maintained. Simple grounds, as one would expect.

Blue Mountains

St Andrew's Presbyterian, Wentworth Falls: Small, yellow sandstone church on a reasonably small block surrounded by pine trees. Looks like it's well maintained but we didn't think it as pretty as some.
Catholic church, Leura: Very cute small chocolate and cream coloured, rendered concrete church. Has some lovely trees and grass on the grounds along with a little off street parking. I've heard that you need to be attending a local catholic church to use it, but your mileage may vary. [Picture below]
Presbyterian church, Springwood: Very well kept, larger yellow sandstone church with a tall spire. Has a gorgeous, large jacaranda tree near the church entrance and is quite beautiful despite being on the main street. It was a little difficult to get in contact with the minister due to limited office hours.
St Peter's Anglican, Mt Victoria: Charming, unassuming little yellow sandstone church. Has a simple and well kept grounds and a bell outside. This is classic simplicity and was our favourite. Cute. [Picture below]
Leslie Memorial Presbyterian, Blackheath: Classic, smallish brick church. Hidden behind a few trees on large but uninteresting grounds.
St Alban's Anglican, Leura: Clean looking larger brick church, with classic looks (recently rebuild after fire). Surrounded by plenty of lovely trees but on the main street.

Hawkesbury

St James' Anglican, Pitt Town: Small, beautifully maintained, classic yellow sandstone church. Has Moreton-Bay fig trees on well kept grounds with a nice amount of grass and lovely views. The most beautiful we saw (but wasn't as cute as St Peters, Mt. Vic, for our money). [Picture below]
Scots Church Uniting, Pitt Town: Tiny sandstone church, on reasonably small grounds across the road from St. James Anglican. Cute and well kept.
St Matthew's Anglican, Windsor. Very large, regal, red-brick church. Building dates from mid-1800's. Surrounded by a cemetery. Very large windows, bell-tower and high roof.
Uniting Church, Ebenezer: This was too distant for us to bother seeing but is worth mentioning anyway. Apparently it's Australia's oldest church building, is stone and is very picturesque.

In order: Catholic church (Leura), St Peters Anglican (Mt. Victoria), St James Anglican (Pitt Town)

Hope you find this useful. Email me if you'd like any more info.

So Long Hong Kong

Edwin Steele — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:30:13 GMT

I love it when your employer sends you overseas to do something cool. A few months ago I was sent to do some maintenance work in two data centres in Hong Kong. While the 8pm-3am work periods surrounded by rows of howling IBM p-Series servers and shipping-crate-sized Sun tape libraries did affect my sleeping patterns, there were still enough daylight hours to get out and see Hong Kong's skyline, Hong Kong's fashion, Hong Kong's shopping malls, its shopping malls, its sights, its shopping malls, its skyline and... did I mention its shopping malls? (Yes, there far too many).

Hong Kong was fun. I love architecture, I adore big cities, the food was brill and I could still speak English. I think I'd go mental if I lived there but it was a great experience.

You might ask why it's taken me 4 months to publish these photos. The answer is that I got all inspired after seeing Steve Jobs unveil Apple's new iLife '08 software. Sorting and uploading a bunch of photos is quite rewarding and relaxing, especially when I'm pleased with the shots (and I am).

And why "So Long Hong Kong"? Yeah, I quit my job last week (and the weight lifts off his shoulders), so I don't expect a return trip any time soon. I wonder if my new employer will send me to the orient too!

Enjoy the shots: Hong Kong Apr07

Ship Run Aground - Pasha Bulker

Edwin Steele — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:05:22 GMT

The NSW coast has been battered by heavy storms this month. Aside from large scale flooding, fallen trees and some nasty accidents, the 40,000 ton coal freighter "Pasha Bulker" ran aground off the coast of Newcastle... actually it was more like it ran aground in Newcastle as Nobby's beach, Pasha Bulker's pseudo-wharf is a mere 15 minutes walk from the middle of Newcastle city.

So, armed with the 5mp camera on my new Nokia N95 and with some excellent company, the trip was made to Nobby's beach to see just how big the ship was and how incredibly close to the shore it was (the answer was "very close". I'm sure you could wade out to if it wasn't all fenced off!).

I present the Pasha Bulker . (In the same vein, you might also enjoy the shots of the beached Guadalupe that I took in Mauritania in 2005)

Rock Climbing at Barrenjoey (Christmas '06)

Edwin Steele — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:36:06 GMT

I've not done a whole lot of outdoor climbing (everyone's a gym climber unless they know and trust someone who has gear!) and these two days just left me wanting a whole lot more. Barrenjoey Heads is on the northern beaches of Sydney and contains plenty of beginner-intermediate grade sport (pre-placed bolts and protection) and traditional climbs (place and remove your own as you go). Most of the routes are in the difficulty range of 10-22 (US 5.5-5.11b) making them a great place to find your feet climbing outdoors. We found Boxing Day to be a little crowded but the bucketing rain early on New Years Day seemed to discourage just about everyone which meant we had practically the whole (dry) crag to ourselves.

I present to you the photos, starring Jono, Chris B, Chris C, Naomi, Damien, Edwin and Harold the lizard:

image gallery (shots by Edwin, Chris B, Chris C)

So, who's for Moonarie in Christmas '07?