light camera action (31)

funky lighting at cube nightclub. this photo was taken exceptionally late into a long evening. well early in the morning in fact as i sat on a couch with my friend whelano for a bit of good old-fashioned & beer-fuelled ranting. yes yes yes i know i have been completely remiss with my photo a day commitment. i have no excuses, the reason is work has been completely mad and has sucked my will to live ... and take photos. i promise to try harder. i'm not sure i will be able to 'catch up' - is it cheating to post two a day to do so? probably. luckily i'm more than happy to live by my own rules :)

she's a speed racer (27)

i love riding my bike. it's my time. it's me. the end.

cheating (25)

i didn't actually take this photo myself but i did instruct mands in a fair amount of detail (she is reluctant to take photos for me, probably understandably) how i wanted the shot framed and taken (mini tripod, timer, multi-shot) so it kind of counts? mands claims to come from a family of non-photographers, so if i don't request photos of myself then they'd never be taken, and then years from now when i'm gone what evidence would there be that i existed and did things? although to be honest i hope it'd be more than photos as evidence of that.

no fortune told in tea leaves (16)

rather i should say, reading your future into tea leaves is made somewhat impossible when you use a tea infuser spoon for your herbal green tea. although what future do i envisage regardless... getting into bed to read my library book a perfectly good family by lionel shriver (a good read ... despite a lot of somewhat discomforting and very astute family behavioural observations) to ease myself into a good night's sleep to give me the best start possible to tomorrow. sounds pretty good. let's hope it comes true. (by the way, this photo taken in 'negative' effect on macro focus using my mobile camera).

lime & corona reunion (10)

lime, i told you last week you would look better in a beer. and i do believe this proves i'm right. this is the refreshing view down the neck of a corona bottle. we spent today enjoying good company and some deliciously cold beer on a very hot australia day in the nation's capital.

twenty-six degrees (6)

not entirely accurate, it's actually a couple of degrees hotter than that. but when it comes to the galileo thermometer, we value historical style over technological substance.

acquiring a new focus (1)

i've always been serious about trying to take the best photos i could. now i finally have the equipment to take me much further on that journey, a canon 550d dslr twin lens kit. i've been meaning to buy a really good camera for years but kept on putting it off, until my sister asked me to take her wedding photos this year. so now i have four months to make sure i'm the best i can be, otherwise... well i don't like to think. unrelated to the recent upgrade prompt but upon hearing about my impending purchase, my friend siobhan challenged (or invited might be a nicer term) me to join her in the 365 project, which is about uploading a photo of choice every day. anyway this shot is #1. this challenge should help get me prepped for the april nuptials shoot, not to mention such an objective should (i hope!) help this blog to become what it was supposed to be from the start. wish me luck!

i would love a house with high ceilings

just for the opportunity to install some amazing lighting. like this installation - taken from directly beneath it in a bar in dickson. fancy.

me & a (sho)gun

tori amos cranked. clear clean crisp autumn day. solarised effect.

tour de canberra

when i first moved to the nation's capital a decade ago, one of the things canberrans raved about (still do, mind you, and i am now one of them!) and which became quite obvious after living here even a short time, was that bicycling is very popular here and that there are awesome bike paths throughout the spread of the territory. so i quickly bought a bike, but for some reason didn't use it much at first. it was just a few years back that i became a huge fan of the cycling commute. i loved not being beholden to sitting in traffic or using public transport, being green, and arriving at my destination clearheaded from my individual quiet time. not to mention the fastest way for me to get to work from home (all of 4.5km) is on my trusty shogun :)

amber lighting, amber fluids

the light swinging gently in the breeze above me as i sat in the open window at the front of the little creatures brewery on brunswick street, fitzroy on a roasting hot november afternoon enjoy some amber ales. bliss and relaxation.

i never used to like wicker

but i really love this ceiling lamp encased in the stuff. funny how your tastes change as you get older. funny how i like taking photos of lamps too. this is the fourth one for this blog that i can think of.

