brown family tradition

scrabble in front of the fire in the evening. my mum, sister anna and i doing battle on the old school board. anna and i play against one another online all the time now. it's the evening before my sister's wedding so i let her beat me ;)

tasmanian tiger sighting (32)

evidence of the proliferation of tasmanian ex-pats in the nation's capital. urban art project on city walk, civic. part of canberra's current community art & theatre project 'you are here'.

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 :)

the dying days of summer (30)

is that brown appearing on the tips of the lush summer leaves already? signalling the end to a topsy-turvy (hot/cold, sunny/rainy) season? say it ain't so!! i do love autumn though. more moderate in temperature (and i do prefer cooler weather to be perfectly honest) and the most stunning colours here in canberra where there are a lot of desiduous trees and plants.

ooo summer rain (29)

i have had belinda carlisle's 'summer rain' in my head for weeks now, thanks mainly to the lead-up to and then post-concert last weekend, but also because it has rained so much here in canberra over the past few months. it has been a wet steamy spring and summer. it has rained so much that all the dams are overflowing. for the first time since i moved here over a decade ago, the dams are full and there are no water restrictions. the greenery throughout the city is something new and wonderful to behold, not to mention the amazing growth spurts observed in our plants in our courtyards. there are mostly camellias which were here when we bought the place. now i know they're hardy plants but between the ongoing drought and the fact that both mands and i are rubbish when it comes to gardening, they've been lucky to survive - in fact only one out of about ten has died. however the difference in them now is amazing! i would say that they have grown as much over the last 6 months as they did in the entire 5 years preceding that. that's how much rain we've had. mands doesn't like the camellias (not sure why) but i have a soft spot for them. my sisters and i used to use their leaves for 'money' when we played shops on our bmxes in the driveway when we were growing up. they're a sentimental plant for me, not to mention i admire their resilience.

pet sematary (28)

i actually did re-watch the film titled the very same just the other day. it was as good as i remembered, not a stellar production but definitely one of the better stephen king book-to-screen translations. the movies are never as good as the original novel. anyway i digress. this photo is of our memorial to jack, mands' and my first cat, in our front courtyard. he died not long after we moved house, he literally just dropped dead one morning, not long after we'd had him along to the vet for an ordinary check-up and he was diagnosed with a heart murmur. the vet said he'd be fine without medication for it until he was a lot older. guess she was wrong. he was only 3 :(

she's a speed racer (27)

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

web of religion (26)

i'm back at the same turner orthodox church trying to take a photo of the lovely eastern europe rooftop. but none of the angles are working out because the trees are in the wrong places and the fence stops me from getting closer, and it's then i notice the spider in the web in the fence showing the church in the background, and it's so symbolical of how people get caught up in the beliefs framework that religious institutions offer them, something they are attracted to or fly into unknowingly and don't realise the trap until it's too late....

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.

nothing like a torrential downpour (24)

the weather when i got home was hardly conducive to photography, let's not forget there was a waterfall in the kitchen just a few days ago. and here i was thinking the most extreme and sudden magnitude of rain i've experienced so far has been in the wet seasons of tropics like featured in this file shot of cambodia (on the south coast just out of sihanoukville) but the weather this summer in canberra has been mad. sunny and fine when i ride into work in the morning, and thundering and pelting down like nothing else in the afternoon when it's time to go home. so much for living in a rain shadow!