the hills were alive

one morning we walked up the hill to the castle overlooking salzburg to take some photos, and as we returned we noticed an unmarked path leading off through the trees and decided to have a little look. for the next few hours we wandered the trails meandering through autumn coloured forested hills and it was lovely. 

the quadriga & victoria

having spent a day walking throughout central berlin, mostly in the old east berlin, then the sun was setting on brandenburg gate just as we were walking beneath it. there is so much i could say about berlin, but essentially i just love it. what a gritty, dark but also beautiful city in a seemingly constant state of transformation, it seems both ancient and modern all at once, it is living history, more so than anywhere else i've experienced.

country comfort

i grew up living pretty much in the country, and while not strictly on a farm, our house was surrounded by paddocks and animals. this photo was taken on a roadside on a drive from hobart to lake st clair. even though it was already mid-morning there was a misty fog sitting on green gently sloping pastures, with a herd of cows quietly grazing, and the weak sunlight (it was close to the shortest day of the year) was enough to illuminate the fluff (seeds) on these bullreed stalks. it was pretty and serene and reminded me of my childhood. imho this photo is worth clicking on to bring it to fullsize.

take the weather with you

simultanously (well within 24 hours) held in new york, washington, rio de janeiro, johannesburg, london, hamburg, tokyo, shanghai and sydney, the world-wide series of 'live earth' music festivals weathered some heavy criticism, accused of hypocritically producing thousands of tons of carbon emissions when the objective of the event was about raising awareness about climate change. however negative nelly naysayers aside, i think this was a really great and special event and i was proud to be there to be part of it. not to mention getting to see some fantastic australian artists perform, including missy higgins, wolfmother, esimo joe, sneaky sound system, and the re-formed crowded house who headlined - with the crowd singing along to all the old favourites played, nearly drowning out the band themselves. it was a great day - this photo is more about the memories it invokes that the photo itself. which i think often is the special ingredient which makes the best photos of all.

city of contrasts

early on in our trip and by accident we came across a series of 'free' walking tours hosted in a number of the major cities in europe. they are a lot more interesting and quirky than the bog-standard bus tour packed with seniors ;) during the one we did in paris, we were taken into the courtyard of the palais royale, near to the comédie française and the bibliothèque nationale, where we saw daniel buren's 1986 installation of black and white pillars of varying lengths. this is something we probably wouldn't have come across otherwise and was a fascinating modern contrast to the renaissance-style architecture all around - somewhat similar to the glass pyramids outside the louvre. 

very much downunder

i am very fond of trees (this is probably becoming obvious!) and photos of them. i think it's as much about the tree as the background that tells a real story. this photo, with an almost silhouetted stark and skeletal looking bare tree against a grey and cloudy sky, reminds me perfectly of the exposed, windy and cold outlook that is the southern tip of bruny island in southern tasmania. i don't think there is anything other than ocean separating it from antarctica! well that's what it felt like that day.

luna(tic) freaks

while not technically the best photo, as in it's a bit blurry, i love this one. just because it's funny :) it was taken at luna park in sydney, we were there for a friend's birthday.

short poppies

i am not a supporter of war generally speaking and i think especially recently as a nation we've been involved a lot of unnecessary conflict for political and economic ends. but i do like this photo with the bright red of the poppy against the dull brass panelling. it is the roll of honour at the australian war memorial.

an angel sleeping

it would probably be more accurate to say "(he is only) an angel (when) sleeping". i took this photo the day after we had a big bbq with lots of friends around so lexie was absolutely exhausted, having expended a lotta lot of energy the previous day - trying to sneak past people to get outside, sneaking up on the table to eat some food, and even snuck in a small bite for one of our friend's child :)

rising above it all

i would love to say 'look at that cool hot-air balloon ride above the lovely old city of prague which we went up in to see the city, river and castle from a lofty height'. but i can't. because we didn't. usually i can talk mands into doing most things which she doesn't think she wants to do (but then she realises she does!) but not this time alas. maybe next time. definitely next time. are you reading this mands?

canberra has lots of lovely trees

this is a tree (well one of a whole street of them - ijong street in braddon) which i walk or cycle past nearly every day while going to or from work in civic. it is a fine looking strong tree, which when i looked up it thusly the other day, i thought that looks like it would be awesome to climb. i used to love climbing trees when i was a kid. indeed when i took this photo i thought i might climb this one one time on the way home from work to relive my youth. and if i fall out, well that's what private health insurance is for.

what the quack

remaining on the topic of 30ths for another day. this is a present i was gifted with for my 30th. do you ever wonder how people come to associate a gift with you? don't get me wrong i honestly love this over-sized polka dot rubber ducky (you're the one!) but how did the friends in question know this! do they think i'm funky? colourful? or maybe just a big kid at heart (not to be mistaken for being immature)? because yes - this is all true. thank you!

