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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lonely Planet cover!

I’ll get into what I’ve been up to lately in a subsequent post but right now I’m just going to share the news that I’ve been contacted by Lonely Planet to be told they want to use one of my shots from last year’s Thailand trip on the cover of an upcomming guidebook!!

 I’ll add that LP had already purchased the license for the image on one of my stock sites, this would have allowed them to quite legally use it in the manner in which they wished to but they chose to contact me and offer me a further generous payment as they felt the stock payment was too low.  Makes me feel guilty now that I bought that locally ‘produced’ (photocopied) Lonely Planet Cambodia guide book!

 So lookout for the 2009 Blue list which will have the following image on it’s cover:

 

Phnom Penh - 11th December 2007

Decided on a bit of a change in scenery and so hopped on a bus yesterday morning to get me to the capital.  It was a reasonably painless 6 hr trip to get here and after fighting through the tuk tuk drivers to get my luggage I was rather surprised to hear my name being called.  Seems either the guesthouse or my driver from Siem Reap (who I ran into the night before) had called one of his mates and told him that a guy called Ben was on his way here.  It’s actually a pretty common thing - lots of the tuk tuk drivers were waving signs with the names of different passengers on.

Anyways I decided to entertain this industriousness and go along with him, if for no other reason than one tuk tuk driver is as good as the next.  I told him I wanted a guesthouse by the lake and he took me to a place known as the “No problem Guesthouse”.  Rooms are shabby compared to the previous place but they are a couple bucks cheaper ($4 a night here) there’s one hell of a view from the common area, they have some pretty cheap food,  and the straw that made this camel stay at the “No problem Guesthouse” - a free full size pool table.

That back deck is one hell of a place to chill.  As sunset was approaching a young boy in a canoe paddled up and offered me a paddle around the lake for $1.  Not much to argue about with that.  Once we got out there the cheeky little bastard tried get a couple more out of me, which I was going to pay anyways - he’s 10years old at the most and earning a living rowing folks around, least he should get is more than $1 for a half hours work…. 

 Here’s a couple shots from the boat and then of the sunset from the deck: