Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
It seems I celebrate the end of every lockdown with a trip to the cinema :)
Speaking of which, I’m super happy with the direction in which they took in A Quiet Place Part II. Great story with fantastic performances – particularly from Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. 10/10 would recommend.
Photo of a cinema screen that shows the Paramount movie studio opening scene.
Emerging as the meaning of life, the universe, and everything on her 42nd birthday, I present to you Dr Nadia Niaz!
(Maggie is suitably impressed.)
Photo of a woman with long black hair. The woman is wearing a maroon and black sweater, black jeans, and black boots. With a big grin on her face, she is striking a post in front of the the door to a house. Standing at her feet and looking up to her is a red dog.
So the home made, gluten free McDonald’s style apple pies were a success!
(The smaller ones burst because I over stuffed them. Not that I'm complaining!)
Photo of four golden brown McDonald’s style apple pies in a glass dish.
There comes a time during every walk in which I make The Final Turn. That turn marks the farthest point from home I’ll be during my walk. Every step or turn after this is a step or turn going home.
Getting the first COVID-19 vaccine this morning felt like that Final Turn.
Close-up selfie of a bald man wearing glasses and a blue surgical mask. One the man’s black puffer jacket is a sticker that reads #JabDone. The man is holding up a small card next to this sticker that reads ‘COVID-19 vaccination hub record’.
When I get the second dose in three weeks I’ll probably feel like I do when I turn onto our street.
Two weeks after that – when I’m finally fully vaccinated – that’s when I’ll feel like I do when I close the gate behind me, turn off my stopwatch, and can officially say I’m home.
It’ll have been a long walk.
Photo of a residential street with tall trees, nature strips, and parked cars. Behind the building in the background of the photo is the rich golden glow of the setting sun.
Are you *actually* vaccinated if you don’t take a post-jab selfie? :)
#JabDone
Close-up selfie of a bald man with glasses who is wearing a light blue surgical mask on his face. The man is sitting in what appears to be a large hall. On his black puffer jacket is a round sticker that reads #JabDone.
(To be fair there’s not much else to do while you sit around in the waiting area for 15-20 minutes post-jab in case you have an immediate adverse reaction to the vaccine.)
In case it’s not clear yet, Nadia and I got got our first doses of the Comirnaty vaccine (the one made by Pfizer) at the Melbourne Showgrounds vaccination hub early this morning.
An 8am vaccination booking has its pros and cons. Yes it’s cold and dark – particularly on a rainy day like today – but the queues are super short and the whole process is pretty quick. We parked our car at 7:49am, got processed by 8:18am, and made our way into the post-jab waiting area by 8:31am.
Photo of a large hall with several rows of chairs set out in a cordoned-off area. A pull-up banner in the foreground reads ‘COVID-19 vaccination hub’.
So to those of you over 40 in Melbourne who haven’t been vaccinated yet: come on down to the Showgrounds and get jabbed! (I’m sure the rest of you will get your turn very soon.)
Photo of the outside of a large hall. A large sign on the wall reads ‘COVID-19 vaccination hub’ and ‘Walk-ins are welcome’.
Lemon tree; very pretty.
Photo of a fruit laden lemon tree in a residential garden.
(For those of you who don’t get that song reference.)
Speaking of trees, it’s a windy week in Melbourne and our neighbour’s tree – the one most responsible for me buying an electric leaf blower - is threatening to dump another load into our back garden. *sigh*
Photo of a tall tree (taller than the double storey house it stands next to) that’s about two-thirds full of leaves, most of which have turned yellow, orange, and read and are threatening to fall.
A couple of weeks ago on this blog I did a photo editing show-and-tell. As I went to publish that post it occurred to me that I might do more of these in the future. So, just in case, I titled that #1. Good thing I did because I’m now back with #2 :)
There are lots of different shot types, but when I’m teaching folks at work about how to take good photos, I usually stick with three: wide, medium, and narrow shots. Then, depending on the story they’re trying to tell, I get them to pick the type of shot that works best.
Here’s an example of me doing that from the photos I took at Midsumma Melbourne Pride March in 2020. I wanted to tell the story of what it felt like to be at Pride. I wanted a single ‘hero’ shot that summed up the whole event.
I initially thought a wide shot would do that best. It didn’t. The story this photo tells, for example, is “here is an outdoor event at which there were lots of rainbow flags”. And, while its cool that you can see the scale of this event, your eyes aren’t drawn to anything — there’s nothing here to focus on.
So then I thought I looked for a good medium shot. Something that showed more detail. That didn’t work either. The story this shot tells is “there were people at a pride event, many of whom were dressed up”. And there’s still nothing to focus on.
So finally I settled on this narrow shot. The story it tells is “here are a couple of queer students connecting at a Pride event”. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about: people connecting, dressing up, showing up, making a statement about their presence in the world, and celebrating.
