The Raph Round-up: May 2025

May has been pretty busy – had friends visiting from Adelaide, took a trip to Stockholm, and started a new job as a senior scientist at cmbio! As a result, I’ve not had much time to dedicate to photography, but regardless, here are some of my favourite photos that I took this month. I’ve also added a new commenting feature to the website (bottom of the page). You’ll first need a free GitHub account if you want to leave a comment.

Out and about in Copenhagen

Having friends visit is always a great excuse to get out and about. It’s easy to take what you have for granted.

Our friends were staying in Pasteurs tower (just across the road from us) on the 33rd floor of the second tallest building in Denmark (128m).
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Another view, this time of Copenhagen (you can see Pasteurs tower in the distance) from the top of the Church of Our Saviour in Christianshavn (91m).
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Another view.
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A bike ride to the contemporary art gallery Arken.
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Shadows. It pays to look down!
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Animals and clouds

There’s a park south of Copenhagen (Sydhavnstippen) that’s home to some free roaming and tame animals.
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Also some very fluffy sheep! You can often see the sheep walk up to people asking for a pat.
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Interesting clouds.
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A short trip to Stockholm

We also went on a short trip to Stockholm. The last time we visited was in February of last year (very cold and dark), so it was great to see the city in the light of spring. It was also nice to catch up with some other friends from Adelaide who were doing a Europe trip. Other highlights for me included: Swedish cinnamon buns, Omnipollos (craft brewery), excellent second-hand shopping, and visiting Fotografiska (a contemporary photography museum).

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New lens, and a spring garden

I also recently acquired another lens for my new camera, the Nikon Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S. It’s basically the Z-mount version of the Tokina 105mm Macro f/2.8 (one of my favourite lens from my old camera). The lens has a 1:1 magnification, meaning that it captures photos that are ‘life-size’ relative to the camera’s sensor (i.e. you can take photos of very small stuff). I love macro lenses, as they unlock a completely different world to photograph – one that we don’t often see.

It’s also a really sharp lens!
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The magnification (coupled with low aperture) also has the nice side effect of blurring out parts of the frame, creating a nice background, and increasing the focus on your subject.
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1:1 magnification of a flower’s anthers – with pollen visible.
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Again, I love the separation between subject and background, and the ‘dreamy’ look it gives.
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Photo of the month

Taken on the same trip as the above section. I love the mood of this photo, the shadows and the contrast.

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Interesting things I’ve read/watched

Check out Cory Doctorow’s new podcast ’Who Broke the Internet’ on CBC. Cory is a fantastic communicator, and adeptly explains how the internet has enshittified. Why has Google search gotten worse, not better with time? Well, it turns out that the more searches a user has to the make, the more advertisements they get served. Funnily enough, Google founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page actually mentioned this in a early paper describing the Google PageRank algorithm:

.. we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.

Learn about quokkas!

I really enjoyed Estonia’s EuroVision entry. Though apparently, some Italians took offence to it!

Adobe was sued by the DOJ and FTC for hidden fees. Yet another reason why I moved away from using Adobe for my photography.

Excellent – albeit spooky – video about the history and modern issue that is PFAS by Veritasium. The best we can do is minimise our exposure, with water being one of the main entry points into the human body. I’ll definitely be testing the water of the next place I move into.

Did you know that only 23 people are needed for there to be a 50% chance of them sharing a birthday? The Birthday Paradox seems pretty counter-intuitive, but it makes more sense when you consider that the comparisons are made between each pair of people, so there are with 23 people:

23 * 22 / 2 = 253 comparisons

It’s is also relevant in the context of cybersecurity!

Someone made a free QR code generator that’s free from tracking and bullshit.

A bonus, based take on wealth inequality by Cory.