photos

I went out with Camera Commandos today.  We were at The Rocks in Sydney.  2 challenges were set.  The first was to photograph red/pink.  

The second challenge was to photograph opposites.  

Opposite colours?

Nature vs non-nature

red vs white

mobile phone camera vs 10d with L series lens  (opposite ends of quality spectrum)

Nature vs non-nature

Big Day In

Sydney Anglican’s Big Day In happened on Sunday. It was a broadcast of a special service for all Sydney Anglican churches to tune into. It was a massive organisational and technical event. I thought there was no way this was going to work, but it did! There were a couple of small issues, but in the big scheme of things, these were pretty negligible. I work in broadcasting, and for this event to go so well was such a good effort and well executed. And for a first time effort, even better. The organisers need to be congratulated for pulling it together so well.

I was there to mix the broadcast audio of the music. Garage Hymnal were responsible for that and they did a superb job! It was a total walk in and mix gig. I didn’t plug in a single piece of equipment (except for my studio speakers) or run a single cable. The wonderful team from Crosstalk did it all and they did a great job. If I needed anything all I had to do was turn around and there was someone waiting there to take my instructions. It makes you feel like you’ve made it as a sound engineer when you do this sort of gig. Turn up, mix, go home again. And it was a privilege to be involved. It was quite a challenging mix actually. I do live to air music mixes all the time at work, but they are not usually this big. Bands this size we would normally multitrack and mix later. Garage Hymnal have eight members – drums, bass, 2 electric guitars, acoustic guitar, keyboards and 2 vocalists. So there were plenty of open mics to muddy everything up. In a live mix like that, the big challenge is to keep the clarity and not end up with a big pile of mush. And then on top of that you need to get a good balance and make it sound nice. I wasn't in a great acoustic space to hear what I was doing, butI think it turned out pretty well. A bit messy on the balance side in some places, but hey – it’s live, that what it’s like. No time to sit and make it perfect, just fly by the seat of your pants.

And the other thing of note – the weather. We were in Kellyville in western Sydney where the temperature was above 40 degrees celcius. RF’s car had no air con. Yep, that was fun travelling home in the middle of the day in an oven. But I stopped complaining when I got home and saw the news about the Victorian bushfires and all the tragedy surrounding them.

films

Films I've seen recently-ish that I'd be happy to see again...

The Black Balloon - Australian Film about a family with an autistic teenager and how this impacts on the the life of his brother.

True North - About scottish fisherman who try people smuggling. Has an ending that leaves you in shock - totally not what you expect.

Bolt - animated, about a dog who thinks he's a super hero. Good fun.

Michael Clayton - intense, but good law drama/thriller.

7 Pounds - This movie ends up not being about what you think it's about for most of the movie.

Photos

Today it's birds.
First up - black swans at Centennial Park. Then geese at Centennial Park.



















Next we have galahs from out the front of my house. This little photography moment ended because of having to go inside to change my shirt. Lesson learnt - do not stand under a tree full of birds to take photos. Luckily they didn't get my camera.

Sydney Festival

These last few weeks the Sydney Festival has been on. I’ve done a couple of recordings in the Spiegletent, which has lots of mirrors in it. And I found out Spiegel means “mirror”. So it’s the mirror tent. It gets really hot inside the tent when the temperature is 36 degrees. The poor air conditioner didn’t really cope with Sydney’s heat wave. I’m just glad I wasn’t in there on the 42 degree day. I was recording lunchtime talks by people from the Moscow Art Trio and the Cinematic Orchestra.
I was supposed to record the Joe Henry concert in there on Tuesday, but my other concert, “Camille” got canned in Angel Place on Friday because we couldn’t get recording rights. But then the record company found out we wanted to do it and desperately wanted us to do it, but it was too late. So I ended up doing the Tuesday night Camille show at Hyde Park Barrack’s and DB had to do Joe Henry. It was really hard to get any info about set up or anything, so we just arrived and hoped to find somewhere to set up, but there wasn’t anywhere. Finally we got permission to set up in the gate house, which because of being a historic house has railing all around to protect the bricks so the space ended up being about 1 metre wide – enough room for the gear and me, but no one else. Luckily I had borrowed Triple J’s gear which is all very compact.
Here are some Spiegel tent pics, but they aren’t very good because I was just using the point and shoot. Sorry - no photos of Hyde Park Barracks - too busy and too much gear to take already without worrying about cameras. The Hyde Park Baracks recording was about 28 channels, so would have made much more interesting photos for equipment buffs. Oh well.


My set up for the lunchtime performances of people talking and playing.


The splitters - what we use to split all the induvidual mics so we can mix our own recording without affecting the PA mix.

Photos

Today's theme - the christmas tree. Hey?!?!?!?!? What the?


It's a fibre optic christmas tree. I set the camera to bulb setting (the shutter stays open for as long as the button is pressed) and moved the camera slowly. There's a bit of zooming going on too. Exposure times were anything from 3 to 20 seconds.

Communion #5

Well I kept up my end of the deal. I bought port for communion. But we didn't have communion. I hope the bottle doesn't get lost. It's sitting in the sound equipment cupboard. Or was....
We didn't have communion, but we did have a happy chappy labrador come trotting into church during the sermon on prayer. He must have wanted to be like this dog...

Estonian food

My Mum, being Estonian, likes to eat strange things. And the rest of our family all like it too. We eat seafood on Christmas day, but on days surrounding Christmas we eat this -





These things aren't exclusively Estonian. They are popular in many European countries.

Starting with the pink stuff - Rosolje (Estonian name) - Russian beetroot and potato salad, containing herring, pickle, egg and probably other things I'm not aware of.

The green thing - Pickled cucumber. Easy to buy here, but hard to get the ones Mum likes. She likes pickles in brine, not vinegar.

Next going clockwise - Sauerkraut

Salami Sticks

Jarlsberg cheese

And most importantly - the fish - anchovy. This is NOTHING like the anchovies you put on pizza. These are pickled whole herrings, and are best eaten by holding by the tail and tilting your head back, as demonstrated below by my brother. Eat the whole thing, head, guts and tail.

Yum. And the jar you can see at the bottom. We used to buy these easily in supermarkets in Brisbane, but now they are hardly to be seen. I have to get them from Cyril's Fine Foods in Haymarket. Cyril has all the good stuff. Including pickles in brine.

Photos - my Christmas holidays

One of the agapanthas I didn't flatten while backing the car up the driveway trying to avoid mum and dad's letterbox.




Where I went most days.





The frog dad found living in the car.






Christmas day lunch. Growing up in hot Brisbane our family began a tradition long ago to eat seafood on christmas day. It's too hot to cook a turkey.

Mt Warning - the view from Mum and Dad's house.

The hen on it's favourite chair on the back verandah of the cottage up at Mt Tamborine.

More nice Mt Warning views from Mum and Dad's house.

Communion #4

Me and my big mouth - now i have to buy the communion wine for this Sunday. I hope I don't forget. If we only end up with grapejuice, you'll know I've forgotten.

Did you know?...Out of the reformation came the tradition of the minister drinking all the left over wine, so that no one could grab the left overs and parade them around and worship them like the Catholics did.

Multi tasking

Today I became camera person, filming a humerous spot for the audio arts website, demonstrating the creating of sound effects.
And I took some stills. The one below I took. I didn't take the others - I'm in them.