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.

Lately I have been playing around with Photoshop a lot more going through different tutorials.

Main purpose is to enable me to manipulate photos and add a different dimension to these photos. I have especially been trying to create some interesting profile photos that I can use of facebook and the like.

The portraits don't necessarily mean anything...mainly created them to see if I could do something out of the ordinary.The plan is to see if I can make a series Earth - Water - Fire - Air following the four basic elements.


It was really hard to get the starting photo right in my studio. It is almost impossible to do a photo of one-self and have it in focus...eventually Kim had to step in a help me (which I am very grateful for). In total it took me about 2-3 hours from start (taking the photo) to the finished result.

Yesterday we went to the beach to have a coffee with a couple of friends. While Kim was catching up on all the gossip I went out to see if I could get some good photos of the surfers (The surf was pretty good that day).

On the weekend I had a bit of fun with Aiden. I bought a world map on email just so that I could take the following photos of him...







And this last photo I call "Is this where you grew up daddy??"




He is now 4 months old and still doesn't like being on his belly...so I had to be pretty quick with the setup.

Sunday night Kim and I was looking after Ethan and Kayla while Chong and KC went out for dinner.

Kims dad and Dylan popped over for a couple of hours (Kims dad wanted to see Aiden ;-)) and after dinner and after Aiden was asleep I set up the studio to take some portraits of the kids. Main purpose was to experiment a little to improve my photography skills...especially my study of shadows (It is easy to light, but harder to create meaningful shadows).

Lately I have been doing more photography using all my flashes with wireless triggers to get interesting angles and effects. A couple of days ago I bought a couple of pieces of fabric in different colours (blue and red) to use as backgrounds and the following photos are a result of Sunday nights photoshoot.












I used one flash camera right in a 60*60 softbox, Hair light behind camera left snooted. In retrospect I should have taken my 3rd flash and used this to light the coloured backdrops to create better seperation...the highlights above are done in Post processing.

I had a bit of fun on the weekend and spent a little time using photoshop doing something different for a self portrait. Just a bit of fun for a Facebook profile photo.


It took me about 5 minutes to take the photo and about 25-45 in photoshop to modify the image.




After taking the image I modified the background, de-saturated the colours, saturated the green colours, added the cat-eye contact lenses and extended the canine teeth slightly...done! Not perfect, but good enough for what I wanted to try and accomplish.

This week there was a big low pressure system of the coast of Tasmania resulting in 18 meter waves there. It was predicted that some of this swell would hit Sydney this weekend resulting in 3-4 meter waves on south facing beaches. This Saturday morning I went down to Maroubra to have a look...The waves weren't as big as I had expected, but there were lots of surfers there and I did manage to take a couple of reasonable photos (I may try again tomorrow).










I am sure that there were a lot of professional/semi professional surfers out there, but unfortunately I would not be able to recognise anyone. Some of the photos I took with my 28-200mm lens which is super sharp. I also took some with an old 500mm mirror lens...it is reasonable ok...but almost impossible to keep in focus.

Some people have said that Aiden looks like me (mostly) and some says that he looks more like Kim.

Here is a photo of Kim and I with Aiden as well as my mum holding me after I was born (I think):



I REST MY CASE!!!!!

This week was the end of the GCC challenge at work. It was 16 weeks of walking almost 10km every day competing against other teams within the company and other companies. In total there was more than 13000 teams of 7 team members each. By the end of the challenge our team was positioned at the top 10% which I think is pretty good.




Since the race finished I've been walking to work every day.

Last week we had breakfast with Audrey and Aren. Aren was born three days after Aiden was born at the same hospital and during Kims pregnancy we met them at the antenatal classes.

Menu was pancakes and afterwards I offered to do some photos of Audrey and Aren.

This afternoon Kim and I decided to try and take a photo of Aiden for his passport. This was not as easy as it sounded and he couldn't sit or lie still and was making all sort of expressions.

These photos were all taken within 10 minutes from start to finish... He is such a funny little boy!

