Australia Travel photos

Three sisters at Blue Mountains, Australia

I'm sorry to say that Australia didn't please me enough with the city sight-seeings we did. I want to see more culture and something significantly different than the US.  

Blue Mountains is one of my fav for this trip. It's like Grand Canyon, but so green everywhere. The sky train ride over the cliff with waterfalls is so mesmerizing. Too bad we only had ~2-3 hours there, so didn't get to hike the beauty.

Nobbys beach, Newcastle

Macquarie's Pier, Newcastle

Skytrain ride over the waterfalls at Blue Mountains

I love Sydney. Sydney is such a beautiful city by the bays, lots of bays everywhere! But I didn't fulfill my single photo goal for this trip. It's the night scene of Harbour bridge and Opera house together. We couldn't get to Sydney harbour again at night. One of the famous photographers said "getting a good picture is being at the right place at the right time". Couldn't be more true, especially for travel photography.

White sand beaches at Nelson bay, Newcastle

Canberra is so empty and looks so much like Madison, WI.

Victoria Harbour, Melbourne, Australia

As far as I can see, Melbourne doesn't really have any significant landmarks saying it's Melbourne although it is the city with lots of really nice and interesting architecture. Just that they don't stand out enough. The spike and Flinders st station looks like landmarks, but they are just not unique enough.

The penguin parade at Phillip Island near Melbourne is another one of my favorites on this trip. No photography allowed there. 

Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Australia

Contrary to popular belief, it's not that easy to see live kangaroos on the road.  And I didn't see a koala since we didn't make it to the farm.

p.s: My honest opinion. No offense intended to anyone. 

Newborn Mizuri (Portraits 45/52)

Baby Mizuri was 3 weeks old when I did her photoshoot last week. I can already tell the difference in photoshoots between a 10 days old newborn and 3 weeks old newborn.  It's harder to get sleeping poses as babies get older. And their legs get stronger so it's not easy to get squeezy poses as they will be constantly kicking.

The challenging thing about newborn photography is that it's always changing. Babies are different. Their sleeping times are different. Lighting and space are different at each home (since I travel to newborn's place to shoot).  So I cannot follow a specific plan as in engagement shoots.  So the flow ended up different at each shot no matter how much I pre-visualized.

The similarity is the end result that always make me smile with super cute babies. If I'm loving those cute baby photos this much, no words I can use to describe their parents. And it's so rewarding that keeps me wanting to do newborn photography.

I believe in Sigma

I recently sold my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens to buy Sigma 50mm f/1.4. I love 50mm. Or used to. 50mm f/1.8 nifty fifty is the first lens I got after my kit lens+telephoto lens in the package. Oh how I loved it. So, I upgraded to Canon f/1.4 couple years ago. Lately I'm feeling like I'm not quite happy with Canon 1.4 because of its un-sharpness.  But I still want 1.4 and 50mm.

I used to have 17-50mm f/2.8 Sigma lens that was perfect walk-aroud lens and stayed on my XSi body for ~90% of the time. When I went FF, I sold it. Never once complained about that Sigma lens. That lens was one of my best purchases too. So I'm going for Sigma again.

I think I got a good copy. Focus is right on as far as my tests go, bokeh is beautiful and 1.4 is totally usable compared to Canon 1.4 or even 1.8.

The only downside is I can't get rid of my feeling that 50mm in general is too wide for my taste on full frame.  I am used to tight composition of 50mm on cropped frame or my new fav 85mm of full frame. In fact, I feel like my pics need some empty space, so I should learn to love 50mm again.

Wendy & Ravi Engagement (Portraits 38/52)

Too bad I can't post their engagement photos. Their photos are some of my favorite photos of my work in terms of light and romance. San Antonio trail at sunset with wild grass was just romantic.