Photography, art, technology, news & the world wide web
Posted: November 9th, 2010 | Author: Wade | Filed under: Back stories, Inspiration | Tags: Backstory, Inspiration | 2 Comments »
Shooting weather is a great leveller for photographers. It’s one area in which you don’t need accreditation and authority to get in, it doesn’t involve expensive travel to get you there, nor does it demand the latest and greatest in cutting-edge equipment for you to have the opportunity to make pictures that are as good as any.
Unlike many other photographic pursuits, you can produce awe-inspiring weather pictures pretty much regardless of your resources. It’s far more a test of your individual vision and skill than your hardware.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: May 26th, 2010 | Author: Wade | Filed under: Back stories, Gear | Tags: Backstory | 2 Comments »
The arrival home of a particular young sailor the weekend before last brought with it a lot of public attention throughout Australia. Some was sincere, some contrived by media companies that had spent huge sums on exclusive rights. But at the Sydney Morning Herald we hadn’t opened our cheque-book to cover Jess Watson’s solo-sailing record attempt so we were on the outer from the outset.
In the final week of her voyage, as she neared the heads of Sydney Harbour which would mark a full lap of the globe and the end of seven months of solitude at sea, media and public interest started to build at a rapid rate. But if you were not a party to that commercial arrangement, you would have to locate the sixteen year old and her 34-foot yacht somewhere in the Tasman Sea without any assistance from her land based management team (or should I say “media management” team?).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 20th, 2010 | Author: Wade | Filed under: Back stories, Gear | Tags: 1200mm, Backstory, Canon, Gear, Inspiration | 3 Comments »
Here’s one from the rare equipment file. It’s the biggest* fully autofocus SLR lens ever built and probably the most expensive. I had the opportunity to give it a run a while back and I thought some of you might be interested in hearing about it.
First introduced in a manual focus variant for the 1984 LA Olympics and later updated to an EF model in 1993, Canon’s 1200mm f5.6L USM lens is a $120,000, 16.5kg technological masterpiece. It reportedly takes a year to grow fluorite crystals of a scale necessary to build its grand elements, and it’s completely hand-built, resulting in lead-times of about eighteen months on orders.
Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Comments