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Getting ‘the snip’.

When we had our first child, I was inundated with people saying nice things like ‘Oh it’s so wonderful’ and ‘You’re going to be a great parent’. Then when we had our second child, people said things like ‘Oh you’ve got a boy and a girl, the full set!’ and ‘Now you’re a real family’. When we had our third, suddenly people were saying things like ‘So when are you getting the snip?’ and ‘My husband went to a place where you get a free stubby holder’. Suddenly women were putting my genitals and scissors in the same sentence, and with a sense of inevitability that terrified me. Well that sense of inevitability was well placed, as I have just had the snip.

So why do it?

Well, mainly because we have three healthy happy kids, and we don’t want to push our luck. Also, at no stage in the last 6 months have I thought ‘You know, I sure could go for constantly broken sleep and zero time to do anything for myself right now!’
Furthermore, despite the advent of self service counters at the supermarket, purchasing condoms remains as awkward at 38 as it was at 18. It’s just that when you bought them at 18 you looked ‘aspirational’ whereas at 38 and with three kids you look ‘incompetent’.
But mainly because having 4 kids would probably tip us into Tarago territory…and having someone attack your genitals with a sharp object seems a fairly attractive alternative.

Making the decision

Obviously this is a decision that needs to be reached after a lot of discussion and careful consideration. So Katie and I sat down and I said ‘You know I think that it might be time for me to…Josh, I thought I told you to stop watching that video about Minecraft!’ and Katie said ‘I think you’re right, but we need to consider…Yes Holly I can see you on the monkey bars…no I can’t come out I’m just trying to talk to Dad…I know you’ll be quick, but…OK fine I’m coming!’ Then I finished the conversation by saying ‘I just think that we really need to…No Xavier! Don’t put that in there, it will break it! DON’T PUT THAT IN THERE! I TOLD you NOT to put that in there! Yes well of course it’s not working now, that’s WHAT I said would happen. Don’t look at me like that.’
So that pretty much settled it.

Fears

This is not really something that the guys I know talk about voluntarily. One guy I know mentioned his vasectomy because it was the reason he was off the bike for an extended period…and another said his was like ‘getting kicked in the balls…but it lasted for a couple of days’. So clearly I was pretty excited about something that was painful, expensive and was going to stop my Ironman training in its tracks.
But I was genuinely worried about what it would do to both my libido and performance, so I called around all my friends and we sat down and had a full and frank discussion about my fears and about their experiences…nah, just kidding, I interalised it all and chose to hope for the best…THAT is the male way!

The process

First you need to see a GP to get a referral to see a Urologist…then you need to see the Urologist. I think that by definition Urologists are surgeons…but I don’t know for sure. What I do now know is that male surgeons aren’t called ‘Dr.’ they are called ‘Mr.’ So while most Doctors say “I didn’t spend 6 years at medical school just to be called “Mister”!’ when you accidentally call them ‘Mr’…apparently surgeons say ‘I didn’t spend an extra couple of years training to be a surgeon just to be called “Doctor”!’ when you call them ‘Dr’. The long and the short of it is that despite the fact that they may be called something like ‘Mr. Clarke’ instead of ‘Dr. Clarke’…they will still charge a hell of a lot of money for a very short consultation.
They will also make sure that you are getting a vasectomy for the right reasons (for the record ‘because my wife told me to’ is not considered a valid reason), and that you are aware that 1 in 4 marriages end in divorce…so are you really sure you want to exclude the option of having kids with your second and third wives? I explained that I had masturbated into the freezer and so I had a ‘sample’ that I could use if ever the need arose…he explained that that’s not how it works, and asked me to leave his office.
You then book in a time and a hospital and away you go. For me I went privately (mainly because my GP recommended this surgeon) and I ended up paying over $1,000 for the surgery…I’m sure you can do this through the public system and pay a lot less. But the crappy sandwich, cup of tea and ‘Woman’s Day’ magazines from 2011made it all seem worthwhile.

From what I can gather different surgeons do the operation differently, some use a general anesthetic and some just use a local. I had a general, and ironically it was the first afternoon nap I’d had since Josh was born. I checked in at 2.30pm and by 6.30pm I was being driven home, so the operation side of things was pretty cruisey…the ‘fasting’ from 8am until 2.30pm was not so cruisey, especially as the reception area where you wait had a cafe with food and coffee that smelled amazing.

It’s now the next day, and while it certainly doesn’t feel like ‘I’ve been kicked in the balls’…I am moving pretty slowly, and think it will be a few weeks before I get back on the bike (this is not a tawdry metaphor…I really do mean get back on the bike). So I’ll keep you posted on the recovery, and just thank God that on the drive home from the hospital when Josh asked me what the two specimen jars were for and I said ‘to see if the operation had worked’…he didn’t ask any further questions.

Not thinking about the operation…not at all.

