I have now added photos from 2004. The highlights from this year was a trip to the United States and Canada as well as a family trip to Egypt. This was also the year that Australia entered the war in Iraq, so there are a couple of photos from the anti war demonstrations.

Click here to read about 2004

In Mid 2006 I was in Portugal for our International Partner Conference with the company.

It was a week of being busy setting up for the conference, socialising but also a lot of fun and partying.


Click here to see more photos from:Portugal/Slideshow

I quite regularly head up to the Blue Mountains to go Rock Climbing.

We normally camp overnight and then depending on the weather and temperature decide on the day what walls we are going climbing on. The photos in the gallery are a selection of some of the photos I've taken in 2006, but there will be more to come in 2007.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of photos of me climbing as I tend to forget to pass my camera to someone else.

Most of the time I go with my friend Sarah, but she has now moved to Canberra so she doesn't come up there as often as she used to.


Click here to see more photos from: Climbing in the Blue Mountains/Slideshow

In September 2006 I went on a business trip to Tokyo along with a colleague of mine Tsukada-san.

Most of the trip was hard work and very long days, but I did manage to snap a couple of photos here and there.

We did get the deal in Tokyo, so the trip was worthwhile, and we are now installing our solution across all of Asia.


Click here to see more photos from: Tokyo/Slideshow

In early 2006 my Mum had a stroke while my parents were on holiday in Thailand.

A few months later in April when I was in Europe for work I used the opportunity to go and visit and check up on how my mum is doing.

She is now in a wheelchair and still getting used to finding new ways of doing things.

I didn't do much while I was there, because it was mainly a social visit to help my mum and dad.


Click here to see more photos from: Denmark/Slideshow

I have a number of photos that don't really justify being in individual albums. I have now added all these photos from 2006 into one album.

Click here to see more photos from: Miscellaneous/Slideshow

In early 2006 I went a trip to Seattle for our annual kick-off event.

Some of us flew over there a few days early to go skiing in Wanatchee east of Seattle. If was a weekend of perfect skiing. It was my first time skiing so I took some lessons after which I was doing fine (blue slopes).

During the week we had lots of meetings and dinners. There were award nights as well as just social nights where we could meet up with the rest of the company.

The following all of us in International went down to Crystal Mountain at Mount Raineer to do some more skiing. It was a lot of fun and we all had a great time.


Click here to see more photos from: USA/Slideshow

Mid 2006 I went with Soeren and his family (visiting from Thailand) to Thredbo to do some skiing. We drove down there Friday night and returned Sunday night. Thredbo is located in the Australian Alps 5 hours drive south of Sydney.

Generally the skiing conditions are pretty good, but last year was pretty bad, but we did get some skiing done.
Click here to see more photos from:Skiing in Australia 2006/Slideshow

In 2006 I went to Holland a couple of time for work. We have an office in Vianen 50 milometers outside Amsterdam.

I normally don't take a lot of photos when I go there, but if you click on the link below then you can see some of the ones I did take.


Click here to see more photos from:Holland/Slideshow

The year 2007 as you can see was a busy year with lots of traveling and adventures.

It is now time to move onto 2008 and see what this year can bring.

You can follow my adventures in 2008 by clicking on this link.

Can I at the same time suggest that you bookmark this page and I can highly recommend using the new RSS feed features on this website.

Last night we went to the Sydney Opera House to see the ballet Coppelia with The Australian Ballet.

It may be the last time for a while that Kim and I get the chance to go and see a performance together for a while.



It was a great show and I can highly recommend it...the story is nicer and easier to follow than The Nutcracker. Coppelia herself doesn't dance much (she is a doll), the story line if mainly centered around the other characters in the story...no one dies (come on...it is not an opera). It is just a nice love story where the right people get eachother in the end.

Yesterday we went to Chris and Yvonnes wedding. The wedding itself was a traditional catholic wedding held in one of the churches in North Sydney.




Kim was having a bit of a cold so to save herself (and the baby) we decided that I'd go to the wedding ceremony alone representing both of us. Chris asked me if I'd video the ceremony using his new camera...I hope it turned out alright as I'm not all that familiar with taking video. I did manage to take a couple of photos (using my spare hand) during the ceremony.




Later in the evening the reception was held at Wolfies at Circular Quay at the Rocks in Sydney. After resting in the morning Kim was fortunately able to join me at the reception. It was a really nice evening and we got a change to meet some of their friends who'd flown in from the US.






During the evening the photographers did a slideshow with some of the highlights from the wedding.






Needless to say that I was pretty hung over the next morning. I didn't take a lot of photos, but above you see a couple of the ones I did take.

