Summer has arrived in Melbourne (not that you’d know it with the drenching rain we had for a large part of the afternoon).   But even in the heart of winter we’d never see the sort seaside scene shown above, with snow to the edge of the water.  We mostly only get snow in the high country.

The photo above, from the Guardian Eyewitness iPad app, shows a couple of people walking their dog by dawn’s early light, along Tynemouth beach in North Shields, after a heavy overnight snowfall.

For those without an iPad, the Guardian’s Eyewitness gallery for the past year can be seen on the newspaper’s website.  A direct link is here.

For example, here’s a photo of what I had for lunch today.

It’s a salad with ham, salad leaves, tomato, cucumber and a peppery carrot salad (from the recipe in Suzanne Gibbs in The Pressure Cooker Recipe Book).  However, in this case the carrots were cooked on the Breville Induction cooker for 20 mins, instead of in a pressure cooker.  After that I followed the recipe and the carrots were crushed with harissa, garlic, cummin, coriander, white wine vinegar, olive oil and other herbs.

During the week I published my final version of the Alligator Lopper video to YouTube.  I thought it was on my blog site in an earlier post, and that I changed the video on that post, but I must have either imagined it or deleted the post as part of a cleanup of some posts that were only meant to be temporary.  I’ve now included the video in this post, so that you can now see the final version, created in Premiere Elements, here:

My final versions are bit like John Farnham’s final tours and concerts, just to name one artist, so today I published a new version of the video at YouTube:

I wonder what you think of the two versions.

For a light relief here is something different, with not a chainsaw in sight.

I‘ve worked out to use the iPhone DSLR Camera Remote to focus.  It’s focussed very well in the above photo.  The frames of my glasses are very sharp.  I’m not showing the original of this photo for the same reason that TV programs don’t show the actors, hosts or reality show contestants without make-up.  I’m only showing the processed photo.

The photo has been processed in Photshop using Nik Color Efex.  That’s the best I can do without makeup.  I had lots of amazing choices, but for today, this was the choice I made.

Now for the battle at Kruger Park, to be shown on Ch 7 tonight at 7.30pm.

When I got up this morning, all that I had in my plans for today was my routine weekend washing plus two separate washes.  One for a white shirt that I wore to a formal dress lunch on Thursday (I’ve learned from long and sad experience to wash white shirts separately).  The other separate wash was for trousers, which of course needed to be done in a gentle wash on their own.

It certainly wasn’t in my plans to spend any time in the afternoon and evening  taking photos of myself.  Although I have, for several months, wanted to take a new self portrait with my Canon DSLR for use on my website.  But I kept putting this off because of the difficulty of composing a self portrait with a portrait lens, and running to and from the camera to set the self timer going.

The last time I took a portrait of myself was in 2002, the year that I retired and was asked to supply a photo of myself for the company magazine.  So I took that photo with my Canon Powershot G2 – a 2001 digital 4 megapixel camera with a fold out and reversible LCD screen where I could see myself in the screen when composing the self portrait, and it had a little remote control to take the photo.

However, for my new self portrait in 2009, I wanted to take it with my newish 2008 Canon EOS 5D Mk II with a portrait lens fitted.  But it seemed impossible, as I’d have no way of composing or focussing the shot.  The best idea I could come up with was to use a wide angle lens (with a large focus depth of field), then crop the photo to a head and shoulders, and use Photoshop to blur the background, as if it were a portrait lens.

My plans for today were greatly distracted when I checked my emails and found one about an exciting  new iPhone application – a remote control for Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras.  Well, at least those models supported by the application.

After I did all that needed to be done to install the app on iPhone and computer software to connect to the camera, I then gave it try.  I hope to do much better once I’ve gained experience.

The above photo was taken with my DSLR with a 24-105mm zoom lens at the 105mm setting.  The  B&W conversion was created using the Nik Silver Efex Pro plug-in for Photoshop.  I chose a contrasty image with a heavy film grain effect.

Check out the iPhone Apps page on my website for more about this application.