July 23, 2014
Farewell my faithful hound

Earlier this week our dog Jasper died, he’d been with us for over 12 years and so I’d known him longer than my kids, my workmates…and Game of Thrones. He was the happy face in the morning when I fed him, and my constant companion when I took him for walks at night, and his departure marks then end of an era for our family.
So I think it’s only fair that I take this opportunity to say a few words.

The regal beagle

In the beginning

Way back in 2002 Katie and I were planning our wedding, and while we certainly didn’t think we were ready for kids…we did think it would be a good idea to get a pet to see what our potential parenting skills were like. We wanted a Beagle, but knew how hard they were to train and so chose some Beagles that had been crossed with a Labrador…after all, my Dad’s family had had Labradors for years, and they were pretty easy to train…what could possibly go wrong? The short answer to this is that by combining a Beagle with a Labrador you create a beast that has an incredible nose, and a bottomless stomach. But we weren’t to know this, and so we got two (we knew that Beagle’s are pack dogs and destroy marginally fewer things if they have a playmate). Thus Ceilidh (a girl and named after a Scottish dance) and Jasper (the boy, named after the coffee) were brought home.
Now that I have kids I realise that the dogs actually provided some amazing insights into parenting. Suddenly you can no longer just ‘head off for a weekend’, you realise the importance of routine and consistency, and most tellingly you learn that suddenly you are responsible for the food that goes into someone else’s mouth…and the cleaning up and disposal of that same food about 12 hours later.
The dogs also taught me that two individuals can grow up in the same environment, and yet have very different personalities. Ceilidh clearly modelled herself on Katie and so was a stunningly attractive dog…who was pretty much 100% convinced that her idea was the best. Whereas Jasper was handsome, stoic and remarkably good at being told what to do…I don’t know who he was modelling himself on.

Photobombing…Beagle style.

Over the next four years the dogs were our kids and we had amazing times training them, walking them, taking them to the beach and watching them tear around Chelsworth and Zwar park. I can honestly say that seeing them at full flight on the beach or at a park is one of my favourite and most indelible memories of the dogs.

Then the real kids came

As much as we promised ourselves that nothing would change when Josh arrived…it did. Suddenly the dogs had to sleep outside, I had to walk the two of them (which looked a fair bit like someone trying to waterski behind two jetskis…both pulling in different directions) and of course the dogs had to accept that there was a new member of the pack…and he was above them.
We were incredibly lucky to have my parents take the dogs on regular long weekends at their place where they were lavished with attention (grandparents need to use dogs to hone their grandparenting skills as well), and I was always convinced that it was only a matter of time before I was able to devote the same amount of time to the dogs that I did pre-kids.
But then Holly came along, and suddenly our pool of available time was even shorter. But the dogs never complained or acted up. They just adapted and took the belly rubs whenever they presented themselves.
Then just as Holly was starting to build a friendship with Ceilidh (Holly would help me feed her most mornings), Ceilidh died. It was bloody awful, and left a big hole in our family. It also made us realise that Jasper would now be more dependent on us for affection and attention.
Then Xavier came along.
Then we renovated the house.

The guilt.

I won’t lie. I’ve been feeling guilty about Jasper for probably the last two years. I have this fantasy of me taking him for his nightly walk and half-way through the walk he would stop and say ‘Chris, there are two things you need to know. The first, is that I can talk…the second is that I totally understand why you can’t devote the amount of time to me that you used to, I’m cool with it and I appreciate everything you do.’ But of course that didn’t happen. Instead his nightly walk was sandwiched somewhere between doing the dishes and getting the kids into bed. I would have had my headphones in listening to a podcast, and the only time Jasper would have taken a break from lurching from one side of the footpath to the other in search of what the TAFE students had dropped would have been when he was waiting for me to pick up what he had just done on someone else’s nature strip.
I was so convinced that I would eventually find the time…but I never did, and now he’s gone.

But remember the good times

For all my guilt…my memories are pretty much exclusively of the good times. Having people assume that he was a highly expensive Foxhound, and comment on what a handsome dog he was (with his muscly good looks and Ceilidh’s long lashes and fine features they could have made a Hollywood glamour couple from the 50’s)! Going for walks with Jasper and the kids and seeing them all revel in the fun of being a pack.

The 20 minutes of freedom his walk gave me every night, and the way it forced me to see parts of my suburb that I would never have seen otherwise. The way he would bound around excitedly every time we were getting ready to go for a walk, the way he would sit so regally…and then simply place is paw on your leg and let you know that perhaps it would be a good idea to pat him…and hey, while you’re doing that I’m just going to roll over so that you can rub my chest. The way that even though he was getting old, he would sit at my side whenever we came to a road.
But most of all, the way he remained so loyal and devoted until the end.

So farewell Jasper Jones my faithful hound, you made me a better person and better parent, and our family is poorer for your passing.

Boy and Hound

June 29, 2014
‘No flash photography’

I’ve always hated using a flash when taking photos. It conjures up horrible memories of washed out images, of people taking photos at concerts in a way that only illuminates the heads of the people in front of them (and not the performers on the stage 50m away), of menu boards in cheap restaurants where you end up ordering the ‘special’ because thankfully they don’t have a photo of that, and of people and pets who look demonically possessed due to red/yellow eyes. In short, I didn’t see how using a flash could add to an image.
But I’ve just embarked on my first ever shoot with a flash…and I am so happy with the results that I felt the need to blog about it.

