New Year

So, have just returned back to work for the start of the year, have just spent the past week holidaying up at the Gold Coast with Grace, it was awesome.

 

We stayed at the QT (not the Q1!) where we had an ocean view that was spectacular. Some days were spent by the pool, when the weather was good.  Staying a week we managed to do quite a bit, on reflection!

– Haunted House

– Ripleys Believe it or Not!

– Seaworld

– Hired a fancy white Jeep Wrangler, and we now want one!

– Lounged by the pool

– Checked out the beachside markets, and Pacific Fair shopping centre

– Mini Golf x 3!

 

The Haunted House was great, there was a family that went in front of us, and they were hilarious, the kids were screaming and laughing and made it quite funny.

Ripleys was interesting, turns out I’m not the tallest man in the world (dang). Dad came down on Sunday, so did Tess! We had lunch at a pub down the road, then we went in the pool. Tess went back home that afternoon, Dad stayed in his van up the road a bit. On Monday, Grace and I decided on a whim to hire a car, a white Jeep! Which worked out well as we drove up to say bye to Dad, then decided we wanted to go to Seaworld, saved having to deal with public transport! It was a pretty rainy weather day so it wasn’t too crowded.

 

We ate at some really nice places, and we had buffet breakfast in the hotel every morning which was awesome.

The markets down by the beach were entertaining and managed to grab a few things from there. The Mini golf place we really wanted to go to was just next door to our hotel, which was great! They had an Ancient Egypt theme and a Jurassic Park themed course, plus an outside one which was apparently the harder of the three to do. It was pretty relaxing, just us two and doing whatever we wanted since it was our holiday! Looking forward to many more.

I’m sure there’s plenty of things I’ve forgotten that we did but my head is still in Holiday mode!

 

Quick Christmas recap too, Grace absolutely spoiled me and got me so many amazing gifts, she is quite seriously the best gal in the world. Don’t know what I’d do without her.

 

2015 is looking like a pretty top year for us, looking at places to move into up her way, Melbourne in July for the Roma/Real Madrid/Manchester City tournament, and Europe/UK/Ireland over 2015-16 🙂 I am very much looking forward to it!

 

Here she is sleeping, so gorgeous 🙂

(sorry luv!)

 

 

– T

 

P.S I love you very, very much Grace 🙂 You mean the world to me.

 

 

Appreciation Post

This lass is quite amazing.

 

She’s encouraged me to do so many things already, one of which is return to education, I’ve started Uni and am doing a Bachelor of Internet Communications, which is tonne more fun than what I am currently doing and is something I completely enjoy. It’s also relevant to Photography as it includes Web Design and Dev.

 

It’s not just that. I’m getting on another plane this year, and then long haul ones next year as we go to Europe and Ireland to see my new Nephew (so cute!)

She gets upset when my sports teams lose and helps me catch legendary Pokemon when I can’t, AND she plays her own Pokemon!

I love the plans we have made already and can’t wait for it all to come to fruition.
She is my rock and I love her more than anything.

 

This post is for you Gracie

 

 

 

 

 

This Girl

 

This girl is my absolute world. She has made me so incredibly happy, I love her to bits and don’t know what I would do without her.

 

Long time between posts, because I’m too busy with this gorgeous, beautiful woman!

Home

 

Not a bad place to view whilst on a run! I normally run up through north gong etc but yesterday decided to go south of mine, and up through the Inner Harbour.

It’s a spot usually occupied by surfers and the backdrop to this is the steelworks, so it’s not the most pleasant view behind. I still think it’s pretty great, though.

Vivid 2014

This is a shot from this years Vivid festival in Sydney.

 

The sails of the Opera House are always lit up, and each year they have a different set of images displaying on them. This years were probably the best I have seen, and these paint splatters are one of the highlights of the festival for me.

I wanted to get some closer shots than you normally would, I don’t have a long zoom lens so shooting from the other side of the Quay always has the sails in the distance.

Grace

Quick girlfriend appreciation post.

I’ve spent the weekend away from her and can’t wait to come home to her today.

She’s a pretty awesome girl.

Bowral Lookouts

I shot this a few weekends ago on a Sunday, late morning.

I had some time to kill up in the Southern Highlands so I was driving around, didn’t have the foggiest of where to go so I just winged it. Ended up at the lookouts in Bowral (which, I didn’t know existed!) Some of the lookouts were basically just stops on the side of the road, but this is at one of the main ones, I forget the name (forgive me, highlanders)

Rather than just go straight to the lookout for the view I wandered around for a bit. This may look like it’s in the middle of nowhere but in actual fact the carpark is about 10 metres behind me, but it looked too good to pass up a photo through the trees.

Until next time.

 

-T

 

 

Taren Point

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I went out last Friday night to take some long exposure shots.  After driving around for a while I found a bridge that suited what I was after. This was a 15 second exposure and I managed to get the lights from cars in all 3 lanes, which I counted as a bonus.

 

I’ll be looking at doing more long exposure shots later on, once I’ve done a bit more research of some good spots. I lost some motivation after this spot, I did try and get some more shots over at Sylvania but soon gave up. This shot was worth the waiting around though.

 

I’m also playing around with watermarks on my photos but that’s a work in progress.

 

 

/Tom

 

Lately

All quiet on the website front lately, I’m trying to keep this heavily related to my photography and not just a blog, and I haven’t gone out shooting much last couple of weeks.

I’ll be doing some night shots on Friday night hopefully, so look for an update over the weekend!

 

-T

Sea Sculptures

Thought I’d give some background on this photo, which I’m currently using in my header.

This was taken last year in November at Sculptures by the Sea down in Bondi, which runs for just over two weeks between October and November. I probably picked one of the worst days to go, when the city was blanketed with smoke from Bushfires over yonder, I felt that a lot of my shots that day would be ruined thanks to the haze that was hanging around. This is one of the few that  I kept and managed to salvage through Lightroom.

I really enjoy the colour coming from the surfboards against the grey and pale colours of the ocean. It was hard to get too close to the sculpture as there was a fence obstructing you.