At the same Pride event I took lots of photos of dogs. I quickly realised that none of the photos I took from human eye level were any good — the angle was all wrong.
So then I switched to dog level (or close to it) and that worked much better. But that alone wasn’t enough. I need to ensure my shot composition was right too.
So my final step was to crop that photo. This now properly showcased that adorable pooch.
The main thing I teach people at work about photography is the difference between photos that document something and photos that tell a story. Both types have their place — but you have to know which is which, and which one to use when.
For example, here’s a photo of Augustus Gelatery in Yarraville that I took. The story it tells: “this place sells ice cream”. That’s the photo I uploaded to Google Maps to document what this shop looks like.
But that’s not the photo I shared on social media. That photo would need to tell a story. And the story this photo tells is: “ICE CREAM!” — which is what I wanted people to get excited about.
So there you have it: more of what I do to take decent photos.
I’m enjoying going back through my photos to document what I’ve learned and now apply, so hopefully I’ll have more of these posts to do in the future.
Someone in my neighbourhood has the best plans for this gorgeous sunny morning. Whoever they are, I hope they have a lovely day.
Photo of a brightly coloured lawn chair and a raised dog bed lying in the front garden of a house. It’s a bright, sunny morning and the chair is set facing the sun.
So my gluten free lockdown lasagna turned out okay :)
Photo of cheese, well-browned lasagna that’s fresh out of the oven and is cooling on a rack on a kitchen counter.
When you’re not a regular stargazer you forget just how quickly Earth rotates!
Fortunately our telescope has an equatorial mount so we just had to keep turning one knob to have the moon stay in our sights during tonight’s lunar eclipse.
Photo of a woman standing outside at night looking through the eyepiece of a medium-sized home telescope. Her hand is on an adjustment knob at the side of the telescope.
Working from the office today – with indoor mask restrictions back in place across Melbourne – is going about as expected. #tumbleweeds
Selfie of a man wearing business attire and a face mask. The man is standing in an open plan office with all the desks behind him unoccupied.
(To be fair there are about ten people working on this floor, they’re just mostly on the other side of the building.)
On the plus side I got to wear my all-blue work ensemble, including a blue face mask, so that was nice. That’s, like, the opposite of the regular pandemic blues :)
Mirror selfie of a man standing in a lift. The man is wearing business attire: black leather shows, a navy blue suit, a blue check shirt, a blue sweater, and a blue face mask. He is carrying a brown leather bag.
The walk to the train station early this morning was lovely too.
Selfie of a man in front of a public garden and netball court, both of which are empty. The man is wearing a suit, dress shirt, sweater, scarf, and hat.
And there’s still plenty of fruit left even at lunchtime. (Usually at least all bananas are gone by 10am.)
Photo of two wooden boxes lying on the counter of an office kitchenette. The boxes are filled with fruit: apples, pears, and bananas.
Importantly, I got to welcome my new team member on her first day of work. So that was the obvious highlight of the day.
So win some, lose some with the whole having to wear masks indoors thing. But that’s okay: health and safety first.
Photo of a sign framed and mounted on a portable stand that’s been placed in the middle of a corridor at the entrance to an office. The sign say “Please wear a mask at all times”. Behind that is another stand installation that dispenses hand sanitizer and says “Hand sanitising station”.
On weekends I batch upload to this blog all the photos I’ve posted to Twitter over the course of that week (or, occasionally, several weeks!).
In the meantime, through the magic of technology and cloud computing working together in the background, those photos have been automatically copied from my smartphone to my computer. And, while I originally post those photos to Twitter from my phone, I usually post them to this blog from my computer.
It’s only when I’m looking at these photos on my large screen monitor that I get to fully appreciate the editing and post-processing I’ve done on them. (For which I use the Snapseed app, btw.) So I thought I’d do a bit of a show-and-tell on two of my recent photos to document what I did to them and why.
Here’s the original photo I took of a tree in autumn whose leaves had all turned shades of red. This was taken with my Google Pixel 3XL (released November 2018).
There’s a bunch of things I don’t like about this photo:
The colours are washed out. The sky is pale blue, when in real life it was a deeper blue, and the leaves of the tree had more vibrant shades of red than what you see here.
The brightness of the sun has oversaturated parts of the photo. Here you can’t make out any definition in the clouds, though when I saw them through my sunglasses they had much more depth. Also things like the pavement have almost no texture.
So what I did was reduce the highlights, added some colour saturation, and (mainly for the clouds) added a bit of the ‘HDR-scape’ filter. I also selectively increased the colour saturation on the tree. All that resulted in this image which has much more depth, colour vibrancy, and textural definition.
Here a side-by-side before and after that makes those edits much clearer. Yes, the ‘after’ photo looks darker overall, but that’s because I’ve turned down the highlights that made the ‘before’ photo too bright. Note the restored blue of the sky and the red of the tree leaves, the depth and definition of the clouds, and the texture you can see in things like the pavement.
