Perth Edutrip: Day Four: A Night at Margaret River

Yes, I'm still at this little town. I am still researching on their education system, for this is a student exchange, and perhaps I'll get a better picture at the end of the trip, at Thursday, after I would be free from joining the year eight classes.

Yes, I had been told to just take a class three years below me for two days straight. My brain needs stimulants. Thankfully, at least, two days ago, there had been something interesting going on. There's a night market in town! And just in time, for soon, the autumn temperatures would make it pretty chilly at night.

Here is what I got in the night markets: All pictures taken with my Canon EOS 600D.

We went to the night market, quite far from my homestay outside Margaret River, but close enough so that it took around ten minutes, and arrived just as the sun sets at around seven. It is a small city, and everyone gathered around for this occasion.

Let's start off from the small details: lanterns hung up for the night. Quite a nice opportunity to take pictures then.

There was this little band of older people, singing for the main attraction of the place. Well, it was nice to hear them sing and dance on the stage below a tree.

Where there are bands, there are crowds watching. Really, Margaret River is a small place, and you could meet basically anyone in the place.

And what do people really come for? The food, surely.

They have all sorts of food. Italian paella, pastry, and pizza, Indian cuisine. Indonesian food from home. All kinds of colorful stalls in the field.

Well, I had just a pizza for dinner. It was really crowded, the orders reaching hundreds, and they were pumping pizza from this wood stove. Tasted authentically Italian.

We went back at around nine. he house where I was staying is in a vineyard, and the pitch-black darkness means stars. Not just a field of several stars, like back home in Jakarta or at Perth, no. A field full of stars.

Shutter speed: 6 s
Aperture: f/5
ISO: 3200
Edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6

Breathtaking. Certainly no view like that in a smoke and light-ridden city. You could make sense of the constellations, too. This cool tip was told to me by my friend's dad:

Look at the bottom center. There are two stars, the Pointers, pointing top-left, to the Southern Cross, the group of four stars making a cross. Now, draw a line from the center of the cross, to the right. Make another line, perpendicular to the line from the center of the Cross to the Pointers, and where they intersect each other is true South.

There's a roughly-made diagram. At least it'll be useful if you're lost at sea in the south.

Probably a mistake putting the ISO up to 3200 in the shot, as the stars could be lost among noise. However, I did not have a tripod with me, thus I took pictures by jamming the camera between the fence and hold it tight, trying to not make it vibrate.

Shutter speed: 20 s
Aperture: f/5
ISO: 800
Edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6

A better result came when I put my camera at a fence post, pointing straight up, and took an exposure of 20 seconds. The clouds did add a nice touch. Shame I couldn't do longer exposures to capture more stars, as my hands would be numb waiting outside in the late summer air.

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Still lack of time to edit, and I'll sort out the exiffs (picture stats) tomorrow, hopefully.