Hamilton Island - post #2

Here is a collection of images I liked from my time on the Island. I really liked the house you see below, or the sign for it at least. It was a lazy $8 million!! and the overall colours and feel, I still crave when I looked heavenward at the sky back at home tonight. I am very grateful for the opportunity I had to be there. I took a picture - self styled portrait of my shadow on the glorious water. I also got really close to a hang glider styled wire flyer and shot the Gala Dinner that was created to rsemble the famed Moulin Rouge of gay paris (paree).

Hope you like the images below also.



























For more info on this slice of paradise click here

Hamilton Island - post #1

I have been away for 8 days in the tropical, gorgeous holiday and conference retreat that is Australia's version of the Caribbean I would guess and have been working very hard. I was there to photograph the happenings and events for a major retail chain in this country and found it to be both exhilarating and draining. I happened to be there whilst I had my birthday as well, and it was good that it was kept quiet for the most part from the almost 600 delegates, their partners, support crew and event staff.

I was essentially working from 5 am photographing the sunrises, until about 12 midnight each and every night. I think it was the adrenaline and expectation required of me that help keep me going coupled with generous helpings of energy from a higher source and now that I have returned home I have slept some 10 hours and am still yawning. I am drained, but very satisfied at the images I captured and the overwhelming support I received from the delegates who all want copies of the images.

I will show only 2 or 3 here at this point as I have many to go through, but I am particularly proud of these two sunrise images and the shot of the plane I flew home on late last night.

I will write more on Hamilton Island soon, but this place is just gorgeous. There are no private cars on the island at all, except a jaguar they use for weddings, but the mode of transport is golf buggy's and what a civilised way to travel. The only deaths that have occurred on the island from these are from people who have been excessively inebriated and rolled the buggy's from the hill and died or in one case, a person who thought it would be fun roof surfing on the buggy. But in actual fatalaties from general driving they are none. it is something I really liked. I saw a house I loved here and pondered much. I also saw apartments for sale, and drooled. I already know i will be returning here and really like the laid back nature of the place. You can also have breakfast cooked by a wonderfully charming fellow on the island and after breakfast actually cuddle a koala, and I believe it is only one of two places that will actually leave the Koala with you. Most have a cushion or toy the Koala rests on but it was divine. As I started rubbing the Koalas back it started falling asleep and the keeper said dont do that, the others wont get good pictures, but I loved the experience.

The pools are divine, and there are lots of them. I swam for about 30-40 mins everyday after my sunrise excursions before eating brekky and continuing the work. It is a two hour flight North east of Sydney in the middle of the great barrier reef and it is truly heaven on earth. All around us in the week I was there have been raging storms and rising flood waters which have seen the evacuation of thousands of people on the Australian mainland because of rising flood waters and in this pocket of bounty were sunny, warm and sumptuous days. In the distance I even saw and photographed a giant twister like water spout from the storm, but it never affected the island.




If you are looking to have a corporate event or getaway, Hamilton Island is the place to go and Be.



For more info on this slice of paradise click here

44 today...yesterday

Well, I sit here at the late end of the 21st of May 2009, and at some time during this day 44 years ago, I was born. I am now officially the age of my step father Allen, when he passed away, and that thought has passed through my mind more than once today.

I have been kept very busy on assignment and at what is now 11:44pm I am truly tired, drained and perhaps even exhausted for good measure. I was shooting the gorgeous sunrise this morning at 5am and believed that there was a moment or two at that time when the colour disappeared from the sky and the tendency I had was to leave thinking the colour had gone, but as though a birthday gift designed just for me from the BIG man Himself, the sky then doubled in it's intensity and created a massive and beautiful swathe of colour and beauty through the heavens. I feel so honoured to have witnessed and felt this experience.

I am also very humbled at the amount of friends, relatives and family who have emailed and texted me birthday wishes. It certainly made me feel loved and appreciated. A big thank you to all who took the moment to let me know a simple birthday wish.

