Perfect Moments Photography | A Rene Pallesen Journal

Needless to say that I saw a lot of animals while in Kenya.

I don't know how it is today, but back then they were everywhere in the national parks.

Here is some of the Rhinos we saw.

Elephants were plentiful.

Lots of cheetahs.

And lots of lions.

Their kittens.

Lots of Hippos (Lots of these in Lake victoria) and they would be grazing on the golf course across the street.

Hyenas

The vultures eating the remains of the kills.

And of cause loads of zebras and various gazelles.

My time in Kenya was every kids dream.

I got see and do things that few other kids had a chance of doing and it definitely had a big impact on my adult life.

Living at Lake Victoria gave me the chance of catching the biggest fish I have ever caught (A 56pound/25kg Nile Perch).

I also caught the smallest fish I have ever caught in that same lake.

We didn't need fancy fishing gear, just a stick with a piece of line on it.

Life, going to school and emerged in a different culture was a different kind of life (This is our house maid, my brother and my grandmother in front of our house).

This is Filistus another of our house maids. She was working for us most of our time there (we found out the she died from a bad case of malaria years after we left).

Here we are riding a 100 year old turtle.

Life with my brother was also very different. He discovered his talent for Tennis in Kenya and could whoop most of the adults arse when he was 12yo.

No hair dressers around so we also had the worst hair cuts.

There wasn't a lot of Europeans around so we'd know most with a 100km radius.

Family life was simple (not TV) but good.

Our dog was part of the family and made quite a few trips to Kenya.

Every afternoon was spent at the Nyanza Country club where Claus played Tennis and we went swimming.

I taught myself to swim and owe these days to how solid a swimmer I am today...I got really upset that I couldn't swim and my stubborness kicked in and I became determined to learn...fast.

Some of the less memorable moments were the school plays where I was dressed up as a big bird.

Here is one of Claus singing in the choir.

I have started going through some of the old photos on my computer and will start post some of them on my blog.

The first one I stumbled upon one of my class photos from Kenya from 1981/82 when I went to Kisumu Primary School.

I was the only white person in my class (we were 5-6 europeans in the whole school)

One evening while staying at the farm we went to the Hunter Valley gardens to check out the light show and the mega bugs.

There were lots of really creepy insects around the garden and they were all moving and making sounds.

The light show was also really good and there were a couple of new things compared to last year.

And we also spend a bit more time in the story garden.

And the story about girls and boys is 'different'...

...but maybe true for these little monkeys.

At the end of the summer holidays we made a trip up north to Broke (Hunter Valley) with the kids and some friends to stay at an Alpaca farm.

It didn't take long for Aiden to get comfortable with feeding the Alpacas but Lucas was a bit more hesitant and was happy to just observe or throw the food at them.

The Alpacas also provided them with a biology lesson teaching them about the bees and the flowers.

We also did a bit of wine tasting while we were in that part of the hunter.

But the kids were more interested in playing outside and chasing the cat.

My New Years resolution for this year is to get healthy.

By this I don't mean that I will try and become super fit and start running marathons. No, I just mean that I want to get to a stage where I feel healthy, do a bit of exercise, have a healthy mental state and generally eat healthy.

I started really well on this last year, but about half way through I started getting sick all the time (like every 2-3 weeks).

This time around I want to have 2 months without getting sick and then I will start some easy to moderate exercise again.

I want to see if I can get back to running again.

Here is a fun little street sign. This is a place I wanna live...

This year we celebrated Christmas eve with the boys.

5 days before Christmas I still hadn't taken our annual family photo even though I had the concepts loosely worked out in my head.

I knew that I wanted to do one in the kitchen and one evening when Kim decided she wanted to experiment with cooking brownies I decided to set it up and talked her through the concept and what I wanted her and the kids to do.
It worked out better than expected.

Kim also wanted one of us unpacking gifts.

This one was a lot harder to set up as the light was critical.

The last family photo we did was a simple one taken in the morning at Maroubra beach.

In one of the shops at Eastgardens I found a wall full of these inspirational notes for 2015.

A couple of days ago the kids were playing in the park at Kims dads place while a big storm was approaching.

The light was beautiful so I couldn't resist snapping a couple of photos with my phone.

This year it was my Grandmothers 85th Birthday. As per the tradition the whole family went on a trip overseas, this time to Egypt.

It was my first time to Egypt so it was a different experience. I can recommend that you take a read of the Travel Journal by clicking here!

Click here to see more photos from: Egypt 2004/Slideshow/Travel Journal

2004 was the year I started working for Captaris. One of the first things I did was to visit our office in Calgary to learn about our workflow product.

