The end of an era - June 2008

Well not exactly an era but I have finished up work for my Aerial client.  Why?  Because I decided on the spur of the moment that doing a snow season in NZ would be more fun.   It’s been too long since I’ve been on a snow board.  So here I am now in Queenstown, Sth Island.  I don’t have any pictures edited up yet of my drive down here but I’ll get to them in due time…for now here’s a shot of me set up as I am in the plane when I shoot, this was taken on my second last day by the pilot:

 

More Aerial work (Grafton) - April 2008

Well after 2 weeks off turned into 7 weeks off a little too quickly we finally got back out on the road for more aerial work.  This time the target area is Grafton.  God damn there is some chilly arsed weather going about at the moment.  On the ground I’m mostly wearing a jacket but get up a hundred meters in that plane with the door off and the wind chill factor makes for some rather less than pleasant shooting conditions.  Still I only have a couple hrs work a day to do (max) so I can’t really complain too much.  We are staying in rather a nice hotel on the river at South Grafton and there is a big L-shaped balcony that overlooks both the sunrise and sunset.  Had a bit of an adventure when the door lock on our room broke and locked us in.  I had to climb out the window and scurry across the roof top to climb in another window in the common area and open our door with the key from the outside.  Anyways as I was on the roof a girl in another room must have glanced out and got an awful fright at seeing someone climb across the roof because I heard a loud scream followed by some curses I can’t repeat here *chuckles*

 Anyways we got our lock fixed now so it’s all good. Found this sign, which made me laugh:

 

Seems that if you want to get up to mischief now is the time to do it.

Next up are a couple aerial snaps, first one of a road winding through trees, second one of a house we came across on fire and third is just a general pretty shot of some sugar cane farms:

 

 

 

When I haven’t been up in the air, scurrying across rooftops or laughing at funny signs I’ve been taking some advantage of the river outside our doorstep to snap off a few sunset shots:

 

 

 

Road trippin' across Australia Feb-Mar '08

Yeah ok, I’m a slack bastard.  I promised an update weeks ago and I haven’t given it.  Well I’ve been…lazy.

Ok, got back from Asia a week or so into Jan with the idea of chillin’ for a couple months and then heading back over to the land of plenty.  Was here a couple weeks when my old aerial photography client rang me up and said he had some work for me.  I initially knocked him back as I’d had enough living out of a suitcase just recently and just wanted to watch the cricket.  But then the bastard rang back with an offer to pay me almost 2.5 times my previous salary.

 Well I’m not much of a material kinda guy but this meant I’d be getting paid 4X my normal stock income for the period of work with them so I caved.  A couple days later I found myself speeding the client’s ford Falcon down from Brisbane to Melbourne for some work in Ballarat.  First a word on the car…did the clowns at Ford actually DRIVE the thing when they released that car?  The Ford Falcon is supposed to be an Australia icon but as the guy who used to work on the suspension in my rx7 said “this thing was all over the road like dogshit!”.  I used to be an idiot hoon, I’m now a…swift driver.  But I’d be dammed if I’d take that thing any faster than about 130 - it just didn’t feel safe.

 Sorry you true blue types but I’m going to stick to my Japanese cars who’s manufactures actually know what HANDLING is.

Anyways as Ali G would say “I digest”.  Got SFA personal shots from the air as I’m that knackered from shooting boring farms for the client that I just can’t be assed shooting my own work @ 500ft but I did get a couple shots of the dam above the place I was staying for a couple weeks (Healsville), a few other random aerial snaps, and then a few shots I managed to snag on the way too and from Melb.  Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australian Landscapes - 18th August 2007

Just a quick entry to let you guys know that I added a new section to the gallery here containing a few random landscapes from around Australia (mostly from S.E. Qld & northern N.S.W.)

                                      Travel & Landscape - Australia

 

Weekend up the coast 02-07 August 2007

Spent the weekend (thurs night - tuesday) up the coast at Jem’s place.  Was largely a lazy bastard during this time but I did manage to take some abstract shots of some of Kel’s hippie crystals and then shoot some kite boarders one of the afternoons.