dan's ray-bans

setting up the frame

moovin health ball 2009

I very nearly didn't come along to this year's ball. I'm fairly introverted, so often tire of events such as these shortly after the entrée has been served. The selling point however, was that Benny offered to loan me his 50mm prime lens (f/1.8) for the evening.


This lens is far better suited to low light conditions than my 24-105mm f/4.0, as it allows two and a third stops more light in (which, according to my calculations is five times more light). The f/1.4 50mm prime is the next lens on my list to buy.


The ball was held in Mooroopna, a slight variation from the traditional Shepparton


Each year there is a slave auction in two parts. There is a live auction of some of the prominent people, such as Prof. Bill Adam's coveted pavlova making lesson, and then there is a silent auction for a few dozen other items.


This part of the action, however, was far from silent!

a day at the races

On the first Tuesday of November, we hold the Wangaratta Cup. Thousands of people come to the showgrounds for an impressive community event as the whole spread from horse-lovers to the horsey-indifferent get together to dress up, enjoy the Wangaratta sun, and watch the ponies run around the course.


I hear there is also a similar event in Melbourne on the same day.


Sarah H and Katrina (above), and Laura, Zoe, Ella and Mel (right).



I heard on the grapevine (and from people's display pictures on facebook) that overhead shots are back in - so I thought I'd give it a go myself!

Ray catches the early stages of Dave's mo for Movember.


One big part of the day is the "fashions on the field". The men's category often struggles to find worthy candidates, but the same can not be said for the women. For such candidates, the competition is fierce.

Matt borrowed my camera to spy this photo of Zoe's hair from behind. It's certainly one of my favourites.

The semester 12 group in Wangaratta. Benny, Ella, Zoe, Liz, Laura and Ben (me).

stormy night

Taken at 10:32:58pm. An extremely active storm blew past us tonight, just missing us by a few kilometres. Sadly, the rain missed us also. It did, however, give us a great opportunity to climb onto the roof and get some great photos.

Taken at 10:33:07pm. This progression of photos is a small sample of what I took that night. I've never taken photos of a storm before (except for one embarrassing attempt), so it was very experimental.


Taken at 10:43:11pm. The only lighting provided was that from the moon, diffracted through the clouds, a few houses, a streetlight and the lightning itself.

Taken at 11:08:49pm. Hovering the mouse over this one, you'll see that I managed to produce the daylight-like exposure simply by having the shutter open for over two minutes.

You can view the other photos in the series by going to my flickr page. Simply click on one of the images above, and scroll through the photostream that appears to the right of it.

farwell bbq

This week is the last week that the interns will be in the hospital, before they will rotate with another group. We'll also be finishing up on Friday, however we will be hanging around to complete our exams over the ten days that follow. So, in Rural Clinical School tradition, we called together a barbeque to bid them fairwell.


Nisa (ED) and Bella (Med 1).


Mel, Kelsey, Laura and Bec. Being cup weekend, a few of us also had extra visitors coming up to stay. Some of you will recognise Mel, who did semester 8 with us, before taking a year off to travel.

I'm afraid I didn't manage to catch too many more photos from this evening, as I was distracted by lightning, just a few kilometres away on the Northern horizon. Benny and I then climbed up on the roof to get a better view, and try to catch it on camera.

wangaratta festival of jazz

Reid Street, Wangaratta, has been closed off this weekend for the Jazz tent, a free event in which a long lineup of bands take to the stage to perform for the public. Their is covered seating in the middle of the road, stretching the entire block. The cafés lining the street pull out all of the stops to cater for the crowds. In addition to this, street vendors line up along where all of the cars would normally be parked.

optical allusion

john gehrig winery

oxley market

The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz is now in full swing! A small troupe of us headed down to Oxley to check out their annual Bush Market before eventually heading back to Wang for some Jazz.



At last I can introduce to you Matt, the latest of our visitors from Seattle, Washington. Matt is a final year medical student at the University of Washington, who has come here for his elective placement. As far as we can tell, his timing with the Jazz festival was not intentional, but fortuitous nevertheless.



We managed to convince Matt to buy the hat, thankfully however, we weren't so successful with the parasol!