Thousands of people braved the cold morning to attend the Werribee 2024 ANZAC dawn service.
Blog
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ANZAC DAY MARCH WERRIBEE
It was a fantastic weather for the Pre-ANZAC day march with hundreds of people in attendance.
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2024//2025 camera gear
It’s been an exciting start of the year for me, diving into all sorts of fun events and gigs that keep me on my toes. I absolutely cherish my prime lenses—they’re like old friends— more about that later. As my projects ( (accidentally) grew in diversity, I realized the need for something with a lot more range. A super zoom lens was calling my name!
Leica, my go-to brand, doesn’t exactly play in the super zoom playground, and to be honest, their price tag would probably have me hosting a yard sale for my spare kidney even if they did. So, I ventured into Nikon territory. I’m now the owner of a Nikon D7200, sporting a nifty 18-140mm zoom lens. It may be a bit of a classic, but it’s got a 24Mpx sensor that’s just right for my needs—great quality without overwhelming my hard drives. What a fantastic little (big) addition to the gear shelf
Leica Apo-Macro-Elmarit-Tl 60mm F/2.8
For my highly detailed photography of gorgeous things I needed something exceptional. It also shoots magnificent portraits of people
This lens is built to deliver exceptional performance. Designed for detailed close-up photography, it offers consistent, premium image quality at all focus distances. The apochromatic design of the lens effectively removes color distortions and chromatic aberrations, ensuring pure colors in your images. In addition, the inclusion of four aspherical elements minimizes spherical aberrations, enhancing the overall image clarity and precision.
Leica Summicron-T 23mm f/2 ASPH Lens
I have had this lens for a few years now and it never ceases to amaze me. Gorgeous colors and accuracy to the edges. A Leica TL reference lens for incredible unobtrusive photography.
The Leica CL
Out of production but absolutely not for sale. Leica just released the SL3 which may replace it. Eventually!
Manfrotto Tripod
A new ( old) Manfrotto tripod is probably my most sensible buy since the last time I did a gear roundup in 2022. This makes my camera equipment rock steady for long exposure photos that often use in product shoots. It’s not exactly lightweight.
The OM1 with the 50mm Olympus Zuiko Lens
The fantastic Olympus OM1. won’t be in my hands much longer—my daughter has developed a passion for film photography, embracing her inner hipster. I won’t be going back to film on a regular basis.
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Uranium Glaze.
Ceramic glaze is a shiny coating applied to ceramics before firing. Uranium glaze is a type of ceramic glaze that contains uranium creating various colours and can emit a special glow under UV light. The radioactivity in uranium glazes is generally considered safe.
They were popular in the early to mid-20th century but are less common now. Antique ceramics with uranium glazes are sought after by collectors for their historical value and unique appearance.
![Uranium Orange [Explored]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53047447158_c941911db9_z.jpg)
Uranium Glaze Vase 
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The photoshoot that never happened
Improvements to AI are almost daily. Using just a little more scripting and a custom merged model this set was much easier to produce.
This person does not exist. if you look closely you can see that these are not photographs.
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Winter in Mornington
Our towns change. Mornington is now an expensive and controlled environment but only slightly below the surface, the older Mornington exists.
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Photography and Generative Artificial intelligence
My love has always been art but with kids and stuff I worked as a Linux system architect for over twenty years. The open-source world has given us so many things that we take for granted and I could not miss this extraordinary work done in generative images. In the short time I have been working with it AI has moved extremely quickly.
The story of an AI apple
Two Stable Diffusion AI apples were upscaled to a larger image and imported into Photoshop beta. Using the new AI generative fill I have replaced the background and edited it as I would a normal photo.
But how did I get here…
It started here.
Multiple iterations with progressively more instructions until I was generating apples with some blemishes in light that were somewhat natural. I didn’t worry about the background as this would be replaced later in Photoshop
Between each of the generations, small changes were made to the Stable Diffusion prompt to suggest a more natural apple
This was the original apple to get the process started.
I changed the prompt to include blemishes on the skin and ran some more steps. It kept doing this strange lighting where half the apple was lighter than the other. It did look more natural though
This went too far and made me a nicely lit set of apples with bruises, but the apple at the back was deformed and had sprouted leaves. I decided that two apples might be simpler
I picked this one as t the shape and skin texture looked the most natural I have also introduced:
Lens type
Depth of field
Lens model
Lens error
Lighting type
Lighting intensityIt would have been faster to just take the photograph but there is an interesting side effect.
I can apply the same prompts to other things entirely
Using the photo above as input, changing the name of the “thing”
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Rustic Still Life | Vintage lens
This was shot using a 40 year old Zuiko Lens on a modern Leica CL digital camera. It was a fantastic lens in its time. Lens technology has moved on!
![It's my stuff [ Explored ]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53319843166_ecc62503c0.jpg)
