What do you do when it’s low to mid-30s day after day after day? You go to the beach!

Our choice of beach this past weekend was Surf Beach on the south coast of Phillip Island – an easy 90 minute drive from Melbourne. We had a fantastic southerly coming in off the Southern Ocean that brought the temperature down just the right amount. There weren’t many people there and as you can see, the water was amazing! Shallow and warm – perfect for a family day at the beach.

This is one of the reasons I love Australia.

 

 

Bird Week? Well, that was the idea when I started it over one month ago now. And yet, I’m still only at bird #6. Good thing I didn’t call it ‘Bird Month’… I might have felt beholden to sharing 30 birds instead of just seven.

Today’s bird is quite clearly a pelican, an Australian Pelican to be precise. They breed over on Mud Island at the south end of Port Phillip Bay. When they get old enough and start exploring, they eventually make it over to Phillip Island and San Remo. Every day at noon, a local organisation feeds the pelicans. They often take in the injured ones and nurse them back to health.

Over time, the birds have become pretty good at figuring out when feeding happens and turn up in varying numbers as the morning gets on. This was about an hour before feeding time when the pelicans are just patiently milling about waiting for happy hour.

 

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.

 

I grew up on the eastern(ish) side of Canada, a long, long way from any ocean, but on the shore of a beautiful little lake. While the ocean was far away, there were lakes everywhere!

It wasn’t until my 31st year that  I found myself living with the ocean at my doorstep. That ocean was a very long way from home. In fact, it was all the way around the world. Despite 30 perfectly happy years without the ocean in sight, I became firmly coastal. While I accept that I’m not likely to ever own that dream beach house in this very developed world, I’m feeling pretty committed to at least living nearby. As a result, many of my favourite images are by the coast. Throw in a dramatic sky and I’m all set.

This particular piece of coast is on the west coast of Canada, in Vancouver.

 

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.

Pictured above is the coal tipple at the Atlas Coal Mine in Drumheller, Alberta. The coal used to ride a conveyor belt down from the hills to the right and then up another conveyor tunnel to the main building. The main structure is the tipple where the coal was sorted and loaded into train cars.

Coal was booming business back in the 1900s in Alberta. Between 1912 and 1966 the coal mines in the Drumheller area produced nearly 57,000,000 tons of coal. When oil was discovered nearby in 1948, demand for coal suffered a steep decline. Coal mining towns shrunk dramatically. Some were completely abandoned. By 1979, the coal years in Drumheller were all over.