I borrowed some more toy cars from my nephews (A bit more willing this time). This time I wanted to do the shoot entirely using light painting. All the following photos are created using a single LED torch with CTO and blue flash gels in front of it. No photoshopping has been done to any of the photos.

They have all been shot at 15 seconds @ f22. The base is a glass chopping board (the writing on the board shines through in a couple of places).

This long Anzac weekend we drove up to Hunter Valley with a couple of friends.

Meeting up there we planned what wineries we were going to. Sasha had a couple in mind which was perfect as they were some Kim and I had never been been to before.

The first place we stopped was Petersons...Joanne wanted to pick up some pink bubbly stuff (pink champagne). They have some wines there without preservatives which are really nice.



On the way from one of the other places we drove past a new place called Noonji...sounded japanese and it was a new one, so we had to have a look at what they were doing.



They had just opened up for tasting recently and as soon as we walked through the door we could tell that this husband and wife were doing things differently. We were welcomed and were told that this was table tasting, so we all sat down at the table.



This was really good since it enabled us to taste five different vintages simultaneously (In other places you taste one vintage at a time). The prices were reasonable and they had a pretty good discount if you bought a case, so Kim and I ended up buying two cases of wine from here.



After this we did some more sightseeing and tasting before we drove back to sydney.





On the way back we stopped at a petrol station and someone has this cool car parked there.

On Anzac day I went climbing with Andy and Dan at a new place called Wingello that we'd never been to before.

Wingello is about two hours south of sydney towards Canberra. It is mostly sports climbing on ring bolts. This means that instead of placing protection you can clip pre-placed bolts.





My finger is still injured so I am in reality unable to climb (pst...I did clean a climb on top rope but dont tell anyone).

This meant that I spent most of the day belaying the others and taking some photos. On one of the easier scrambles I got to the top so that I could take some photos from the top. It is the first time I have tried to really try and take photos from the top and it was difficult. A lot of the photos were slightly blurred because it was hard to keep the lens steady in the available light when zooming in). Here are some of the photos from this climb that did turn out alright.






Also being up high means that I could provide Dan with some instructions cleaning the anchor system. For his first try it wasn't pretty and he got the ropes in a big tangle.





Eventually we got it sorted so that he could get down safely....but more practice is needed.

After this we went further along the wall to so some easy/moderate climbs (16/17s). One one of the climbs Andy stuck his hand into a hole with a snake skin in it...this is his second snake incident. After this he refused to even get close to the hole (fair enough). He is now on the leader board 2:1...my incident was a brown snake crawling across my feet while belaying him years ago.




Dan managed to also lead this climb which he was absolutely stoked about.






We finished the climb just before the sun set and we managed to get out before just in time. The climb out was interesting at the easiest route is through this narrow and steep gully with fixed ropes and ladders (The fact that Dan was carrying his makeup bag and a 5 litre bottle of water didn't make it easier).

Today I borrowed a couple of Toy cars from my nephew Ethan. I had to promise that I'd bring them back tomorrow.

I wanted to have a play with using a single bare flash right above the car as a softbox. Because the flash is hanging right above the car just outside view) it has been dialed all the way back to 1/128th power (shooting at f/32, iso 200 @ 1/250) or I'd use detail. On the side just outside view I put a piece of white paper to reflect a little light onto the side of the car. The reflective surface is a glass chopping board from the kitchen.


After a while I started also using a flash on the background using different gels. I found that orange and blue gels were the nicest. The Blue as a good contrast to the yello car. With the orange gel I could create a sunset type light by letting the light fall off quickly on the wall. The background if a white wall (except for the textured background which is a black backdrop).


None of the photos below have had any photoshopping done to them (otherwise I would have removed those scratches on the windshield).

Kim was kind enough to let me take some photos of her. I have been studying some flash photography videos and articles and wanted to have a play with multiple flashes around dusk. The trick is to balance the ambient light with the light filled from the flash...especially tricky as the light constantly changes during the last 30 minutes of the day.


So far I only have two wireless flash triggers to was was somewhat limited (ideally I would like to have three triggers).



It was really good to be able to do some experimenting. For these photos I used one flash 45 degrees to the back and another 45 degrees in front. On the back I am using a CTO gel. In the beginning I was using one on the front one as well, but when I got home to look at the photos I could see that it was too warm (Lesson learnt that I should use the warm gels on the back). On the photos here there is no gel on the front flash only on the back.


I would have liked to stay just a bit longer to play, but kim was getting a bit cold.


With a more time I would have been able to enhance some of the zoom effects as seen in this photo:



Definitely a trick I'll be using in the future...makes for some cool effects. At lot of the photos are actually quite nice, but the two above are my preferred ones.