tongue & groove

a carpentry joint term. but also a canberra bar. to be honest it is a venue probably a little too sydney-esque and flash for the likes of me personally, with its too-cool-for-school-and-to-be-bothered-serving-you staff. it has a fancy false ceiling layered with about twenty large lamps (some of which are featured in this shot) which is lowered about five metres as the sun sets. not sure what that's about but it's the only thing i like about the place.

l'artiste enivré

this could be a photo capturing a triple eclipse of some sort, or a smaller planet casting a shadow over a larger red planet. or an abstract and very expensive painting in the louvre. but it isn't. it's a snap i took of the inside of a lamp when i leant back on a couch at my sister gina's 30th at soak (kaos by day, soak by night) in north hobart. i found inspiration for this arty shot in a few jagerbombs and there will be more to come in future :) this was a really fun night, with all the requisite hijinks and dramas necessary for a memorable evening with family and friends. i'm just glad i wasn't the one wearing a cushion cover as a hat!

i swam every day

i do love swimming and being in water but i so often enjoy it as i fear open water because of sharks (yes irrational i know) and am repulsed by public pools, so when mands and i stayed at a small resort in port douglas for our whatever-you-call-the-holiday-after-a-civil-partnership - i took great delight in swimming in the outdoor heated (unnecessary but lovely nonetheless!) pool at least once a day. and i didn't have to share it with anyone else at any time (well ok, mands a couple of times). it was absolute bliss to float on my back and quietly gaze at palm fronds and blue sky.

emulating kate winslet

we spent a good half an hour or so out on the uyuni salt flats in bolivia, taking photos that played with perspective - the vast expanse of white with nothing really visible on the horizon allows you to do this. so we took photos like mands pushing a 'giant' bottle of vodka on top of me, us standing on a 'giant' pair of dice, and me holding a 'minature' mands in my hand. i'm not sure what i was doing with this particular photo but i do like it anyway for its simplicity. the salt ridge mands is standing on is only a 1cm high or so. in fact in look at it now, it almost looks like a 'giant' mands standing on the top of a wave breaking at the beach! or maybe she is remembering the giant jebus from rio :)

cartoon browns

another modified photo, this cartoon effect was in photoshop if my memory serves me correctly. it was a nice photo i took (camera held by me with arm outstretched as you can even see in the reflection of my sunglasses!) in the first place, if i may say so myself - but i like this cartoon result as well. simplified but still honest.... with no wrinkles or blemishes to be seen. an airbrushing of sorts ;) this photo is from way back in late 2003 when we went for a daytrip out to port arthur, this moment on the cruise out to isle of the dead, where a thousand people, mostly convicts and paupers, were buried in the early to late 1800s.

masquerade ball of sorts

this is one of my sisters, georgina, at my 30th which was basically a drinks and nibbles in the backyard affair but i required that people wore masks. if i remember correctly i think this mask was actually anna's (my other sister) but gina had borrowed it for a moment. anyway it's a pretty cool mask. mine was a jester (of the court) mask with the floppy hat points (the technical term being liliripes!) with jinglebells on the ends. 

all in, all out

my mobile camera (sony ericsson cybershot 3.2MP) takes fairly decent photos, and has some funky inbuilt effects settings. one of them is solarize - which overexposes the image, causing the colours to bleed into one another - resulting in blocks of colour and blurred line definition. this image is taken on that setting from the first floor landing overlooking an infamous 'clappers' poker night. i was taking the photo after i did a spectacular fail on an 'all in' bluff with a really crap hand. this is not an unusual occurence on these evenings :)

the australian dream

is owning your own home. my sister gina and her partner just got the keys to their new place in taroona yesterday - lots of work to do (including replacing this rusty letterbox!) but it's a labour of love when it's yours, and the end result carries with it a real sense of satisfaction. i love older places like the one they bought, they have so much more character than the new mass produced concrete boxes. it was lots of fun helping them pulling up ancient carpet and lino, and ripping down wallpaper today.