An old shed

I took a lot of lovely images today but I can't post any of them as they are of children. I did a shoot out at Outram School to grab some images for the NZC Online website, and also for a video in production. CORE Education has a new project called Book Talks where authors are 'beamed' into the classroom using Skype. Today Craig Smith, the author of Wonky Donkey talked to a class at Outram School and I was lucky enough to go along and film the whole thing. Was very exciting to see kids interacting with the author of a book they loved.

Anyway, this is the image I can post. In my hectic day, on the drive back from the school I pulled over and took a quick snap of this old shed. I didn't even get out of the car to get a good angle as I should have. So this is the slacker's snap.

Dunedin train station

Busy day today, so here is another photo prepared earlier (I hope I don't lose points!). This is the famous and beautiful Dunedin railway station. The tiles inside are Royal Doulton and worth a look if you're in town.

Helen

We had a photo shoot today to get some new images for our CORE website (in development). I particularly like this one I took of my colleague Helen, the camera loves her.

Morning on the harbour

I love the way the harbour looks different every morning, depending on the light.

More folk art

I really enjoyed painting this one. It has pride of place in my kitchen. The reason I have such affection for it is because I painted it with a close friend and she has her painting in pride of place in her kitchen. It is lovely on the rare occasions we can visit each other (she lives in another country) to have something of each other in the house.

Off to camp

It is going to be strangely quiet around here for a week ...

Autumn

It was another beautiful autumn day today. I think autumn is the nicest time of year in Dunedin. Although it looks quite pretty, I really must save this tree from the creeper.

The boys

On a rare occasion I manage to get a photo of my boys. For the above photo I waited in the hallway, focused on the doorway he was going to come out of and then snapped with stealth - thus the surprised face. Boy number 1 was playing Halo all day and said I made a good sniper.

Boy number 2 was off to his first formal dance complete with granddad's tie and dad's jacket. He looks either very rock and roll, or very mafia. I bet all the other boys are wearing black tie ... oh well.

Folk art plate

It was a drizzly, grey old day today so I looked for something inside to photograph. I painted this plate years ago. I really loved making it, the pattern was so soothing to do.

Painted pot

A while ago, when I was a stay at home mum, I loved to do folk art. There's not much in my house that survived without being attacked with a brush of some sort. This is my utensil pot which has graced my last three homes.

Judder bars

When we first moved to New Zealand we were confronted by this sign. Took us a while to figure out what it meant. Doesn't exist in Perth. Made me think of udders, but that didn't help deciphering the meaning :)

Just hanging around

After a long day at the Ministry today I was walking down the main street in Wellington and noticed this guy hanging off a building with a high powered water blaster. What a cool job.

Teeth

This is not a pretty shot, but I had to get a picture of these things as proof. An artist was commissioned to create an art work to set off our beautiful Otago Harbour. So therefore we now have a set of six teeth blocking the beautiful views of the harbour. These teeth are made out of Oamaru Stone I think and the rope around the top is meant to help them to 'decay' over time. The artists says this will add to their beauty. I really don't know what they were thinking. Surely the fact that these have been placed on Portsmouth drive is not enough of a reason to put teeth in front of our harbour?

Now I quite like them as a piece of art and think they would look fantastic outside the dental school. But I would have liked something else to enhance the harbour.

Jessica

We had a lovely relaxing weekend with very little work. Played some squash, watched some videos, went for a run, and took photos of Jessica in the garden.

Cleaning day

Driveway

I walk past this driveway when walking from my house to the shop and it is so beautiful I wonder what is at the end of it.

Driving to Wellington

I had a mad dash back from Palmerston North to Wellington to catch my plane. Which was frustrating because as I was driving I could see so much I wanted to stop and photograph. Luckily (even though I was in a hurry) I was stopped at some road works, so whipped out the camera and took an image out the window. I loved the vibrant colours produced from the dull greyness of the day.

Driving to Palmerston North

Lucky me, the rental company upgraded my car to a Rav 4 so I had a very pleasant drive from Wellington to Palmerston North. I was heading to present two workshops at the Kainui ICTPD cluster mini conference. The sea was very rough, which isn't really reflected in this image. I suppose that is what this challenge is for. Seeing a story you want to capture, finding out it doesn't work, and then playing with your camera to learn how to get what you see and feel to be portrayed in 2d in a photograph. I will have to work on that.

I've just got to say, I LOVE MY IPHONE. This is the first time I have made the trek by myself from Wellington up North and was a bit nervous about getting lost (I don't think NZ uses sign posts very well, just saying...). Anyway, typed in my destination in the google maps application and there was my very own GPS keeping me company on the drive. Thank you Mr Jobs.