My feet are throbbing, my head is heavy as are my eyes, and I certainly did not want the day to pass as it will in a mere couple of minutes, without expressing my gratitude to you all. what a day of mixed blessings and feelings. One of my colleagues bought me a cup cake and a single candle and I just finished eating it with a soy milk hot chocolate and feel like a king.

I was sent this today from a friend.

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!! ..... Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans ! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

A thought for today

May you choose to see beyond life's storms, to uncover the blessings that the rain brings, and during all of life's twists and turns, may you always choose.
--Michelle Sedas

Sound advice indeed. I have been so busy of late it has been quite refreshing tonight to just stop, and relax. I was able to catch up on doing some washing and drying, tidying up the office and t has been so good.

There is a lot of images coming in the next few days.

In the Arms of an Angel

The walk in the cold and dark this morning culminated in a moment just standing, without camera, on a hill just staring at the most glorious sunrise I have seen in a long time. I feel myself just full of gratitude, for life and the chance I have to live it, for my eyes and the ability to see, for my health and opportunity that becomes mine each day.

It is a busy few days ahead and I needed additional strength and assistance beyond my natural ability and found the strength, solitude and hope in the morning walk today.

As I look around the world or my little slice of it anyway, I realise how very fortunate and blessed I am, I never believe that makes me more special or even remotely better than others, just different.

I am grateful for friends, for adversaries and even for detractors today.

I feel that many opportunities I seek and feel that have been withheld for whatever reason, have appeared so because I failed to see that I was perhaps the very one who prevented them from occurring. I feel that in a sense I had reached some sort of plateau, but I sense comfortably that I need to keep going, and all will be revealed. I often do not know how the hand of fate selects people for a variety of experiences, and truly believe I understand very little of life and people. I struggle many times to make sense of where I am and how I ended up here. Not in a negative way, but I am truly an unworthy benefactor of the many opportunities I am the recipient of. Make no mistake I will grab every bit of hope and opportunity that is dangled before me, even if it is faint and disguised as bloody hard work.

Life has a strange way of bringing people to a collective awareness, and though there have been many twists and turns thus far on my journey, I am so very happy at this moment. I felt that I had communed with my maker this morning and feel a sense of personal nothingness as a result. Yet I feel so totally important, needed and loved. It is a feeling I can scarce describe, it is just beautifully simple, and simply beautiful.

All is right with my world at present, though I feel very strongly for people who are being hung out to dry in the court of public opinion, I feel for friends who have a financial lack, even though most all of us do, I feel for friends who are having so many problems and who are suffering illness, stress and pain. I feel for people who are losing or who have lost jobs in this time we find ourselves in. I wish I had the power and the ability to rectify or remedy the situation or to make it right for everyone, but alas I am just one, and in the big scheme of the world, a VERY small one at that. But all I can do is hold good thoughts and prayers that we will all get through with our integrity, dignity, kindness and respect for one another intact.

May God smile upon us all today, no matter what our circumstance or situation. I send my love out to the world today. It is a strange title for the post but feel I have been in the arms of an angel this morning and no-one can encapsulate that thought and beauty as well as Sarah Mclachlan can.

Moving Pictures

There used to be a band in this country which had a HUGE hit song called What about me? the band was called moving pictures.( I have included this song clip at the end for those who are interested in hearing or re-hearing the very popular song which was a very big hit in this country in 1982)

I have borrowed the bands name as the title for this post, but could well apply it to my life, because that is essentially what it is. There is much happening at the moment as I try to find time to do all the things that are expected of me at present. I am certainly very fortunate to be busy at the moment.

This series of shots ranges from Newcastle's Blackbutt reserve with the Koalas and Rosella Birds which is about 2.5 hours north of Sydney to the Anzac bridge in the heart of Sydney. Then to a bridge in Melbourne where I was the other day. Melbourne is an interstate 1.5 hour plane flight from Sydney, or about an 11 hour drive away for those people who do not live in Australia who might read this. Then back to Sydney's Strike Bowling bar down at the King Street Wharf near Darling Harbour. These are the sexiest bowling alleys I have ever seen. I looked at one of the bowling balls and took its picture because it looked like someone yelling out to me saying "NO dont bowl with my head!!!"