I love the new camera...it performed abosolutely amazing on the weekend when I did a photoshoot with the family. The 36 Megapixels mean that every detail such as pores in the skin, hairs etc. is visible and sharp.

This photo below shows one of the photos of Chong and Emma zoomed in at 100 percent..the small photo on the left shows the original photo.

A couple of months ago Chong and KC had a new addition to their family.

Last week they asked me if I'd take some photos for them. It was a good chance for me to have a play with the new camera as well as some light setups.






Emma was very good and only had one 'accident'.



It was also a good practice session for when our next addition arrives in a couple of months.











I love the new camera, the details are absolutely amazing in the studio and the autofocus is accurate now after I had it fixed by Nikon.

Yesterday I went to a work conference where at the end of the day they offered us to do some site visits.

I was fortunate enough to visit the satellite tracking facility in the Northern part of Sydney. The company I work for owns a number of satellites (at a cost of around $400 million each) and they will be launching their 10th satellite later this year...the 'O10'.


This photo is from the control room where they look after all the locations, transponders and media broadcasts from the satellites.




It was interesting to be able to see the raw/unedited broadcasts from areas such as the London Olympics, the conflict in Syria etc.


The actual electronics was equally impressive.






I even found the box that currently is receiving all the media broadcasts from the 2012 London Olympics.






This is the Satelite Dish controller...On the display you can see the current position of the dish (and from that you could probably calculate the location of the actual satellite).




Outside was the array of dishes.






Most of the satellites are being launched from French Guyana by the European space agency.

A couple of days ago it was my birthday...I wish it was my 27th...but it wasn't!

Kim took me out for dinner on the day itself to a nice place at Circular Quay...very nice, but absolutely freezing and windy in there.





Day after we went out for dinner with the family to a Japanese restaurant and they ordered a shameful amount of food!

After the dinner we went back to our place for cake.

Aiden is a big fan of the Thomas Trains, so a few weeks ago when Kim saw some vouchers for the Train Shed she bought some tickets.

This morning we went out there with the whole family to go riding on the trains. Aiden was very excited...to the point where he didn't want to get off the train.



The kids had 5 rides each and they also had lunch and scones provided for us.







Aiden had to check out anything that remotely looked like a train (looks like he is taking a wee here).




It was also a good day to try out the new camera (just came back after 5 weeks in the repair shop for recalibration). Kim was using it most of the day and said she loves it compared to my old camera.


On the way in I had seen a signpost towards the Warragamba Dam. This is where 80-90 percent of Sydneys drinking water supply comes from.

This morning it was a beautiful winter day here in Sydney and we decided therefore to go duck feeding in Centenial Park with Aiden and Dylan (I was supposed to have been doing a course, but it was cancelled).

Aiden eventually figured out that it was fun to tear off small pieces of bread and throw it in the water for the ducks and swans to eat.



I showed him how to hand feed the big swans with a flat hand, but he still didn't like them much...and even less so when one of them stole his bread after sneaking in from behind.



Stupid Swan!!!!



But eventually the swan apologised and he was happy to feed the smaller birds.



Also the pond is full of fat eels (and on one occation I have seen turtles there). Some of them would surface to try and steal the bread from the ducks.

Yesterday we went to Emily's birthday party in Centennial park. We were there on time at 10.30 on a very cold morning (it had been 7 degrees overnight) but there was no-one else there...the host and the birthday child turned up two hours later (I cannot stand people who consistently have no respect for other people time).

We had brought Aiden tri-cycle that he got as a birthday present from his grandma last year.



We also spend some time exploring the forest next to the playground.

Today we celebrated Aidens birthday with the family.

In the morning we all had Yum Cha and afterwards we took all the kids to Little Dynamos to play.



In the evening we had the family over for steamboat and cake. Great opportunity to take a new family photo with the latest member of the family...Emma.

Today it was one year ago that my my Mum and Aidens Grandma passed away.

I am still sad that Aiden never met her but I am hoping that he will get to know Bedstefar better as he is growing up.




I am also glad that Aiden will have a brother to keep each other company and I hope the two of them will be close and grow old together.

I still have a suitcase sitting here full of photos that I one day will get the courage tp go through...but not anytime soon.

Today was Aidens second birthday...time flies!



We had a Birthday cake for him with the family and sang Happy Birthday and let him blow out the candle.

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.

This week we travelled to Denmark to meet the relatives. We flew straight from Sydney to Copenhagen with short stopovers in Singapore and London. Aiden behaved like a little angel pretty much all the way although he was pretty tired on the last stretch from London.

The purpose of our trip was initially to introduce Aiden to both his Grandmother and Granddad (Bedstefar), but since my mum passed away last month he could only meet my dad.



It took a couple of days for both granddad (Bedstefar) and Aiden to get used to each other, but now they really enjoy each others company and have fun playing with eachother (although it will take some time before we get him to babysit as he refuses to change nappies).





