Driving from Magadan to London, east to west June 2012. Follow our journey Starting in Australia to Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Europe and the UK.
When complaining about how my photos typical turn our boring, Brett was very quick to identify that I don't use the rule of thirds when taking photographs. Rule of thirds I asked?
After several articles & demonstrations I can now see what he is talking about. The rule of thirds!
See how the left photo below just seems boring, yet the right one is more dynamic and interesting.
Typically, when I take a photo, I take it square on - being very conscious of lighting, focus, depth of field, but not concentrating at all on the actual composition.
Cassie seems to do this natively, to the point anyone can tell the difference between a shot she has taken, and one I have taken.
As I look back, any photo taken with this rule is usually a favourite, and ones that don't follow the rule, usually don't see the light of day.
This is also applicable when photographing any horizons. This shot feels better composed as it adopts the thirds. The main adoption in horizons is to prevent cutting the shot in half.
This rule has roots in our appreciation of composition.. often experienced in painting. As far back as 1797 John Thomas Smith wrote about this 'rule of thirds' with relationship to balance of hot/cold colours and subject/background.
Brett continues to remind me that photographers can smash this rule and get outstanding results, but as a tool for beginners, it's a great one to have.
I've put some sketches below to help demonstrate the evolution of an idea throughout the design process.
In the first and second sketch below, you can see the wheel arches in the back of the troopie. Don't worry - we're not wasting the space above them, they are just drawn with empty space above to illustrate thier position.
You can see the evolution of two ideas here:
Firstly, the idea of a bed flipping over from the left hand side, over to the right. It's just one of 6 designs we have on paper, but it was convenient to measure them on screen.
The second idea is our way of managing fresh water. We plan to have three 20L jerry cans, one beneath the sink, connected to a water pump and the other two just behind the back seats. The second one is not pictured, but sits along side. You can see one of them in white (only the top bit)
All measurments are exact with regards to the floor plan of the car with the exception of the angle of the front seats -We forgot to get this measurement from our test drive. The wheel arch on the drivers side is slightly longer to allow for the diesel tank filler neck.
You can see in this picture our tap that can be rotated to allow access to water when the back door is open for filling drinking water bottles, washing up outside, filling up the kettle etc.
It's hard to get perspective on the size, but all the sketches sit below the window line. Oh and another thing, we have to make sure there is an access hole in the back of the cupboards so we can fill up the rear window washer bottle - visible in the right picture.
The weather is cold which means I look up cool tech stuff that we plan to use on our trip.
First of which is called Eye-Fi. It's a SD memory card that goes in your digital camera and stores photographs and videos... but with a twist. These awesome things have inbuilt WiFi to enable you to sync your photos/videos to your PC without ever connecting a cable.
Sure, seems lazy, but there is a few more advantages.
-You never run out of storage as it syncs to your PC when its on. Once it has copied all the photos, it marks them as 'copied' which means as you start to run low on space on the SD card, it will clear the oldest copied photos off the card.
-Because we copy our photos and videos each day, it means lots of plugging and unplugging which I fear will wear out the ports and reduce the reliability of the seals that cover them.
One cool things they do (but we won't) is the ability to ROUGHLY geotag your photos. To those new to geotagging, the idea is to store the location the photo was shot, alongside the photograph which you can use later to locate it on a map. Awesome idea, however Eye-Fi's approach is way off the mark. It identifies nearby wifi hotspots and assumes your location from there. In real world tests in metropolitan areas (best case) the results are horrible, more oftern being 4-5 blocks wrong. To some people, knowing what city they were in when they took a photo might be enough, but I reckon this is hopeless. Where we travel, there will be no wifi for weeks, let alone one it knows the location of! I suspect it would be better to have no location than one thats wrong.
Eye-Fi cards have the ability to automatically upload photographs at public WiFi hot spots - cool idea, but I doubt it will be used.
Another clever feature for the pho-togs is 'Direct Shooting' - Allowing you to use large display such as a laptop or iPad to display your photo right after your shot was taken. Again, not that handy for us, but would be great for professionals.
GPS Geotagger
For years I thought it would be handy to have photos and videos embedded with location information, but never really thought how it would be possible. Here is a better solution - this video says it better than I can:
Not only is this going to have the obvious advantage of allowing us to geotag our photos and videos, but it will be great to see a high resolution track of our journey. Because we are using PC software for navigation, a convenient side effect is this will track our progress while we're driving, but this device will provide insight into our path when we are outside the car.
Naturally I want the yellow one, it's slightly smaller, but the black one has slightly longer battery life - it's going to be a hard call.
Those pictures side by side look about to scale, the yellow one thinner but longer.
These beauties have a motion/vibration sensor that has them turn off when the're still, saving battery power.
Sony Camera:
Well, what can I say - this thing is awesome.
-NATIVE GEOTAGGING!
-Wide angle lens - surprisingly this is a big deal
-5.1 sound - Can you imagine how immersive it will be reviewing footage with 5.1 sound. Changing a tyre on the side of a road... talking in the foreground, cars driving on gravel in the background. It'll be awesome.
-240GB HDD or SSD - no tapes.
-SD Card port - Allows you to record to SD card - which means you can use the Eye-Fi!
That's about all I can think of now. Getting too hungry to think.
You all know I said beige interior was out of the question... OK, I would make an exception for this one. 2000 model, 111,000KM, side steps, winch bar, perfect condition. 25K. It's however in Darwin.
The attention to detail with genuine floor mats, dash mat, sun visor etc. tells a story of a good life - not a bashed around work truck. It seems to have a rub mark on the bull bar, but that's the only mark I can spot.
... this is going to be a long 6 months of waiting ;-)
The sun visor looks horrible, but perhaps its benefit outweighs the look. Same with those floppy fenders, they look stupid.
Yesterday we drove to a car yard at Homebush, Sydney to have a look at a 2003 troopie. Would you believe this is the closest troopie in the correct age bracket. It seemed prudent to make sure we are focusing on the correct tool for the job. It also occurred to me that as we may be buying at auction, so its super important that we know roughly what we are buying. We used the opportunity to take measurements so we can design the fit out. Below is a video of the event:
I would like some help identifying the indicator lights on the dash - it's difficult without the manual.
No idea - Low oil level?
Low/No oil pressure
Diesel/Water separator?
Air Filter blocked/Replace
I think this one means air filter blocked / needs replacing - not quite sure how it knows that. Any ideas?
What I am confused about is what the top light does, if the red 'no oil pressure' light indicates that, then what does the amber one do? If it does indicate low oil level, I would be interested to know how it knows that too.
The car was pretty good, the diesel motor was excellent - much better than the 1995 one. It should technically be the same motor, but perhaps a little less worn. The car was trashed in the back and had some bad signs like rusty wheel nuts, front mounted towbar etc. - but drove really well.
We both instantly noticed how much better the ride was with the coil front suspension, further confirming our decision to go with a 2000-2006 model.
The low range coupled with the diesel engine meant you could idle over any obstacle with ease.
By my calculations, it's 22% slower in 1st gear, low range, but more importantly, the diesel motor works at the lower RPM's where the petrol would stall.
