Perth's first cold front for 2014

Finally, for the first time this year, we have experienced the passage of a relatively normal strong cold front.

It brought with it plenty of rain, wind, and for lucky people in south of river areas, there was lightning overnight.

I was in the Rockingham area for the afternoon so I was able to photograph a lot of the features of the front as it came in.

As far as weather goes, it was just your average winter cold front. Minor damage to homes meant that I was called out as an SES volunteer to patch some leaks.

I also got a timelapse video of the front moving in.

120 Degree panorama showing the front area of the storm.

Throughout the day quite a few people stopped by to watch the weather.

As the rain fell, so did the visibility.

Is it a funnel cloud? Nope. It's a scud. They are often causes for false tornado or waterspout alerts.
More info is in the storm spotters handbook.

Once blown over, there is no damage from the scud clouds.

April Update

Not a lot occurring. No weather. Nothing.

So that's why this blog has been seemingly unattended.

Regardless, I'm slowly building my plans for doing some more underwater photography over the coming months. I've got 2 main underwater cameras. One is a GoPro Hero 3 White edition, the other is a Canon Powershot S110 in a DiCAPAC WP ONE waterproof case.

Juvenile Pink Snapper at Point Walter. Photographed on Gopro Hero 3

The GoPro HD Hero3 White edition is a brilliant camera for the price I paid for it, unfortunately, it only can capture 5 Megapixel images in brightly lit situations. If you need high res images, or need to photograph in murky spaces, the Gopro quickly shows itself up as an inferior solution.

That being said, if you understand the above points, it performs exceptionally well as long as you remember to orient it correctly:

This wasn't bright sunlight, it was a cloudy sun filtering through trees. So the Gopro still gets nice, decent results
even if the lighting is mediocre.

The Powershot S110 is a different matter however. It is a 12 megapixel, RAW shooting compact camera with a very decent lens. I haven't done many test shots,and I'm less than convinced of the seal quality of the Dicapac case, so I only use it underwater if I absolutely have to. I prefer to get up nice and close with the gopro shooting 1 photo per second, so I just photograph everything, and sort the photos once I get home.

Another project I want to do with the gopro is to do an underwater timelapse. This involves weighting a tripod, and then swimming down with it to the bottom of the beach or river, starting the timelapse, and leaving it there for an hour or so, timelapsing the events underwater.

All in all, I'm quite hopeful to be able to get some form of good photography done while I wait for any form of interesting weather.