We also went to the cemetry to visit my mum who passed away recently and my brother. It is a pity my Mum didn't get to meet Aiden, but at least he has now been to the cemetry.



We also went to visit my grand parents (Aidens great grandparents) as well as my great grand parents and great great grandparents (5 generations in one place).








One afternoon we went to my Aunties house to visit.



On a couple of evenings we had an outdoor BBQ. My dad was looking after the meat and we were looking after the side dishes and deserts. On the first evening my dad managed to burn the chicken a faid bit.



One afternoon we all went to the local zoo (It must have been 30 years since I last went there).







We tried the swings there, but Aiden wasn't happy with them (Maybe when he is older).



In the evenings we went down memory lane where my dad pulled out old 16mm film from when I was a toddler.





We were in Denmark a week and a half and it was really nice to see Aiden and my Dad getting along. I am hoping that my dad will come to Sydney in the near future and spend more time with Aiden...it will be good for him to know Bedstefar as he is growing up.

Today was a beautiful winters day...cool, windy and blue skies and we decided to use this beautiful Sunday to go on a bushwalk with Aiden (his first real bushwalk).

The walk we decided to do was one up at Cowan from the station down to Jerusalem Bay (5km return). I carried Aiden all the way in a small sling/backpac we have for him.



He is still not used to the sling and keeps leaning back...but hopefully we can get him a bit more used to it before our holiday to Croatia.

The walk follows a creek with a small stream running through it. Eventually it reaches the bay which is a picturesque little place.



It was a great trip and it was great to get out and get some exercise.



Afterwards we had lunch at Berowra at a place I had been to before. Unfortunately it had changed owners and didn't have the same quality to it any longer.

We had a beautiful winter day yesterday and we decided to head down to the beach to get Aiden used to the feel of sand.



He took it a lot better than expected and although wasn't playing with the sand at least he tolerated his feet and hands touching it.



He was also quite content sucking his fingers being full of sand.

This week it was Kims Birthday (one of the big ones with a zero in it). In the morning she was surprised with a big bunch of flowers delivered and she thought they were from me...she was very surprised when she discovered they were from my dad.



...and I got an earful because she thought that I hadn't gotten her any...well I did and they were delivered by the end of the afternoon and they were different from the ones I ordered (they just delivered a palin bunch of roses which was very dissappointing but the florist gave me a refund when I complained about it).




In the evening we had Kims dad baby sitting while we went to Sepia for the degustation menu.




The food was really yummi and time just flew away.





On the Sunday we celebrated with the family on a japanese restaurant followed by cake and birthday song.



Happy Birthday Kim!!

Week before last my mum passed away.

She had her birthday on the Saturday where we called her and sang har Happy Birthday. The next day I received an email from my auntie saying that my mum had another stroke on the day after her birthday and that she probably wouldn't make it through the night.

Obviously a bit of a shock and after calling the hospital they confirmed that she was in a coma and that it wasn't looking good. The stroke was on the opposite side of where she previously had a stroke so even if she woke up she would probably be totally paralysed.

Later that day I managed to get hold of my aunt and spoke to her to try and decide whether I should jump on a plane immediately or wherhet I should wait and see. I decided that because she was asleep there wouldn't be much value in me going there since it could be a long wait. My mums health has been pretty bad for a while so every time I've spoken to her I've know that it could be the last time. The one regret I have is that I only spoke to her briefly on her Birthday because we were going out for dinner.

On the 8th I reveived a call from my Aunt in the middle of the night saying that my mum had quietly slept in and that I better make my way to Denmark because there was a lot of decisions that had to be made.



When I arrived to Denmark my Dad hadn't arrived yet and his neighbour was out so I was unable to get into his apartment. I decided to go for a walk down to the hospital where my mum was and I was sitting outside for a while. Every time I saw someone in a window I was hoping that I would catch a glimse of my mum.

Next day my dad had arrived and we had a very busy day organising the funeral with the funeral company and starting to clear out her apartment. I had to make a decision as to what I wanted to keep and what should be disposed of. Over the next couple of days I managed to pack two boxes of stuff to keep and the rest was thrown out (apart from one box of porcelain painted by my grandma which I gave to my auntie). It was belongings that represented my Mums entire life and I had to make decisions as what to keep. In the end I only kept a few things that I would like to remember her by where the photos were an important part. I also kept a few of my grandmothers things that she had.

My mum had kept a lot of my things which I had to throw out as well. There were a number of really old bottles of wine from before I moved to Australia where the only one that was perfectly drinkable was a 1987 bottle (The rest had turned to vinegar). My dad and I shared this bottle over an outside BBQ one evening.



It is really sad to see how my Mums last few years has split up the family as well as old friends...when she had her first stroke years ago she was very much let down by both family members and friends that she thought she could depend on. A couple of these turned up to the funeral service...I am sure my mum would rather have had them not being there.