Ecochallenge ( Sabah 2000 )

Arrival	Silam / J Home 20. October 2012 11:21 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Setup Shot - Funny face 20. October 2012 11:21 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet setup shot funny face Share When I setup for my photos I normally have to take a range of setup shots to check if the light is the way that I want it. Sometime I managed to volunteer Kim to help me set up and on the rate occasion she pulls a funny face. 13. October 2012 12:50 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Lucas 1 Month Photos 13. October 2012 12:50 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet lucas 1 month photos Share This is a series of photos I've taken of Lucas being 1 month old. It is a lot harder taking baby photos this time around for a number of reasons such as it being harder to find the time with both Lucas and the newborn around as well as Lucas not being a very good sleeper. This means that whenever he does sleep it is time for especially mummy to have a rest rather than run around taking photos. Aiden is extremely fond of his little baby brother and every morning he wants to see the baby and give him a little kiss. Whenever Lucas cries, Aiden will say 'Dont cry Lucas'. I am sure that as he grows older they will be best mates. Hopefully as he grows older Lucas will be a bit easier we will be able to take more photos than we have been. 13. October 2012 08:24 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Lucas 1 Month celebration 13. October 2012 08:24 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet lucas 1 month celebration Share Lucas is now one month old and we had a little celebration for family and friends with bbq, food and cake. It was a fine day with lots of kids around (so AIden was busy playing all day). 11. October 2012 04:37 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Work Photo Competition 11. October 2012 04:37 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet work photo competition Share Some weeks ago there was a work photo competition where the theme was 'World Connected'. I didn't have much time due to the kids, but I did manage to put together this photo below for the competition with the title 'bringing closer those who matter!'. It wasn't picked as a finalist, but still fun nevertheless. 8. October 2012 07:20 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Baby name - Lucas 8. October 2012 07:20 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet baby name lucas Share Ok, Kim has finally decided on a name for the newborn out of the 2-3 names left on the shortlist. It is: 'Lucas Lee Pallesen' 8. October 2012 01:41 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Samanthas B'day and Thomas Train Day 8. October 2012 01:41 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet samanthas b day and thomas train day Share This weekend it was Samantha's (Sacha and Mavis' daughter) birthday and to celebrate we did another day with the Thomas Trains. The kids love the trains and it is really good value for an afternoon out. Even Kim had a few rides on the trains as she wasn't able to ride last time because she was pregnant. It was a cool and drizly day...hence the warm clothes. On one of the last rides Thomas de-railed so it took the staff a fair while to get him back on the track (the engines are pretty heavy). 2. October 2012 07:37 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Baby's hand 2. October 2012 07:37 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet baby s hand Share The other night I took this photo of the baby's hand grabbing my finger. We are now approaching week 3...still no closer to having a name for him. 2. October 2012 07:19 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Auburn Botanical Gardens Picnic 2. October 2012 07:19 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet auburn botanical gardens picnic Share After our escursion to the park last week the family decided to go there for a picnic on this Labour Day (public holiday). I was soooo tired after having food poisoning the night before...and wasn't able to eat anything...but the others were having fun. Here is Kims dad with the four daughters. What I didn't realise was that this was the park that KC and Chong got married in. The ceremony was in this spot where I took this photo of Kims dad with most of his grand children (the two youngest missing). I also did some more peacock photos while we were there. Afterwards there was cake and KC and Chongs place (it was his b'day a couple of days earlier)...but we were too tired to join them. 29. September 2012 05:57 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Photo Competition 29. September 2012 05:57 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet photo competition Share For the last couple of years work has has an annual photo competition. This year the theme was 'connected world' and I decided to participate. Not an easy task coming up with an idea and doing a project like this with a new kid. With bit of brainstorming I came up with a couple of ideas and with Kims permission to doing a night shoot in the city I decided to put one of the ideas to life. I am not sure if it is a strong enough photo to be a real contender, but it was fun trying to put it together. The photo was taking at the Domain in Sydney with the highrises in the background. 28. September 2012 08:39 by Rene Pallesen 0 Comments Auburn Botanical Gardens 28. September 2012 08:39 by Rene Pallesen | 0 Comments Tweet auburn botanical gardens Share Yesterday we made the trip to Auburn Botanical gardens which is located about 25km from where we live. I am paternity leave at the moment at this was a nice opportunity to get out of the house with Aiden and the newborn and also take some photos. The garden contains a Japanese section full of Cherry blossoms in spring...unfortunately it is no longer cherry blossom season, but I did find some apple trees with flowers on them as well as other flowers. There was also a bunch of peacocks around the place...one of them kind enough to show us its pride. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts 1 2 ... 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 ... 93 94 Older posts