Lots of beer, lederhosen, and PEOPLE. F@ck loads of people., with quite a cultural cross section.  A demographical smorgasbord, if you will.

Young, old, single, families, sober, tipsy, drunk, very drunk, very very drunk, and “Oh my, I’ve puked all over myself” drunk. No doubt, there may have been some that wished they’d worn adult diapers, but I really don’t want to go there.  And no, I didn’t take pictures of people puking.

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Not feeling very inspired at the moment. It’s hot, hotel room is stuffy, and I’m bored. Woe is me.

Hopefully something more enthusiastic will follow soon. I think I’ll go and sample some more German beers. Maybe that will, as Stephen Fry says, “Tickle the muse’s tits”….We’ll have to see.

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Now, I pee using two hands. There’s nothing quite like the V of an open zipper moving slightly and giving your scrotum a pinch. With the thumb of one hand hooked into the V to keep the nasty zip from creeping up to gobble your manhood, and the other hand performing the task of assisting with aim, your hands are pretty much busy. If I were smoking and peeing, that would mean the cigarette would have to be clamped between my choppers, smoke wafting up into my eyes causing me to squint. The alternative would be (if you were using two hands) that the hand keeping the zipper at bay would also be the one with the cigarette, bringing it into close proximity of splashing pee & microscopic spray particles that would ultimately soak into the cigarette paper. Also, shaking off too early may result in accidental contact of ember with member…..
I imagine that unless one wanted essence of pee-pee on their ciggy, they’d have to chomp down on that sucker from the first pull of the zip until the whole hand washing and drying sequence had been completed.

Just thought I’d share that.

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Most employees often joke about management treating them like mushrooms…you know, kept in the dark & fed s#it…well if only some employees turned out as good as the mushrooms after the treatment…

Took these pics of a punnet of some type of ‘shroom my mom had at her place this afternoon. I haven’t seen mushrooms clumped together like this before, but then I’ve led a sheltered life when it comes to certain ‘culinary exotics’. I’m a burger and fries type of guy.

Didn’t have time to take too many photos because I was in charge of burning the meat on the fire, but did manage to snap a few. Tasty little buggers when lightly fried in a garlic butter sauce. Texture not unlike calamari. Sigh….salivating at the thought. Might have to grab some seconds (I brought home a doggy-bag)…..

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After shakily finding my feet after the camera purchase, I started investigating macro lenses, settling on the Canon 100mm F2.8 for around R6500 ($1000). Now I could get close to the action.  It’s a great lens if you have the megapixels to compliment it. But I wanted more…so a chance encounter in a photographic retailer saw me leaving with a set of extension tubes, my credit card taking the brunt of the R1700 ($270) transaction. I was now even closer to the action.

Trawling through the photographic sites and forums one evening led to an interesting site discussing reversing rings.  A reversing ring, simply put, is a ring adapter with thread on one side to mount your lens to, and the other side has the standard fitting to mount to your camera. Obviously different lenses have different diameters so you either need  the correct ring for the specific lens you want to use, or you need a step-up, or step-down ring to compensate.

Mounting a lens to your camera in this way leaves you with an extremely shallow depth of field, and an inoperative autofocus.

I did a test after I bought one online for R65 ($10)…

• First pic below is using the bog standard 18-55mm kit lens at 55mm.
• second one is the 100mm macro lens
• third is the macro with the whole set of extension tubes
• and last is the reversing ring at 18mm.

18mm means you are hovering your lens about 5mm from the subject, so you need lots of light, and a steady hand. I doubt that any insects you are trying to photograph will hang around with a lens that close to them. Anyway, this is a low cost solution that can get you some great shots, but mainly of still life unless you have steady hands, and can manually focus fast on moving subjects.

Good luck…

(For better viewing, click the ‘FS’ at the bottom right of the gallery.)

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