Here’s another photo that, for opposite reasons, essentially had the same issues as the one above. This time it was the gloominess of the light that washed out the colours and led to the lack of contrast and texture.
The fix for this was basically the same: reduce highlights, add ambience (which tweaks the brightness and increases saturation), and add a touch of HDR-scape for the clouds.
Here’s the side-by-side that shows the differences more clearly. We now have more vibrant colours (look at the colourful building and the grass), more definition in the clouds, and more depth overall. And I think the darker ‘after’ photo does a better job of capturing the gloomy, overcast mood of the day.
I don’t have too many other examples to show you, to be honest. That’s mainly because, with decent lighting, the Pixel 3XL camera does a remarkably good job of creating a balanced, well exposed, nicely coloured photos. Those I just have to crop and they’re ready to go.
I will talk about what else I do to improve my photos before I share them, but that’s for another blog post.
What kind of post-processing do you do on your photos before you post them or share them anywhere? And what camera and editing software do you use? I’d love to know.
It’s nice to take an afternoon break when you’re working from home.
Here are Maggie and I making the most of the only corner in our back garden that is still bathed in sunlight.
Selfie of a man and a dog sitting right up against a weathered fence on a bright sunny day. The shadows being cast by nearby objects are long, meaning the sun is getting lower in the sky and so it is late in the afternoon.
That’s not too different from this morning, tbh, when she and I lazed around in bed for a bit before starting the day. Evidently my thigh makes for a comfortable pillow.
Close up photo of a red dog lying on a blue bed sheet on top of a bed. The dog’s head is propped on to what appears to be the leg of the person under the sheet, who is also the one taking the photo.
Important update: both of us have changed position. She’s found another warm spot and I’m now sunning the back side of my head. #ManualRotisserie
Selfie of a man and a dog. The dog is lying on her side in a sunny path of paved residential driveway. The man is in the foreground and is looking at the camera. There is bright sunlight on the back of the man’s head.
We conclude the documenting of my afternoon break with the all-important cool down in the dirt. Though at least that’s something she’s doing all on her own!
Photo of a red dog sitting on a shady patch of cool, freshly dug-up dirt under a small tree on the side of a weatherboard house.
Two major benefits of working from the office…
Photo taken from a tall building of a cityscape on a grey, almost completely overcast day. In the distance, just above the horizon, rays of the setting sun shine through the clouds with a deep golden yellow glow.
Photo of an office kitchenette with wooden boxes and a coffee machine in the background. On the table in the foreground is a quarter of a rich, layered chocolate cake with white icing. There is a butter knife lying next to the cake so people can cut themselves a slice.
Back on the commuting life at Southern Cross Railway Station.
Photo of a train approaching its platform at a large train station. You can only see the lights and vague outline of the train that has just entered the covered portion of the station building. Another train is parked on the tracks next to the approaching train. A man in a silver puffer vest stands in the foreground, looking at his phone, while he waits for the train.
Autumn + neighbour’s tall tree + wild, windy night = (electric) leaf blower time.
Photo of a residential back garden showing a wooden deck, a pathway next to the lawn, and green grass growing in the lawn. There are yellow, orange, and red leaves scattered all over the ground. There is also a red dog sniffing around on the path.
That was a lot of leaves! (Also, I love electric leaf blowers so much.)
Photo of a residential back yard showing a large collection of red, orange, and yellow leaves that has been blown onto a cemented area next to a fence. Placed in front of these leaves is a black and bright orange AEG brand electric leaf blower.
There’s a lot you can accomplish during your working-from-home lunch break :)
Writers of Australia! Come “play with language and see what happens” in the ‘Language at play’ session that Nadia is running at the Emerging Writers’ Festival.
This is part of the full-day ‘Language & Writing’ masterclass on Wednesday, 23 June.
When you're different from your neighbours it’s good to be loud and proud :)
Photo of a residential footpath and street. All the trees along the road and in the houses have green or brown leaves. However one tree, which is the focus of this photo, has bright red leaves of different shades.
Not what you expect to see carved into cement on the footpath, but I suppose it’s nice to live in a neighbourhood (Newport, VIC) in which people express this type of sentiment. Especially during the month of Ramzan.
Photo of a square of cemented footpath into which someone has carved the letters ‘GAC’ and then ‘Muslims are good’. Below that a stylized graffiti tag is also carved into the then-wet cement.
Ah Melbourne. Your graffiti and wall art never fail to impress. Especially with art like this.
And not only is this gorgeous, you can really only see from the train just before you reach Footscray Station!
Photo taken from a train window of a large exterior wall of a double storey warehouse. Spread across the wall is a vibrant painting for a futuristic city and an astronaut above that city who is reaching out to touch a bird that’s flying into the starry night. The painting’s background colours are those of the rainbow: going from the red of the city to the violet of the night sky.
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia