the aussie football team have scored a surprise win against the netherlands in a friendliy overnight. the netherlands drew first blood after just 5 minutes, thanks to good work by liverpool winger ryan babel who set up the goal. it seemed to be all down hill from there. josh kennedy, however, was having a good game and working hard up front. he earned a penalty and had the dutch goal keeper sent off with a red card. former red, harry kewell, converted the spot kick, leveling the scores.

the aussies continued to hold their own, thanks to the extra man, and it was kennedy again who found himself in the right place, heading home a beautiful wiltshire cross.

the socceroos have made the most of their warmup and look to wednesday’s clash with uzbekistan in the world cup qualifiers. last night, uzubekistand were convincingly beaten by qatar 3-0, so there’s no reason why the socceroos shouldn’t take full points.

I’ve seen lots of great pictures where photographers have kept the shutter open for a long time. How can I get good shots this way? Peter, Seoul.

Shooting with long shutter speeds can be a great way to achieve unique images. It can also be very difficult to accomplish and also takes lots of trial and error to get right.

Obviously, shooting long exposure photographs is a lot easier at night. When it’s dark, you can open your shutter for much longer without overexposing the image. At night there is also a lot of artificial light from buildings and vehicles that can make your shot look much more interesting.

Daytime long exposures are much more difficult. One way to help is adding filters and using smaller apertures. Stack a few filters onto your lens and it cuts down the amount of light the camera receives. Neutral density filters are great for this purpose. Polarizers are also handy. However, when stacking filters, beware of vignetting (the appearance of circular edges in the corner of photos).

With the slow shutter speeds, it’s possible to make water blur for great effect. Waterfalls and rivers can look much more ethereal and tranquil when the water’s detail is blurred out. It also creates a nice contrast with the sharp focus of rocks or surrounding features.

As well as filters, a good tripod is essential. It’s impossible to hand hold photographs for 10 second exposures. A sturdy tripod is better, for avoiding vibrations. Many tripods have a hook in the bottom, so you can add extra weight (like your camera bag) to help make the tripod sturdier.

The third essential item is a remote shutter release. Pushing down the shutter on your camera often causes the camera to move slightly. The remote shutter release (either a cable release or newer infra-red remote unit) will allow you to activate the shutter without touching the camera.

Once you start working with slow shutter speeds, trial and error is a good method of working out shutter times. Many photographers set their camera to ‘bulb’ when shooting long exposures. The ‘bulb’ setting means that the shutter will stay open for as long as you want. It’s a manual way of controling the shutter. Once you press the shutter button (on your remote cable) the shutter will remain open until you release the button. So you can time the exposure using a watch or by counting. If you have very long exposures (such as 30 seconds or more) the remote cable has a lock function to keep the shutter open without you needing to hold the button down manually.

When you master long exposures, you can have a lot of fun. Try photographing streets at night with the cars zipping by, or the Han River with boat cruises and buildings in the background. You can also try writing messages or making ‘light graffiti’ by setting a long exposure then using a light (from a torch) to make patterns in the air. Photograph stars streaking across the sky or waves splashing onto rocks.

Long exposure photography is a lot of fun and with a little practice, some stunning results can be achieved.

Happy shooting!

David Smeaton

an interesting article, courtesy of the bbc, states that australia is suffering a man drought. the statistics conclude that australia has 100,000 more women than men, which is actually a lot considering our population size. while aussie women have become better educated and richer, aussie men are leaving the country to live and work abroad … an example of which is the 12,000 boomers living in UAE, most of whom are young males.

while this may seem like a bad thing, there are definitely upsides … aussie guys can take the pick of the bunch, leaving only the lesbians, uglies and fatties …

the talk of the town is google’s new web browser, entitled chrome. the browser is very minimal and light (in the usual google fashion).

my first impression of chrome is that it’s fast. the browser loads and moves quickly. pages load relatively fast as well. the browser uses little space for tabs and icons, leaving the majority of the real estate for the web pages. that’s my favourite part, how little space is wasted on icons and how much space is left for the internet.

chrome will be yet another contender in the browser wars. but as some pundits point out, chrome may take more of firefox’s userbase than from internet explorer’s userbase. and then there’s the sinister side to why google might create a browser. after all, the more they know about you …