we're all just big kids

sparklers are fun at any age, including at a 30th. and make for cool photos with people looking like they are holding lightning in their hands. note to self to buy some sparklers and experiment with this a bit more. 

eyeful (of) tower

when in paris it is of course obligatory to take a (million) photo(s) of the eiffel tower. i thought i would try a slighty different angle than simply straight on (with mine and mands' faces goliath-like and seemingly bigger than the tower itself as i hold the camera, pointed towards us, at arm's length). if you click for the bigger version of this photo, you can see the many many many rivets holding these giant pieces of iron in place - there are 2.5 million rivets in the whole tower! that fact will hopefully come in handy for you in a trivia night one time.

four seasons in one day

one time when mands and i were down in hobart visiting my family, we thought we'd go for a drive up the mountain. as in mountain wellington featured in the previous post. the weather was lovely and clear when we set out but of course when we got up the mountain the clouds rolled in and my god the wind!!!! it was freeeeeeeezing. so windy and cold. we only lasted a few minutes out of the car then it was abandon all ye hope as we jumped back in to bolt back down into some semblance of warmth, and as we started out on our descent there was this beautiful sight of the sun valliantly bursting through the clouds far off on the horizon. i didn't get out of the car to take the photo :)

my mountain

i am from tasmania, as my profile states. i go back there a lot because far and away all of my immediate and most of my extended family still lives there while i rebelliously reside on 'the mainland' (this is what tasmanians call the rest of australia, why bother with individual state and territory names when you can just use 2 words to describe the lot!). tasmania is a beautiful state, with tons of natural beauty. indeed about a fifth of the state is world heritage listed. mount wellington, which features in this photo and, i would dare say, in every photo of hobart known to man, is not world heritage listed but it is spectacular in its domination of tasmania's capital. it seems to have its own extremely volatile weather system as well, and whatever mood takes it effects the entirety of hobart town. it is not unusual to see snow on it in the middle of summer. i took this picture in 2003, i think it might have been mands' first visit to tasmania - whether it was or not, i recall my mum took us to show her the 'best place in hobart to take a photo of the mountain'. for your reference and future photo-taking, this location is at the end of newcastle street in battery point.

a lot more trees than the grand canyon

touted as being the blue mountains' "very own grand canyon" can i just say i found govett's leap lookout at blackheath to be far far more impressive than the famous three sisters (i am fairly certain my reaction exactly to that particular NSW natural icon was "is that it?"). govett's leap however was nothing short of breathtaking with a drop of over 600 metres down to the canyon floor, and fantastic sheer rock faces around the rim, with the massive valley stretching all the way out to the horizon. mands' family live in the blue mountains so far and away most of our time there is family time but i am making a note to myself right now to do one of the walks around govett's leap next time we are up there. a fact worth nothing is that this place is not named after a man who leapt to his death or anything gruesome (local tourist myth) - rather this govett was scottish surveyor working in the area in colonial times, and 'leap' is the scottish word for waterfall (many of them in the gorges making up the valley) or cataract.

fig mug shot

i took this photo walking through the stunning world heritage listed daintree rainforest (135 million years old, the oldest rainforest in the world!) in far north queensland. the grouping of what looks like long vines is in fact a strangulation fig beginning to take hold on another tree. initially it takes hold in the top of the tree as an epiphyte and then sends its root system down the trunk into the ground, and it's all pretty much all over red rover for the host tree then, as the fig grows stronger, and its roots grow thicker (amazingly so), until it strangles and kills the original tree. we saw a very advanced fig where the original tree was completely gone inside the massive root system - there was simply a huge space where the original trunk used to be. aside from the story of the strangulation fig this photo invokes for me, i also really like it for the sense of lush green enclosure that a rainforest canopy creates - with the sunlight struggling to burst through at intermittant points.

merely a meerkat

with stoic and unwavering concentration, not even a smile for the camera, this meerkat performed his sentry duties from the highest point above the ground while the remainder of his group happily foraged for food in the knowledge that they would have ample warning of any impending danger. each member of the group takes a turn on lookout. the meerkat is native to the west coast of africa. this one (and his friends) was located in the open plains dubbo zoo which i visited as part of a dubbo roadtrip for a friend's 40th birthday.

llamas are not overly friendly creatures

they may look very pretty and soft but they are pretty tetchy and more than likely inclined to spit at you if they get annoyed. this one had a glint in his eye and a suspiciously wet corner to his mouth i remember noting as i quickly took the photo. although i guess having their owner pimp them out to tourists for the quinessential south america llama shot all day long - 'twere i a llama i'd be spitting too :)

colca canyon condor

we rose early on a bitterly cold windy morning and drove for a good hour or so through a hilly barren landscape to a rocky outcrop ledge on the edge high in the colca canyon, the world's second deepest canyon.there was nothing else we were there for except the hope of condors, not a promise as we were given no guarantee of even seeing one. we waited patiently in a steadily growing crowd for over an hour before we noticed someone down the far end of the ledge pointing excitedly - and desperately followed the rough line their finger indicated. and then we saw our first majestic andean condor with its wingspan of metres, soaring silently but at great speed on the canyon updrafts. it was a spectacular example of perfect nature. 

