I know, it’s just an ostrich right, but I quite like the background so I’m sharing it!

Looks like it’s back to work for me tomorrow. This was my last day of summer vacation. It went fast, but we had a good time. With all the travel earlier this year it was nice to just stay local, visit with friends, go on picnics, go on bike rides, enjoy time by the beach and some quiet days at home with the family.

The challenge now will be to keep up the blog while working. I’ll do my best!

 

Just a few days ago on the beach, taking this picture, I was wearing a fleece hoodie trying to stay warm in a cold southerly wind. Today it’s 36C! Despite the heat, we took the kids to the zoo for a few hours before it got really hot. Tomorrow … 41C. Going to be chasing the air conditioning…

Anyway, the picture above is another long exposure. This one was 30s at f16 with the variable ND filter cranked up. Again, the water was pretty rough, but the long exposure smoothes it right out.

 

Today, I’m pleased to share my first image from Melbourne since we arrived in August. I captured this image on Saturday night in a suburb called Middle Park in Melbourne. It’s right next to the much more well-known and more popular St. Kilda. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, but it was low enough for me to shoot this at f16, ISO 100 and 30 seconds. The water was quite rough, in fact it was spraying up over the end of the pier (hence all the water), but the long exposure smoothed it right out. This view is looking south out across Port Phillip Bay.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long series of much more frequent posts this year. It’s all easy while on vacation… I’ll see if I can keep it up once I’m back to work!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. I’m very much enjoying the break and a little bit of time to finish sorting out my images from last summer in Canada. This one is from the same place as my last post (over a month ago!), Algonquin Park.

This was a particularly wet, rather cold morning. My brothers and I agreed we’d get up early unless the weather was bad. I decided it was bad, they didn’t and practically had to drag me out of my cabin! I got going quickly and here are the fruits of my labour.

So, these are the same canoes as my last post, but from a different angle. Which do you prefer?

You might think I’m not here any more with the frequency I’ve been posting and commenting, but the truth is that I work long hours in an office environment these days and find myself reluctant to hop back on the computer in the evenings or on the weekends.

The fact is that, at the moment, technology consulting is my primary focus. I took a luxurious, self-indulgent couple of years pursuing photography full-time and while I found my photography skills improved immensely, my earning potential and my CV took a serious beating. Not discounting everything I’ve learned about making better images, the biggest thing I actually learned was that I have no desire to be a full-time professional photographer. I’m incredibly thankful that I took the opportunity to try and now I know that it’s not for me. I’m not cut out to be a full-time creative.

By no means should you take from this that I’m giving up photography or giving up blogging, but I am re-prioritising. Photography is back in hobby status. I’ll still shoot, I’ll still blog, and I’ll still look for opportunities to sell and exhibit my work, but it’s not my full-time gig any more. It’s back to the rat race for me. I’m commuting an hour and a half every day and working 9 to 11 hours and I’m loving the challenges, the brain-strain, and the many, complex relationships that make up a busy office.

Stay tuned and keep checking in. I’ll re-balance soon enough and start picking up the camera again. Hopefully, you’ll even start seeing images from Australia soon. For now, though, we’ll have to make do with pictures from this past summer in Canada. This image is from Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. These canoes had clearly seen some action. Despite appearances, they’re still roadworthy – I enjoyed many hours exploring the lake with anyone who was game to go out for a paddle.

 

Found these Canadian Geese on a summer stroll at Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary south of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada.

 

While I do love shooting early in the morning, it’s always such a close competition between getting up and sleeping in.

 

Hopefully, this is me getting back to regular blogging. It’s been pretty patchy since May, but I have good excuses. Packing up house and moving around the world to Melbourne, Australia takes a bit of effort.

Sorting, purging and selling started in May and got serious in June. As of June 28, we were officially homeless and our lives were either packed up in suitcases or in a big metal box. We took the suitcases with us and wished the big metal box an uneventful 10-week trip across the Pacific. We then set off on a six-week tour of Canada, visiting friends family on the west coast, camping through the beautiful Rocky Mountains, visiting more family in Southern Ontario, invading the homes of friends in Ottawa and then back to Vancouver again.

The image above is the city of Vancouver as seen from Stanley Park during our visit to the west coast of Canada.

On August 19th, exactly one month ago, we arrived in Melbourne with very little organised beyond a hotel and a hire car. Given the low starting point, we’ve accomplished a lot in one month. We moved into a house (shipment delivery day was very exciting!), we bought a car, we bought appliances and furniture, the kids are back in school, the older one has high school sorted, we’ve caught up with a few friends, and I’m back to full-time (non-photographic) work.

Although we’ve been away from Melbourne for two years, everything is so familiar that it seems like it was just a blink.

…that I’m a little preoccupied lately? I suppose that might be evident from the blog. I haven’t posted in three weeks! While I’ve had the camera out a bit, it has almost entirely been either for work purposes (teaching photo workshops at my daughter’s school), practical purposes (photographing many of my worldly possessions so I can post them online and sell them), or documentary purposes (photographing graduation and going away parties). I have not shot for fun at all in these past three weeks.

Instead of photography, I’ve been downsizing our household, sorting out plane tickets, and organising movers because we’re moving again. If you’ve followed this blog for a long time, you’d know that we’re a bit nomadic. We’ve lived in several cities in Canada including Ottawa, Fredericton, Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton. We’ve also lived in New Zealand and in Australia. We’ve never tried the same city twice until now. In three days, we’re putting our lives in a shipping container and sending it back down under.

Before we go, we’re going to do a bit of a cross-country tour going as far west as Vancouver and Salt Spring Island and as far east as Ottawa with lots of stops in between. When we’re well and truly exhausted, we’ll board our flight to Melbourne on August 17.

With us flipping our lives upside down this summer, you’re not going to hear from me very often, but hopefully, I’ll have lots of stories and lots of pictures to share once we get settled in late August.

 

Hey folks! Been a while. What can I say? I just wasn’t feeling terribly inspired with the camera. Luckily, last weekend we got out-of-town to visit the little town of Drumheller, Alberta which sits in the middle of the Canadian Badlands. Drumheller is known for its dinosaurs. In fact, they’re so proud of their dinosaur status, their city website is http://www.dinosaurvalley.com. They get their dinosaur status from the incredible number and variety of dinosaur remains found in the area.

With so many dinosaur remains, they built what is surely one of the most amazing dinosaur museums in the world, the Royal Tyrell Museum. Simply amazing. That was our first stop on Sunday morning. We got their at a reasonable hour, but it being a long weekend, the crowds soon overwhelmed us. It’s open late so we decided we’d return after an afternoon out in the much-less-crowded great outdoors.

Avoiding the throngs of people, we headed down to Horseshoe Canyon (pictured above). While the signs compare the view to the splendour of the Grand Canyon, this canyon was considerably more modest. Not that it wasn’t a pretty sight, but it’s no Grand Canyon. Lucky for us, this canyon is way more accessible and easy to get into. You need a little balance and sure-footedness to get down into the canyon, but once you’re in you can go wherever you like and stay as long as you please.

After an afternoon hiking, we grabbed dinner and headed back to the museum to find we had it literally to ourselves. Now that’s a great way to enjoy a museum!