On the thursday we had my mums funeral at the church next to where she was born and I found it really hard to say my last goodbuy to her. It is one thing knowing she has passed away, but it really sunk in when she was right there in her coffin.



It was difficult for me to take these photos, but I needed something to remember the funeral by.



After the funeral we had lunch at Marielyst. It was good to catch up with some of my family members especially my mums sisters and my cousins and I am grateful for all the flowers that were sent.



In the middle of the lunch my dads sister came and threw a spanner in the wheels. She has days before promised that she would take care of the legal side and in the middle of the lunch she declared that she didn't want to do it afterall. I find her timing absolutely appaling and dissapointing. She could have let me know of that decisions earlier...instead I had to rush around and organise a lawyer in the afternoon where I thoughs I could finally site back and reflect on the loss of my mum and pack my things to finally go home next morning.

Anyway it got all sorted and next day I returned back to Australia.

I am really sorry that my mum never got to meet Aiden and I am sorry that Aiden never got to meet his grandmother. She passed away day after Aidens 1yo birthday and we were planning togo to Denmark next month to finally introduce them to eachother.


I hope that if there is something after that she has finally found some peace and that she is with my brother and that both of them are young, happy and healthy. The years since my brother passed away were really tough on my mum...she has had a tough autumn and her wish was always to be buried next to him in Vaeggerloese.

We will all miss her very much...

Today it was Aidens 1st Birthday and we celebrated it quietly with a birthday song and a little cupcake with a candle in it.



He is now a lot more curious about his environment and crawls around the livingroom investigating every corner. He is still commando crawling, but when he is determined to get to something then he is pretty quick.


We also measured him up against a wall and he is now 74cm tall and weighs just over 10kg. He is starting to become a real handful. He is used to me taking him with me in the shower and really doesn't like being bathed in a bathtub any more and it now takes the two of us to dress him (one of us to hold him while the other person dresses him). He is getting so strong that it is hard to one person to hold him is he starts wiggling like a worm.

On Sunday is his big birthday party and I really hope that I will be able to be there and celebrate it with him. Aiden's Grandmother (my Mum) had another stroke on Sunday (the day after her 69th Birthday) and things don't look very good at the moment and I may suddenly have to rush back to Denmark. I really hope she will hold out as I don't want to miss my little boys first Birthday party.

I am really sad that my Mum and Aiden hasn't had a chance to meet. We are supposed to go back there in August to visit her...but now we will have to re-evaluate our plans.

Again this year I went into the city to have a look at Vivid Sydney. This is a festival of light and music in the city around Circular Quay, The Rocks and the Opera House.

On the first few days of the festival it was raining a bit, but one evening when there was a clear night I went into the city leaving Kim and Aiden at home.

I managed to get a couple of good photos I think although I spent way too much time on photos of the opera house and therefore ran out of time.








This was the third year of the festival and I found this years festival much more creative than the previous years.


Anyway, here are some of the more interesting photos from the evening.

This weekend we made another trip to Centennial Park to go for a walk, have lunch & coffee and take some photos. Is it becoming a regular event so expect some more post in the future.

This Sunday the park was car free, meaning that everyone had to park outside the gates rather then drive into the park. It meant that there was a lot less people in the park which made it even more enjoyable. The trees as beautiful with their golden yellow and red leaves.


It is currently Autumn in Sydney and lately the weather had been fairly miserable and even this Sunday when we went to the park it looked a bit dark and gloomy at first. Fortunately the grass and leaves were fairly dry so I could do our 11 Month photos of Aiden. At first he didn't like the leaves at all, but after a few minutes he warmed up to the idea and started having fun playing with them (and eating them).








He is very funny at the moment, he is starting to crawl a lot faster and would try and get to the camera so I had to keep crawling backwards to keep the distance between us.

Friday night Kim, Dylan and I joined a number of Kims friends on the Abba cruise on the Sydney Harbour.

Dylan had completed a writing assignment we gave him a couple of weeks earlier (to write a 500 word essay about our easter holiday) and as a reward we took him along on the cruise.

The boat was a fairly small boat (almost house boat sized) and probably fitted around 80 people onboard. The Abba band was pretty good. The singing wasn't brilliant, but still very good entertainment and they managed to get the boat rocking. We even managed to get Dylan up dancing (even though we didn't give him much choice).




^{(oh...this photo is intentionally blurred...I tried to create a cool effect by zooming while I took the photo with a rear-curtain sync).}


It was a beautiful calm night, so it was nice to once in a while go up on deck to enjoy the view of the city line. Vivid Sydney had just started so Circular Quay, The opera house and The Rocks was all lit up. I will be heading in there one of the next few nights to take some more photos (I tried to take a couple of photos from the boat but Abba was rocking it too much ;-) ).



I hope Nikon will soon announce the D800...my old D50 was really strugling this evening with the low light conditions and I didn't bring a Tripod along.

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!