rolls royce feline

as chilled out as lexie may appear in this photo, he was recovering from not only 3 operations to unblock his bladder but also an operation to cut out flesh on his chest and leg which had literally died when he became infected with a superbug at the vetinary hospital. there haven't been - touch wood - any other blockages since then but he is on pricey prescription cat food for life to keep the condition under control. he is one expensive pound rescue cat! 

cattitude

it is not with rose-coloured glasses looked upon those who have passed on nor first-born favouritism that i say with all honesty that jack was an absolute saint compared with the little b (also known as lexie). however even the best natured cats have their moments and this looks like it was one of those for jack. i also like this photo because the black and white effect hightlights his tigery stripes.

dearest jack(et)

this handsome creature is mands' and my first cat jack who died when his heart failed 9 days after we brought lexie home as a friend for him. he was diagnosed with a heart murmur in a checkup just prior to getting lexie. the vet assured us that he would be absolutely fine until he got much older (he was only 3 years old) and only then would he have to go on medication, but only 2 weeks later he died. i heard him collapse early one morning, i was in with him less than a minute later, and in a panic even tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth but he was gone already :( at least it was very quick, and he loved lexie from the word go so his final days were happy.

old and forever favourite

beautiful twisted mossy tree in cradle mountain national park in north-west tasmania. this world heritage area is my favourite place in the whole world. in all seriousness. it is simply stunning all year round, whether lush green in the summer or white wonderland in the winter. the overland track which starts at cradle mountain, and ends 65 kilometres later at lake st clair, is on my bucket list.

gay flamingo

i set up the camera on the side of the pool on auto-timer for this happy snap so technically i did still take the photo. mands and i were in port douglas - where the rainforest meets the reef - on our 'honeymoon' after our civil partnership in august last year. we stayed for almost a week at a gay-owned and run (although open for anyone to stay there!) resort called the pink flamingo. it was fabulous! we had a villa with a private courtyard and an outdoor shower. there was also a resort cat called friday who was so cute. she'll surely be featured at some point :)

flamingo volcano

to justify the repetition (although i make no apology - there will be more photos to come from this day) the previous photo was about the flamingos and the lagoon, this shot provides some context with a snow capped inactive volcano in the background. it was actually very very cold on the day in question - despite the sunny clear blue skies and dessert-like environment. the ants on the far side of the lagoon are people. 

flamingo flamenco

a flock of stunning pink flamingos living on special plankton which grows in the high altitude lagoons in southwest bolivia. a day of 4wDriving over sometimes trecherous terrain (no road!) was required to reach this lagoon, including an extremely scary moment when one of the wheels literally fell off the 4wD we were travelling in at high speed down a hill comprised of rocks and shale.

the water flows freer than the money

this is one of the water features in the cafe courtyard outside the building housing the australian government departments of treasury and finance & deregulation in the parliamentary triangle, barton, canberra.

communist tv

this is a shot i took from a boat cruising through the mekong delta in southern vietnam. i was amazed that people even living in clearly abject poverty had both the money and inclination to buy a tv and some impressive aerials. then our guide informed us that the government installs a tv with a requisite aerial to ensure good reception in every home, and also provides all the programming, to reinforce government messages to the population.

day 2 inca trail

with the mists clearing to reveal clear blue skies, it was a fresh and breath-taking start to day 2 of the inca trail, looking up at the mountain peaks towering over us, and of which we had slept in the shadows the night preceding, our campsite halfway up the main incline to dead woman's pass. we were informed by our guide, wearing a sly love-scaring-the-tourists smile, that several hikers die every year attempting to walk over the pass. i loved every minute and every metre of the 45 kilometres of the inca trail, and would do it all again in a heartbeat.

why

ah the 2 edged sword that is the digital camera - you can see a photo as soon as you've taken it and you don't end up paying a fortune to buy and develop countless films but the same ever-improving  technology that enables the former results in the user, generally speaking, taking many many more photos than they would have using film. 

which not only makes it a daunting task to sit down at the end of a long trip to sort and edit and label and if you're really lucky actually get around to actually putting some as physical prints in an album, but none of your family or friends really want to sit through the five trillion photos you took on your exotic trip to wherever :) 

which is also not to say that everyone doesn't have some awesome photos they want to share (show off). this is what this blog is about. i am going to flick through the thousands and thousands of photos i have taken since i got my first digital camera about 5 years ago, pick out the good (subjective i know) ones and tell the little story about each one. 

i will be aiming for one a day - it will be no more than this, although it may conceivably end up being less depending on other stuff happening in this life i live :)