There are some great attributes to the traditional camera backpack, such as weather proofing, nicely organised and quick access to everything, and these days theyre extremely comfortable. But if you have most of your gear in the car, and are out in the field, a mere kilometer or so from your "base camp", the negatives of the camera bag become pretty apparent.

So the photographer's vest was born, basically an oversized fishermen's vest with tougher zips, bigger pockets and a far bigger price tag. The ones I looked at were all $200+.

I'm going to be trialling this military webbing this weekend at the Legend of the Lakes hill climb, shame about the color though, any color apart from bush camo...damn it, the pics will speak for themselves, even if I am buried at the local gay bar by the end of the night.

More TK soon...

I have never seen a flock of 12 pelicans fly directly overhead, was completely breath taking.

Shot this yesterday morning, brilliant storm clouds in the background, and amazingly contrasted sunlight hitting the hut made the whole scene magical...just needed an Elephant or similar to fill in the field on the right

My latest app addiction is a little app called 3D Camera, and yes, its all in the name. What this nifty little app enables your iPhone to do is shoot two images of a scene, from slightly different angles, and then merges them into one image to give the illusion of depth.

It gives you the resulting image so it can be viewed with those funky 80's red/blue 3D glasses, or puts them together in a method similar to the old magic eye puzzles.

Try this one below, moving your eyes close to the screen till the two images become one, and move away till its in focus...Shazam, 3D magic has arrived, for $2.49, its not a bad deal.

Anyhow, I thought after getting back and seeing some of the shots, that they were blog worthy on here, as well as my usual facebook feed, so here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

Night of the 17th Gallery

Its an old and worn out quote, but very true as my iPhone has been an invaluable camera on many occasions.

I took this shot yesterday after coming across the local CFS officers doing a controlled burn on the park near us. I didn't have my DSLR near, so sadly all resulting shots were capped at 2 megapixel, but the image is still there.

In the following album is a mix of the best shots in my opinion that I have captured using mobile phone camera's, and not just the iPhone, some were taken on a Nokia 6120 and some on the Sony Erricson Cybershot, my point is, a camera is a camera, its up to the photographer to capture the image.

iPhone Image Gallery 

Anyhow, off with the jeans, and waded out far enough to frame this:

The man above is quite possibly the most talented person with a guitar that I have ever met. I went over to his lodging earlier today to record a strum that he has been working on to play alongside my portfolio of images. The image above was captured on  iPhone, as I did not expect to be writing this, so I apologise about the quality, but the music, you must hear:

Most of the rainy days in SA, I prefer to be editing, keywording, or generally escaping the freezing rain, but when Max walks in with a beautiful specimen of a male Banjo frog, its an opportunity not to be missed. I have shot these guys before, but always in a studio, for identification and stock purposes, going out into the bush would be a completely new experience.

I was only out for half an hour, but by the end, every bit of me and my gear was well and truly soaked (thank god for weather proof lenses and bodies). This shot was taken with my Sigma 10-20mm at 15mm with a single SB-600 shooting down from top right.

Although I didn't get wet, eaten, drowned or burned for this shot, it was a bit of a disappointment after a twenty minute drive to a location I had scouted out the week before. A gorgeous place, with a huge view over Victor harbor, and would be perfect for sunrise. I got there at 5:30 AM, and could hardly see my hand in front of my face, very tempting to turn around and head home. 

The decision to wait it out, and see what happened turned out far better than I could have hoped. The fog started clearing as soon as the sun poked its head over above the horizon. Set up my camera and shot this with the 50mm 1.8. Although there was no sunrise to speak of, if you work with what you have, there is always an image to be found.

This shot was taken in Mount Buller last year on Tom Putt's snow landscape course. After getting into the village, Tom and I were keen to get straight out that night and start shooting, never mind the blizzard and icy roads, by damn, we were gonna do it. The image above is RAW straight off the camera, 30 second exposure, with the cable release held down with very numb fingers. The image below is an edited/color corrected crop, and is one that goes quite well on stock sites.

So no matter what the weather, there is always a great image out there, sometimes you just need to brave the elements.