Checking social distance...

People just checking their social distance before we practice patterns in the park...
Looking forward to getting back to normal training....

Taekwondo Grading

Very proud of how everyone performed at the grading.

Xander successfully graded for his second dan with United Taekwondo

And here is a photo of a happy group of sweaty people.

Xan's Black Belt

After a lot of years of training and several restarts with different styles,
Xan got his First Dan Black Belt with United Taekwondo a couple of weeks ago.

Couldn't be prouder.

A shot of Xan doing one of his breaks, and then getting his belt presented by Master Paul.

Waterfight shots!

Whippersnipper Kid

Never too young to get them helping around the house!
If my nephew is going to stay with us, he is going to earn his keep!

Ascend...

Breathe

Backyard Milkyway

"And it's something quite peculiar,

Something that's shimmering and white...

Leaves you here, despite your destination,

Under the Milky Way tonight"

Playing around in the backyard tonight, before the moon came up.
One of the wonderful things about the southern hemisphere - so much less light! (although you can see the light from Toowoomba in the bottom right of the sky).
Anyway, a pleasant experiment.

unclear...

The view from one of the lookouts I drive past every morning...

Not so much view this time.

My Young Men.

First day of school last week.

Carnival of flowers

Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers this weekend.
Toowoomba really is a beautiful place to live and the Carnival is a bit of a celebration of that.

Not that the photos here have too many flowers in them... mostly just stuff....

Impact at a distance.

Took this one on Friday the 11th on my way home from work.

It is impressive what the sun does.

Millions of miles away, completely oblivious to us,

Yet still impacts on everything we do.

New development

There is an area of the middle of our town that is being redeveloped.  A Shopping center is gaining weight.... a lot of weight.... so it is spreading over the street, engulfing the library and enveloping another shopping center.

So here are the photos of one of the parts that will be ripped down to fit it in.  There is nothing particularly nostalgic about it, but the Photo club had a little field day there to record what it is at the moment, before it all changes and we forget.

Weekend of Chess

Zak was invited to compete in the Toowoomba Invitational Chess Tournament over the weekend.
Games got increasingly tougher as he went through, but he finished in a very respectable position.
Very proud of him!

Early Christmas Present

So, the kayaking that we did a few weeks ago was a test run to see if the boys would like a Christmas present we had chosen..

So we headed out on the local dam again for a lovely paddle with our own kayaks this time.
Huge fun... I can see some paddle adventures at dawn coming up soon.

Oh.... and there were seaweed fights!

Kayaking

Some friends of ours came out to Cooby Dam with us for a bit of kayaking....
Here are the boys heading across the dam.

Good fun, but I will remember to put sunscreen on my shins next time!
Walking around the streets in shorts while having bright red lower legs.... not such a good look!.

The Doctor

Near where we live there is (believe it or not) a Tardis!
The people who own it were kind enough to let us take a few photos with it this afternoon....

For a huge Doctor Who fan, this was a huge thing!

Photo Geeking:

Bright sunlight in the background.. still just before setting.  2 flashes, one held by my very own voice activated light stand, the other on the ground to the left of the shots.  Shutter speed high to darken the background.

The shot straight out of the camera is below... along with one showing a little more like what the scene looked like in real life... (along with the voice activated light stand!)

PSAM

If anyone is interested... here is the mindmap I used in a talk a couple of months ago....
Asked to do some sort of "for people new to photography" talk...

So I talked on the modes of the camera....

It is summarised in this diagram:  I am not sure if it means anything without me talking about it as well..... but there could be something in there that is useful?

Back home and Christmas lights

The view from my front door just after sunset....
Through the Christmas lights....

We are joining in with the neighbourhood lighting just a little more each year...  It all looks very festive!

Down side of an older car...

So, there are all these things you take for granted when you have them....
and when you make a decision to go back to an older model, they are no longer there....

In this case, in every car I have owned for the last 2 decades I have had a little thing that tells me "distance to empty".  I no longer have that - and it turns out that I use that a lot...

My car decided to stop working on the highway on the way home.
I pulled off to the side, called Ruth, who soon arrived, (laughing the whole way) with a fuel can.

Luckily I had a camera to record the whole experience...