Halloween costumes and personalities....

Halloween parties mean costumes.

Izak went as two different things...

Jason from Friday 13th...
and a butch fairy.

Xander of course was very different and went as a very subtle, and recently fed, vampire.

80's Theme...

Xan heading out for an 80s themed night.
Some combination of Maverick, Goose and Iceman I think... but definitely TopGunish.

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.

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.

Breathe

Contemplating Fractals

Going through some older photos from NZ last year...
One of Milford Sound..

The boys

Scouting for locations to shoot my Niece's formal, practicing with the boys.

My Young Men.

First day of school last week.

Graphics not that great.

Xander

Been a good school year.

Last night we had Zak's graduation from Primary School.

He managed to get the Arts award (tied with a very worthy "opponent"), and the Dux for the year.

That combined with his sports award for.... wait for it..... Chess(!), and his winning of his year in the Drama competition, all adds up to being a good result for the efforts he put in this year.

Between that and Xan getting an academic award along with his swimming age champion...  I think we can chalk up the 2014 school year as a good one!

Well done boys.  We are proud of you.

Swimming Presentation

Xan received an award for being age champion in the swimming at Downlands this year.
Here is before (and then after) the presentation, looking, to my eyes, extremely adult.

First photo taken with my OMD with the Lumix 20mm 1.7 in the light of the outside passage.

Second one taken using the LED torch from Ruth's Iphone as lighting....

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....

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!.

Finished Primary School

Xan has finished primary school..

He is definitely growing up...

 Zak and Boppa looking on at the graduation...

Xan and the Storm

Incoming storm when I was home.  Taken between Christmas and New Year.

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.

Too many Japanese cartoons

Xan has been watching too many Japanese cartoons...
this is how he has started to look.....

He is an oversized pair of boots away from being part of an elite robot controlling fighting squad destined to save the world in a quasi spiritual battle!

Weekend play

Last weekend, we went to a couple of parks and the boys and one of their cousins had a good, fun old fashioned play...There was swinging... and then there was flying....

Sometimes it is so hard to keep kids under control!

I try to let them know that it is impolite to fly in public, but sometimes they just do not listen!

Photogeeking:  first photos all taken with off camera flash on high speed sync, at about 1000 of a second so that I could get the background a little dark.  Then I played with some Nik software with them.  I am still trying to work out if I can afford to buy the Nik software - it does some nice things - but am I just being lazy when I could eventually get most of the results in photoshop?

The flying ones involved walking around with a step ladder and a tripod... taking a photo of the background and then of the flying... going into photoshop, putting the background and the people in the same document and then masking out anything that was not meant to be there.