My visit coincided with the Calgary Stampede, so lots of cowboys in town, indians and rodeos. I also too a bus ride up through the Canadian rockies through Banff, Lake Louise and up to the Columbian Ice Fields.

Click here to see more photos from: Canada 2004/Slideshow

One day we went playing bowling...I had a dream round where I played my best game ever (including a turkey - three strikes in a row).

This year both the boys played soccer for the first time.

They made some good friends while playing and did pretty good considering it was the first time.

Lucas' team won the competition in his age group. Aiden made a great effort considering he is a head shorter than all the other boys in his age group.

Kims dad celebrated his 90th(we think) Birthday this year.

He is mostly bedridden these days, but we managed to get him downstairs to celebrate on this day.

Strange year indeed, and other than a few things, it is remarkably the same.

The kids have still done a lot of activities and here are some of them.

Aiden hanging out with his friend Jake at the beach.

Mini golf with Sammi.

Doing puzzles at home.

Aiden had patience to do one of the simpler ones.

Me trying to teach them how to use photoshop...not a bad result for a first try.

Painting the old way.

One of Aidens favourite drawings. It got soaked by accident and he was absolutely devastated. I managed to rescue it somewhat and take this photo.

He went through a phase where he was obsessed with the Titanic.

He was also into Harry Potter and made a drawing of the sorting hat.

I took Aiden out for a run and he did 4.5km without a break...very proud.

Ice skating with friends

Backyard tennis

Ice cream

Karate - Lucas got to wear a black belt after doing a 3 minute plank.

Their Kumite (sparring) gear.

Aiden reading a bit. Reading is really difficult for him. He can read all the words and sentences perfectly, but it is hard for him to comprehend the stories he reads (almost like he is unable to visualise and imagine the story as he reads it.).

During the lockdown we spent a lot of time in our backyard having a firepit on the weekends.

One weekend I put up my old tent and I camped in the backyard with the boys...they had a blast.

On the other side of Botany Bay is Kamay national park.

On a very stormy day we went for a walk over there to experience the wild weather.

Aiden likes to dress up, this time like harry potter...

It is not often gets an award from school, so he is super proud when he gets a little encouragement.

At Boracay I did another shoot with some beautiful models. It was a fun shoot on the beautiful beach and at the hotel pool.

Early in the year we made an extended weekend trip to the Gold Coast in Queensland. Main attraction here was for the boys to visit Movieworld and Seaworld.

Every year I do a family photo. This year we decided to use the gingerbread village and the tree as a backdrop.

Merry Christmas.

Over the Christmas period Aiden and I have been building a Gingerbread village.

It has been good fun for me to put the houses together and for Aiden to help with sticking on the kandy.

Tonight I did some more photos...

The plan was to get a photo of Lucas and Aiden together wrapped in christmas lights. It turned out to be impossible to get especially Lucas to sit still, so we eventually gave up and tried to do some individual shots...the photos below are the best of the lot...not great but will have to do. To be honest the best shot of the evening is the one above of Aiden which I took after we gave up with the chain.

Lucas is growing up really fast and him and Aiden are now best mates doing almost everything together (including fighting).

The other day I found this in our garage.

I had to look it up...but it turned up to be a blue tongue lizard but without the stumpy tail we normally see.

I asked Kim if the kids could keep it...but she screamed and said no, so I released it into our garden.

You can tell that Christmas is approaching when Banana's in Pyjamas is wearing a Christmas hat...oh and then there is the cute Santa's helper.

Yesterday it was Kims dads Birthday and we celebrated with a big lunch party with cake and good food.

And Kim was beautiful as ever and Lucas was very handsome...

Christmas is approaching fast. The Christmas tree is up and Kim is busy shopping for presents for the various people.

The other night I managed to slot in 10 minutes for the first set of Christmas photos of Aiden and Lucas.

I was shooting these with a 50mm f1.4 lens to get the nice blurry Christmas tree lights. This also meant that I didn't have much room to play with when it came to focus...almost impossible with two moving kids whily trying to get the right mood with facial expressions, tantrums etc. Aiden couldn't sit still and Lucas refused to wear his hat. What do they say...never photograph wild animals and children!

The other day it was Aiden and Lucas Christmas concert with their daycare centre.

This year they were supposed to dress up in some country's national clothes.

We borrowed some Chinese clothes from KC and they looked very cute in it.

The concert went very well. We were especially impressed how well Aiden was able to follow the instructions and the moves to the various dances.

It was especially funny when they were singing this song with Konitchiwa...Namaste....BULA!!!!

Lucas was also in the first part of the concert sitting down the front with one of the carers.

Aiden is still playing soccer once a week. Last week he insisted on wearing my shoes instead of his own.

Maybe he was hinting that his old shoes are getting too small.

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