Squiffy Photy-Tooks

Okay. So. Before you think I'm mental for having entitled my post "Squiffy Photy-Tooks", the very first thing I have to tell you is that my mum refers to photos as photy-tooks. Don't ask me why, but she does. So I didn't just make that up, right now, here on the spot.

Which leads me to the second point: Whilst I may be just a tiny bit squiffy - squiffy enough to use the word "photy-tooks", and also squiffy enough to walk home from the pub on this three degree night and decide that it's a rip-snorter of an idea to go and get my camera from my pleasantly heated cabin, and then go back out to the banks of the River Murray to take photos... and also to use the phrase "rip-snorter" - I... shit. I have no idea where I was going with this. Um. Something to do with squiffiness not impairing my judgement. Or something. And also something about me not being particularly squiffy right now. Not that you'd take my word for it, but I only had four standard drinks in four hours, so I have no reason at all to be in the least bit squiffy. I think I'm mainly very tired - it's been a long week, full of gym attendance for my 1001 things challenge (I'll update the list soon, I swear!), plus a whole lot of hard work.

Anyway, this leads me to my third point: it's 12:12am and I should be in bed, but I figured that I'll be buggered tomorrow anyway on account of only arriving home from a work function at ten to twelve, so hang it, I may as well stay up another half hour and post these photos.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm a little bit disproportionately excited about these photos. I've never taken photos in Full Manual mode in the dark, and I'm kind of excited that I made my camera take a photo at all, let alone one that's sort of vaguely okay.

To be clear, I only think that one of them is sort of vaguely okay.

And that's this one:

It's probably a bit difficult to appreciate it on a small-ish blog photo, but anyone who's been out and about at night on an evening with a more or less full moon will realise that, murky though it is, this is actually quite an accurate depiction of the colours and the light that you see on a night such as tonight. It could probably have done with half a second longer exposure, but I'm still pretty happy with this - you can see shadows on the river in the dark, plus the reflection of the light, so I'm ok with it.

Then I got a bit annoyed at the stupid light meter, because it wouldn't let me take a photo of the bigger lights on the other side of the river with a bit of stuff going on around them without winding the exposure time up to 25 seconds, so that's why this one is a little on the blurry side:

I'm pretty impressed with the colour of the river, though, as well as the grass - it's quite true to form, at least, for daylight. But totally not the effect I was going for - I heart the first photo.

And then I took this one, which I really like, except for the fact that it's blurry. I really, really wish I'd had my tripod with me, except it's back in Adelaide, and so I had to make do with one of those treated pine log barriers they put around carparks and the like to prevent people from driving into stupid places that they're not supposed to. Such as they have thoughtfully installed adjacent to Murray River at Barham to prevent idiots from driving into the river, for example, which is where I was resting my camera and trying oh-so-hard not to breathe and make the photo blur:

I failed. Those blurry streaks in the sky are the Southern Cross, or part thereof, and I'm afraid you're just going to have to take my word on it.

So anyway I decided to downplay the fact that it's blurry by shrinking the photo:

See, that makes it much clearer! (yep, sure it does, Vanessa...)

And then I decided to take this photo of my beautiful, sparkly nailpolish when I got back home into the warmth of my cabin:

... and that's about the same time I realised that it was well and truly time for bed.

Nighty-night, people!