Lucas is now 5 months and we did his monthly photos the other day together with Aiden.




This also gave me an excuse to try out the new strobe I bought for photography (an Alien Bee B800) and it worked out great...so much better than trying to use multiple flashes inside a softbox to get enough power.

Aiden and Lucas are already ganging up on us and sitting giggling together. They absolutely adore eachother although Aiden sometime can get a little rough with Lucas.




Afterwards we went to the local Park to have a bit of a play (see previous post with photos of Aiden).

The other day we visited Boralee Park to let Aiden play and to take some photos of Lucas.

Aiden is now definitely less afraid of playing and is quite happy zooming down the slides by himself...although he is a little cautious about the swing unless showing off in front of Lucas.

This Sunday we went to Sydney Aquarium with Sacha, Mavis and their daughter Sammi.

Believe it or not, but it was my first time to the Sydney Aquarium, I guess we were waiting for Aiden to be old enough to really enjoy it (Lucas is still too little).



Aiden immediately ran off with Sammi to look at all the fish tanks.





And as we descended deeper and deeper we came close to the big fish in their larger tanks.





And we could look at them walking through the underwater tubes.





They are also one of the only aquariums in the world having Dugongs in captivity.





In the old days it was though that these creatures were mermaids and you can see how that could happen.

LOOK!!!!! A MERMAID!!!!





Anyway...for the most part it is about me watching the Dugong watching the people watching the Dugong....




Unfortunately I had a terrible hay fever and probably would have enjoyed it even more without it....but we may go back in the near future.

This weekend in the Blue Mountains I took a series of Panorama and waterfall photos.

This first one is taken from Govetts Leap.



And these two are from Evans Head.





This waterfall is also at Govetts Leap.



And these waterfalls are all from the Grand Canyon walk.

On the last day in the Blue mountains we made a visit to the Toy and Railway museum in Leura.

They had a lot of old toys and movie related memorabilia such as Tintin.





...and James Bond.



and some impressive Meccano pieces.



Outside there was a garden with a Japanese inspired section



Along with a Matterhorn model railway.



And other railway stuff.

This weekend we rented a small cabin in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.

It was a nice little place with a couple of bedrooms and a nice little fireplace. It was a cool couple of days so we had the fireplace going most of the time.



During the day we would go for nice walks in the local area much to the enjoyment of especially Aiden...






...and have lunch at cafes to the enjoyment of Lucas.




The forest around the cabin had a couple of lyrebirds.

My dad holiday is over and he is returning back to home. To celebrate their last ight we went to a Korean BBQ place in Sydney and then we had a coffee across the street later.








Hopefully it won't be too long before he is coming back!

Last night we were at Darling Harbour with my dad having dinner. They had already started the pre-Australia Day celebrations with music and a light show on the harbour.



Dinner was very nice...but too much food.

The other day I was playing around with some macro shots of Lucas and managed to shoot this photo of him...I had something else in mind, but this turned out quite nice (I think).




It was a real challenge to try and keep reflections out of his eye...and as you can see I didn't succeed using a shoot-through umbrella.

Lucas is now 4 Months and here are his monthly photos.





Kim has him started on solids hoping that he will start sleeping through and he is almost able to sit and he has started babbling when we talk to him.

His favourite pass time is to eat his fingers and play with his feet.

Kim has never learned to ride a bike. One day at the park she borrowed Kaylas bike and gave it a try.

She did pretty good considering that she's never done it before.

Here is some quick snaps of some public artwork that I find really cool.

This artwork I found in the Macquarie centre.







It is thousands of plastic balls suspended from the ceiling.

And this grafitti is from Redfern...I wish all grafitti was this well done.

One day we went with the kids to the opera house to experience a play called "The tiger who came to tea" which is based on a childrens book of the same title.

We had borrowed the book week before and read it to the kids so they were very excited and the play was really good fun and well made.

One of the sad events of the year was the attack on the Lindt cafe in Sydney where a lone gunman took the patrons as hostages. He was eventually shot by the police after killing two patrons.



All of Sydney laid flowers in front of the cafe as Martins place.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Daydream island in the Whitsunday islands at great barrier reef.

This was a great opportunity to check out some of the natural beauties...





...such as Whitehaven beach.











We spent a lot of time playing at the pool and at the beach.





The resort has a massive inland lagoon with lots of stingrays and sharks that the kids loved.






Aiden and Lucas were allowed to touch some of them including this live shark.



and stingrays and star fish.










And on the island there were lots of kangaroos.



A beautiful place.





And I did have time to do a bit of creative shooting.





Eventually it was time to say goodbye to the island with a vulcan salute.

In early November I did another open studio day. This time a mini day with less models, hair and makeup and studio setups.

As usual it was good practice and fun to work with the various models. I think I did get some great photos and there were a lot of lessons learned that can be done better next time.


Model: Charlotte de Lucey


Model: Jessica Garcia


Model: Tanika de Alwis


Model: Britney Williams


Model: Tanika de Alwis

Compared to the other times I was doing a lot more natural light photography this time and some of it in nasty and not very flattering direct sunlight. I think I still managed to get some very usable results out of it.


Model: Nikki Doan


Model: Nikki Doan


Model: Amy Hill



The hardest thing for me is still the communication with the models and the creation of a vision that is different when you are on a fixed set.


Model: Jessica Garcia


Model: Jessica Garcia

This Sunday we took the ferry to Manly.



It is a beautiful trip past the opera house and the boys were very excited being on a boat.














At Manly we went down to the beach. It was a calm day so the boys had a lot of fun at the edge of the water.










After that Kim did some shopping, we had some fish'n'chips and we also had an ice cream.

Last weekend it was pretty warm here in Sydney and the lawn needed watering.

I turned on the sprinkler and we let the boys have some water play.

It is Friday, so time for a little photoshop fun.

Lucas gets really scared whenever Aiden roars like a dinosaur/dragon. When we went to the forest last weekend he again got scared and I snapped this photo and decided to insert a dragon into it.

This weekend when we went to Luna Park I took this panorama I took this panorama from the top of the ferris wheel.

It is a series of 5 photos stitched together. The large one if amazing. You can clearly see individuals at Sydney Opera house and you can tell the colour of their clothes.

It was just taken handheld with my D800 and 50mm lens.