Wineglass Bay & other nice places in Tasmania

Wineglass Bay,
originally uploaded by _bernd_.

Lisa and I spent a prolonged weekend in Tasmania to visit Hobart, Cradle Mountain National Park and the famous beach on Wineglass Bay. The photo shows that the weather wasn't always at its best, but we had a lovely time down there, and I hope we will revisit Tasmania soon having better weather.

I still need to finish a roll of film and get it developed, but I posted some photos on Flickr.

Conference photography

OZCHI 2009 student volunteers,
originally uploaded by _bernd_.

This week was all about OZCHI, the Australian conference on Computer-Human Interaction. I had several roles in the conference, one of them being the event photographer. Have a look at the set of photos on Flickr if you are interested in what's going on during and around such an academic event.

End of the volleyball season

volleyball,
originally uploaded by bernd ploderer.

Last weekend marked the end of the indoor volleyball season. This year I've been playing with the Division 2 team of the Melbourne University Renegades. We dominated this division at the beginning, but lost all our games at the end of the season because half of the team was on holidays. So we landed in fourth position, which was slightly disappointing given the players we had.

After my team was out, I had the opportunity to play the semi-finals and finals with the Division 1 team. Unfortunately, we lost the final against Monash University in 5 sets. Nevertheless, it was fun to play with this team, especially in front of the large crowd in the final.
More images of the finals are on http://www.renegades.com.au/

2.33

13/08/09 at 12:35 PM,
originally uploaded by 2.33.

Shawn and I have started taking photos from our office (2.33) to make use of our amazing view of the city and to experiment with our camera. For each day of the week we post a photo on http://flickriver.com/photos/41420945@N03/

Whale watching

watching,
originally uploaded by bernd ploderer.

Last weekend, Lisa and I drove to Warrnambool to watch whales. The bay in Warrnambool attracts Southern Right Whales, in particular whale mothers who raise their young (while the father hangs out somewhere in the ocean). For me this was the first time I had the chance to see such gigantic and fascinating animals. It was amazing just to see their fins, to watch them play with their tails or even seeing them jump out of the water.

Video & photography

video crew,
originally uploaded by bernd ploderer.

I'm attending an introductory course on documentary video production at RMIT together with Shawn and Emy in order to work on my filming skills (actually, in order to develop those skills from scratch :) It's been an interesting experience to see how much work it is and how difficult it is to produce something that looks good and is interesting. The photo was taken at the end of a film shoot at the farmer's market and shows our group.

The next thing will be that I want to get more into photography, which will be the context of my final study for my PhD. I'm planning to get a new camera (my old one broke) - the question is Canon Powershot G10 or Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3? Hopefully I'll have more recent updates to present on here then.

Volleyball again

Lloy Ball,
originally uploaded by nataliebehring.com.

I'm back in action on the volleyball court with the Melbourne Renegades. I've already played in the second and first team over the last 2 years. Now I'm in the third team, because I want to focus more on my studies and I can't commit to the amount of training required for the first two teams. It's fun though to play in the third team, which is led by my house mate Jared. All players know how to play and put a lot of effort into their game; we've got a good team spirit, and we easily won all games so far.

PS: the photo is obviously neither me setting nor my photo, because my camera is broken. But I'm planning to get a new one soon and I hope to deliver more photo impressions from the court, from uni, and my life in Melbourne soon.