Only from vacations?

It seems that I am only taking photos on vacations at the moment....
Very poor showing.

With that in mind we recently spent a week visiting the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns.


Xan and Zak during a snorkeling trip, heading down to check out a clam on the ocean floor:

I am not in any way a marine biologist, but from my recollections when I was diving on the reef last... there are some serious problems there.  The colour of coral is so much more subdued that what it used to be.  When Ruth and I were there last, the fish were hard to spot, because there was so much colour around.  Now they show up vivid and bright in their dull surroundings...

We got to have a good look around, as well as the snorkeling, we had a couple of scuba dives as well.
Here are Ruth and Zak in a sea of bubbles of my rapidly consumed air!

Looking...

Xan looking out over the Tasmanian coastline.

Playing with a ND filter during the middle of the day (asking Xan to stand as still as possible).

Tasmania Trip!

First couple of weeks of the school holidays we spent down in Tasmania, touring around....

I am sure that should mean I will have some photos to put up on the blog...

Here are the boys in a random place in Tasmania.

The view from my hotel room

Spent a couple of lovely nights up in Bunya Mountains National Park.
These little wallabies were just sitting a few meters away while we had breakfast on the verandah.

Graphics not that great.

Xander

Going to take a while....

For me to go through the NZ photos and actually find all the ones I like!

Clan of the Cave Bear

Well, it looks like a scene from one of the books to me anyway!.

reflection of her.

Lake Tepako

There are  couple of nasty spots on my camera sensor that I will need to clean up when I work on the photos....

I have one word for you....

Jetboat!!!!!

HUGE FUN!

View from my hotel room Queenstown

This was a couple of hours ago tonight...
Spectacular!

Tomorrow we are going to be coming down a zip line from the top of the mountain in Queenstown.  Should be huge!

Between a sunset like this, and what we saw today jetboating.... it is completely understandable that they would chose this area for the back drop for Lord of the the Rings.

View from my hotel room....

a little different this time.
We are vacationing in New Zealand.
For anyone who has a chance to do it, I recommend it whole heartedly!!

This was the view from inside the motel in Wanaka in the South Island.

Of course - when i actually took the time to go down to Lake Wanaka and take a photo or two.... this was the result.....  An amazingly picturesque place.

Water

Xan jumping out of the surf.
If you like we can pretend that I just captured this in real life, rather than asking him to flick out of the water half a dozen times.... that would make it a lot cooler!!!

We spent the weekend at Noosa.  Awesome beach, great family time.  Ruth got to do lots of relaxing, the boys and I got to do lots of swimming.

Niece's Formal.

We all went up to Rocky to visit Ruth's brother's family, and to take photos for our niece's formal.
All went well I think.

Here is one of the heavily processed photos of the event....

I think many of the shots turned out well - but I had good material to work with!


Photogeeking:  D7000, 85mm 1.8 lens, flash being shot through an umbrella, from camera left.  Everything on manual.  Slightly underexposed result that was then played with in photoshop at different exposure settings (from the raw file)...  highlights accentuated by letting the over exposed version show through the under exposed version in different layers of the same shot.

Zak doing some looking...

the lighthouse...

the lighthouse sitting on top of the hill... as if to say...
No matter how much turmoil is going on around, or how bad things appear to be...

"I still SEE you".

Vacation in Northern New South Wales

We went on vacation around Byron Bay and then Port Macquarie....
I was talking at the Australian Photographic Society Conference... (which I think sounds a lot more important that what it might have been!...)

We had a HUGE time!

Ruth and the Boys at the base of Protester Falls near Nimbin (the hemp capital of Australia!)

There were some vaguely warm days... but there were a few bitterly cold ones as well!  My time at BST was useful for something.... I got this really good hoodie!

Zak and Xan wakeboarding..

What we were doing at the time - cause it was REALLY cold!  (About 15 C at the time (60F))

A Koala that was spotted by Zak in the trees......

Xan being heroic and then contemplative.