Steve emailed me an excel for the remaining HD videos which we will include with the SD videos. When completed, we will be able to provide the NFSA with a fully up to date collection of species videos, including four we uploaded in January. We will produce the next videos from material on a memory card from the new camera. Based on the vimeo record, I discovered that three videos were missing from Steve’s SD excel list, bringing the total to 123.
This evening Steve gave me the Excel document for the SD Species Videos we will be sending to the NFSA (National Sound & Film Archive). It is about a year ago since we sent them the HD videos. Once I get into the swing of things it should be plain sailing. There are 120 videos for which I need to provide taxonomic and descriptive information. Among them are some of my earliest videos on Vimeo uploaded six years ago.
I have long thought I arrived in Australia at the end of February thirty years ago, but couldn’t remember the date. Wanting to mark the occasion here, I ferreted around to see what I could find and came across an old UK passport which unfortunately replaced the one I arrived with, the following year.
Happily, my old metal document case yielded the key paperwork relating to my move, including the Qantas ticket for my flight from Heathrow to the Gold Coast. I landed at Sydney on February 11. I remember over-nighting at the airport hotel, scarcely believing I was actually in Australia and only a relatively short distance and a matter of hours away from folding Simon, my beloved five year old son, in my arms. He had preceded me to Australia with his mother and her partner nearly a year before.
I was forty five years old when I came to Australia, straight from London to Tamborine Mountain, where I have lived ever since; my longest ever sojourn in the same place. Australia has been extremely good to me, allowing me to live a better life than I ever could in the UK, both materially and,… Read Complete Text
This afternoon I posted a USB to Queensland Museum containing the 2016 video frames and photos to be added to my Image Library, plus supporting information on locations and species identification. There are 419 video frames. I tried to count the photos and arrived at a total of 559, making 978 images in all. However, in copying the photos to the USB there seemed to be many more items. I do not know whether that tally included the folders housing the jpgs.
I took delivery of my Canon XA35 camera before breakfast and before noon was in Steve’s office so that he could set up the camera for me, bless him. The extras comprise two large batteries and two memory cards. The battery included with the camera is only good for 145 minutes or so.
This evening Steve and I captured the 20 frames from the last tape footage and the first 49 frames from memory card 1. The latter include plenty of in focus wide shots, which I was unable to film for the past two years with the Sony.
Yesterday I collected two time-coded DVDs from Steve. One contained the last tape footage, the other the first memory card footage. Today I selected 20 frames for capture from the last tape footage. They completed the tally of 978 images for 2016 I am submitting to the Queensland Museum to add to my Image Library which is in its collection. I have started writing the document containing location information and species identity to accompany the images.
A good way to start the blog for 2017; posting my decision to buy the Canon XA 35. This evening I was with Steve. He downloaded the footage from the memory card to his hard drive and transferred 1 hour and 20 minutes worth to his edit programme. The footage included two night filming walks and the lagoon at the Sports Complex, dry on 30 December 2016 and full of water on 4 January 2017 with four Pacific Black Ducks swimming in it, after heavy rain three days ago. I am hanging onto the demo camera and hope to be able to keep it until the new one arrives.
I have just uploaded the 300th image to my Moths Album, following an excellent run of new species at the garage, since the new owner of the property replaced the bulb in one of the two lamps three weeks ago. The moth is yet to be identified. It has strange antennae which have tiny serrations on both edges and a black and white-banded tip.