February down, 10 to go

Phew, another month (albeit shorter than most) full of taking photos. It's interesting looking back over the past 28 days to see the days where I put some effort in and when I snapped blindly without a care. No idea what I was thinking deciding to do all this for a year, definitely running out of things in the house to take pictures of.

I did make a conscious effort to take more pictures of people this month and ended up with five in total... I guess 18% isn't all that bad. Woe to all social hermits that want to get better at taking portraits.



I had a blast clicking away at the company BBQ the other day and managed to snap this one of Dave which I'm rather happy with. Once again I forced myself to use my 50mm prime to take all the shots which meant I needed to be quite close to the action. Framing proved to be challenging due to the focal length and I ended up just keeping a subject in focus while watching the ball with my other eye. At least I got a chance to use my servo focus mode which worked a treat.

Evidently a few other people thought it was a decent capture too as it was (to my delight) my second picture to go up on the front page of Photoblog. The other one was the Green Bridge in January. Glad to know my law of averages approach is working. :)

The secret to my success

Heh, I can definitely relate to the latest strip on What the Duck.


One of my favourite quotes:

The secret to good photography is lots of bad photography

Happy New Year (Oink Oink)

Without mum here this year to help prepare for Chinese New Year it was all up the two of us to pull up our socks and get things ready. While we didn't end up with as much food this time around I think we did a pretty darn good job.

We picked up this pretty funky Chinese Festival dishes cook book while in Sydney last year which included a recipe for layer cake. It was probably due to the size of the cake pan but we didn't manage to get more than six layers. Still tasted nice though.



Once again we broke out the steam boat that's been collecting dust in our cupboard for the last year. Food stuff on plates included chicken, prawns, pork balls, prawn balls, tofu, vermicelli, kang kung, shitake mushrooms and won tons. We would have had enoki mushrooms too but we noticed they smelled pretty sour as we were unpacking so thought best to leave them off the table.



We had to rearrange the furniture a little to fit six people around our dining table. Regulars Kath and Andrew were joined by Krit and Charlie this time round so we got our first chance to hold a real dinner party. There was some concern about the volume of food put out at the start of the night but we somehow managed to choke it all down without too much difficulty.



Of course Andrew could not refrain from washing up right after dinner.



I'd folded some paper pigs (year of the pig and all that) as table decorations. Kath wanted to have a go and soon enough everyone was getting into it.



Kudos to Krit who actually managed to finish the entire fold. Kath came up with a pretty fetching dinosaur and Andrew completed what I've been told is a scorpion. Sorry Charlie, getting your girlfriend to finish your model doesn't count.



I'm usually relegated to the other end of the camera lens on most gatherings but Andrew was kind enough to snap a few piccies of the two of us.



To finish off the night we served cold watermelon sago which I always enjoy. Hopefully everyone else did too. It was great to have everyone together and we should do this more often.



Oh and as happy news to start the New Year, we found out last night that Kath and Andrew will be buying a new townhouse this year. Settlement will be around June and they were originally planning to move on the Queen's birthday long weekend but we gently reminded them that they might have other commitments on the day. :)

Yet another barbeque

Work can be tough sometimes. We had to drop everything to spend half the day at Colmslie Park having a BBQ to say goodbye to co-workers moving on to bigger and better things. Ah well, all in the line of duty.



I had a real good time taking pictures of the 'lads' throwing a frisbee around, at least until they lost it for good in the snake infested grass. They proceeded to kick a football around though so I could continue to practice my action photography. Probably the hardest part was keeping both eyes open just in case someone tried to be funny and belt me on the side of the head while I had my eye on the viewfinder.



Anyway, the sad bit of the gathering was that it was the last official day Matt would have working with the IT Team as a full time employee. We got him the National Geographic Photographer's Field Guide as a parting gift to fuel his new found interest in snapshoterry. I'd like to take full credit for getting him hooked on the hobby if I may.



All around a good day even if we're sorry to see him go. Thankfully we'll still see him around once a week as he'll be doing part time work for us while returning to Uni on his road to becoming a Speech Therapist. Best of luck mate.

Sitting outside

Spurred on by the success of our BBQ yesterday we decided to charge on ahead and give our balcony a little makeover. Rubber mats for me to hop across so that my dainty feet don't get dirty, new comfy outdoor chairs and a little table to rest our drinks.



We also had to take a quick trip to the dump to toss out the old, rusting outdoor set that was far too big to use on our narrow strip. It's nice to chuck out the junk and get some new stuff in time for Chinese New Year this weekend.

Snags on the Barbie

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally got my act together and set up the barbeque. Shame that the gas bottle that Alison bought me close to a year ago wasn't compatible with our set so we had to head out to the servo to pick up another one. After that minor setback it was all smooth sailing to our first meal (of many hopefully) on the grill. We christened her with Chicken, honey and macadamia sausages along with some roschti and salad.



Now to have that housewarming BBQ that we've been planning for close to the last six months...