Wellington buses

I'm in Wellington for a day of meetings. I love how the buses are so happy and yellow. Had a funny experience walking into a meeting and there was @jo9ty who I had been interacting with on Twitter but had never met face to face. It is good when people have their image as their avatar so you can have these surreal experiences of meeting people for the first time who you think you 'know' but have never actually met.

Lacking inspiration

The dark grey days are here, I'm back at Uni and at work, and I can't see photos waiting to be taken anywhere. And now even my kids have had enough of me taking their photos. What is a girl to do?

In his natural state

The teenager is a strange creature, given to both great bursts of movement and long periods of slothfulness. An interesting addition to the slothfulness is the need for loud music and multitudes of electronic equipment.

A hard day's work

Today was a nice fine day in Dunedin and we decided to cut the hedge. Well I decided I would and that meant that my army of helpers joined me. Ashleigh picked this photo of the ones I took today. Brett had worked hard all afternoon.

Door

This is the door to an abandoned building in lower George Street. I think it was a bank at one point.

Morning and evening

Morning
Evening

Playing with shutter speed

St Clair Jetty

I'm cheating today with a photo prepared earlier :). This is St Clair Beach jetty poles at sunrise. I'm finding it a little tricky being back at work after three weeks away and am lacking in inspiration to take photos without the sights, sounds and smells of foreign places. I promise I will get back on with the challenge tomorrow.

Sunrise

Sunrise over the hill suburbs in Dunedin.

Cannisters

Anyone for tea?

Happy Easter everyone

Last day in LA

Today is my last day in LA. I decided to take a leisurely stroll around Santa Monica before heading to the airport. It was interesting to people watch down the Third Promenade which is the main street in SM. I looked through all the shops and even bought a jacket, which was a little depressing as I had to get a medium! The sizes are much smaller over here. I still don't see how it is humanly possible to be a size 0, surely that is unhealthy.

The picture below is a cheeky photo that Sasha took yesterday, because this beautiful man came into the diner and we thought he was too beautiful not to be someone famous, but we didn't recognise him.
Anyway, time to go home.

Los Angeles - Celebrity encounters

LA is the land of celebrities and wannabe celebrities. I wasn't really paying much attention or looking out for them, I was just taking in the city. So today was an interesting day.

I met this lovely girl, Sasha, on the bus trip yesterday, a fellow Perth girl who has been living in Ireland. We arranged to meet down at Venice Beach and spend the day together. I walked to the end of Venice Beach and sat down on a post near the beach to wait for her. There was a man and some kids playing with a frisbee. I sat there in the sun contentedly until the frisbee nearly took my head off. I exclaimed, 'you're trying to kill me'. The man apologised and explained he would have let me know if I was going to be decapitated. I took another look and I was talking to 'Greg Brady' (Barry Williams).

Sasha and I decided to go up to Sunset Strip to have a look around. On the way we stopped at 'Hooters' (just to see what all the fuss was about) and then continued on to the Strip. We had a drink at Carney's Diner and while there a man walked in with a Spinal Tap tshirt on. Now since I had just made the pilgrimage to Stonehenge as a Tap fan, we made a comment on his shirt. Turns out the shirts were only made for crew and we were talking to two of the people who shot the film. (This will only be impressive to Tap fans)

This photo above was our last celebrity sighting for the day. We stopped at the Red Rock Cafe for another drink and sitting in the corner with his manager and some other guy was Christopher McDonald. They were discussing his next movie and we watched him sign the contract. Was a rather surreal experience. The photo above is Sasha with Christopher in the background because, being Australian, we couldn't let on that we had encountered someone famous. You know we don't go in for that sort of thing :).

Los Angeles - Santa Monica Pier

My hotel is right across the road from the Santa Monica Beach and Pier. This is the famous end of route 66 (however, I heard a rumour the sign was moved there as part of a movie prop and the end is elsewhere). The Pier is quite an amazing site at night time.

In the morning I went for a walk along the beach to the famous Venice Beach. The beach is really clean, with big tractors raking along it. The interesting (sad) thing was that there were bodies scattered along the beach as you can see in this photo above. The beach is a sleeping spot for many people with no where else to sleep. The beach also had a really strange smell. I can't be sure what it was but it didn't smell fresh and clean like Perth beaches to this Australian nose.

It is interesting as you walk south to Venice Beach things get more funkier and edgy. I walked along passing very interesting people, watched a drug deal go down, tried not to breathe too deeply to avoid getting high too early in the morning, and said a polite no to the Kush Doctors selling legal MJ out of their Venice Beach shops (offices?). I arrived at Muscle Beach to watch the pumped men work out. They were shooting a segment for MTV at Muscle Beach so I thought that would be good professional development so I sat down to watch.