While watering the garden today I had to rescue a tiny little lizard who wasn’t enjoying his bath, I just hope he hasn’t now turned round and eaten my rhubarb…

Today was spent being nice and relaxed, eating food:

Hanging out with fun people:

I might write some more later, but now it’s bed time…

My current gym has a number of non-australians training at it so we regularly say goodbye to members. Tonight was Yuri’s lst night and to celebrate we went out for dinner, then headed back to the gym for some drinks and to watch the olympics. Thanks to Larry for the dinner it was much appreciated, good luck to Yuri in the USA, I hope to see you in the future.

More pictures can be found over here…

Yesterday involved a lot of time doing useful things, including making curtains and planting rhubarb, it did not result in any photographs being taken so you can have another from the beach at Botany bay. I shall make an effort to shoot something fresh and new for today…

In other news I’m enjoying watching the GB olympic team actually winning things, definitely makes a change…

Today was mostly spent at the beach, it would appear that the beach in Australian winters is much less of a survival exerise than the beach in English summers…

In other news, today marks the start of the new football season, as always I am more interested in who the first player to be caught in a “News of the World” sex sting will be, my bet is on Christiano Ronaldo, but I wait with baited breath…

Today I spent most of the day relaxing in the garden, where I found some wierd brightly coloured socks attached to a pair of legs…

Nikon d200 55mm f/8 15 sec ISO100

Queen victoria, from opposite town hall in Sydney…

In other news I’m enjoying the unrestricted and unfettered media coverage during the olympics…

I often go through phases where I am unhappy with what I am shooting, especially for myself. These spells can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, during which time I will be moody and disaffected and frankly no fun to be around. Obviously being in such a frame of mind does nothing to help me be creative and so the cycle continues. The best way for me to claw myself out of one of these sulks is to take a picture I’m happy with, which while I was working would usually take me about 10 mins at the start of a shoot and then I’d flip into a hyper productive mood and the world would be good.

Now however I find myself with no compulsion to shoot and myself in a trough. As my friend Eric once said “the best way to be creative is to do lots of something and throw away the bad stuff” (I am paraphrasing terribly as it’s late and I don’t want to dig up the IM log). As a result I will, by fair means or foul, take at least 50 pictures a day until the end of the week and post the best of them daily (I may well continue with this plan after the week ends if it inspires me). I’m going to try some new things, push some envelopes and just see what clicks, hopefully this will see things move in a good direction…

In other news grapefruit are delicious

Nikon D200 85mm f/9 13s ISO 100

So the past few months have seen a few major changes both personally and professionally. The biggest one being my summer holiday to Sydney becoming extended indefinitely. I’m enjoying the weather and scenery far too much and this is meant to be the worst part of the year (though anyone who has seen me in hot climates may understand my morbid fear of the coming summer months).

One big downside of my move is that at present I am not permitted to be self employed due to my visa status. As a result I have actually been working for a living, I can’t say I’m enjoying the whole turning up to the office and doing a 9-5. I am looking into ways to change my visa to allow me to shoot professionally but as I shall discuss later I’m not in a huge rush to do so at the moment.

Part of being a professional photographer especially in the field that I have been in, events and corporate, is something I find deeply satisfying. I derive great enjoyment from seeing clients happy that their memories have been preserved and being able to share in their moments. There are certain boundaries inside which most of your work has to fall. There is this constant voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to shoot “how the client will like” rather than feeling free to shoot the pictures I want.

I felt that I had started to lose the love of photography and I began to feel that I was plateauing. I wanted time to clense the pallette if you will, before trying to explore some new avenues of the art form. As a result I am going to take some time as an ameture (admittedly being prohibited from working also plays a factor in this decision) and spend some time on some personal projects and giving something back…

So here I am free from the “professional” tag for a while. What does this mean? Firstly it means I am going to be working on some personal projects, things which I have wanted to explore photographically for a while but have not had the time or moxie to do. Secondly I am free to shoot for nothing, so I am on the look out both for interesting shoots to be involved with (any models or bands who want free promo work drop me a line) and may well try to get involved with some charitable work too (again please contact me if you are a charitable group who require photographic coverage of your event). Finally I can grow as a photographer, there are many areas of photogrpahy whch interest me, but about which, quite frankly I know nothing (”fine art” photography springs instantly to mind), I now have the time and energy to study these other areas, take what I feel will be useful to me and hopefully push my pictures to a new level…

I will try to blog more often now as I finally have internet access at my house, I would love to write more but it is late and I have to be at the office in the morning (wow I never thought I would have to say that again)…

Nikon D200 55mm f/2.8 1.6 sec ISO 100

Last night I went out to what I expect is Sydney’s answer to London Calling. Neo Tokyo was a reasonable electro night but I wasn’t really feeling it as far as dancing went. I felt like the DJs were playing songs and not sets, which is fine at a bar but when I’m out dancing I like to have something perfectly crafted with a consistent flow which runs from track to track…

Adding to my angst is the fact that one of my flash units has developed a curious and erratic fault with it’s sync port. If I pop it during a long exposure, it decides that it wants to fire repeatedly and at random throughout the exposure. Now I have found the fault it means a quick trip to the nikon service centre and everything should be fine (I have several spares) however in the dark of a club I wasn’t able to isolate the problem and so had a thoroughly frustrating time taking pictures. I finally came up with a work around involving 3 pocket wizards, some gaffa tape and a clamp (don’t ask), but by that point I was running low on moxie and left for home shortly afterwards…

Enough of my whining and here are some more pictures… (more…)