The good flash and the bad flash

I can still remember my first really good Pad Thai, my first really good Pinot Noir, and my first really good bike, because I had that moment where I thought ‘Oh…now I see why so many people rave about this!’ It was still just a combination of ingredients, or elements or parts…but it was done by someone who knew what they were doing and so it worked. What I realise now is that I simply hadn’t seen flash photography done well (or perhaps more accurately I hadn’t realised that some work that I really liked was the result of a flash). Thankfully a friend of mine Tim Arch (check out his website…he’s awesome!) introduced me to the work of Zack Arias and suddenly I wanted to try to take some photos with a flash!

If you’re even vaguely interested in taking photos using flash then I highly recommend downloading his ‘Onelight 2.0′ videos. They basically take you through how the flash works and then takes you through different photo shoots where he only uses one flash and get’s some amazing photos. They are beautifully filmed, he’s an excellent host and best of all you LEARN a hell of a lot! The boring bits are still interesting, and and the interesting bits are inspirational!

Off camera flash

The biggest difference between what I had seen as flash photography and what Zack was doing was that instead of having the flash mounted on his camera, Zack was mounting the camera somewhere else and then using a wireless transmitter to fire the flash when he took the photo on his camera. So instead of having someone who looks like they’re about to be hit by a car…you have someone who is lit in an artistic or nuanced way. Also he is using something to diffuse the light (a softbox or an umbrella).
I should also add that this is nothing new…it was just new to me.

So I decided to bite the bullet and hire a light stand, some wireless camera triggers, a reflective umbrella and a flash (about $100 for two days) and take as many photos as I could.

Shoot 1 – The brick wall

If you’ve been to our place post-renovation you will know the brick wall we now have in our dining room, I really wanted to use this as a backdrop and so this was my first place I set up the gear.
Now one thing I learnt very quickly is that it’s really difficult to set up the shot without someone sitting in the spot while you take numerous test shots and ask yourself questions like; How powerful the flash should be? Should I be closing down the umbrella to try to focus the light?, How far away should the flash be from the subject? and What’s the sync speed on this camera? (the correct answers for these shots being about 1/16th, yes, about 2ft and 1/160). So you will need to coax someone to sit in while you take the practice shots. Be warned that children have very low tolerances for such things when they could be scooting around the house…and that pleading/needy look in Dad’s eye is just becoming tiresome. But if you can keep one of one of them in the seat for a couple of minutes, you can get something like this

I really like this shot…but because the ambient light was so low I had to rely on the 550D’s autofocus because I couldn’t really see the face clearly…which I find tends to be a more hit than miss. In this case the focus is on the lips rather than they eyes…but it still works. I also later learnt that I could have had the ambient lights up a lot brighter and still got a good shot as the flash was going to drown out any ambient light…but it’s little things like this that are great to learn in front of a non-paying client.

If the kids have been bundled off to bed, then can try to take a photo of your spouse. They may need to be plied with a cup of tea…but it’s all worth while when you can get a shot like this.

Shoot 2 – The Cellar.

I’ve been promising to take some photos of my father-in-law (James) for a website for his wine racking system (I’ve also been promising to build this website…but first things first). So I packed the gear and headed over to his place to take some photos in his cellar.
Again there was a fair degree of faffing around with the gear and setting up the shots…but I’m really happy how they turned out (and best of all he likes them enough to let me stay married to his daughter!)

How old? Very old.

Shoot 3 – Outside

This was a purely impromptu shoot at about 5pm in the backyard of Chateau Righi. Basically we had finished shooting in the cellar, I’d had a glass of something cool and delicious, and I decided to try shooting just as the day light faded. What really surprised me with these photos is how the flash overpowered the ambient light. They look for all the world like they were shot in darkness…but it was dusk at the latest and there was still plenty of light in the sky.
What I really love about these is that in using the flash I was actually able to capture a few moments that I would never have captured shooting as I normally do. In that light, even the slightest movement would have meant that the faces were blurred…but the flash captured the moment perfectly.

Where’s this bat that you’re talking about?

So in summary, did I like shooting with the flash? Yes I did. Have I completely changed my tune on flash? Yes…but I still won’t use the flash that’s built into the camera. Am I going to buy the gear so I can shoot like this whenever I want? No. At this stage it’s still too expensive…but it is definitely on my list of things to buy…along with the 5Dmk3…and the 85mm lens…and the Fuji x-T1…and the ND filters…oh, and the food for my family…but in that order.

May 6, 2014
So tell me about this shot…

At the end of last year I signed up for The Age’s ‘Clique’ photo competition. Basically each month they provide you with a theme and you have to submit a photo on that theme. I was relatively happy with my submissions for the first two themes (‘water’ and ‘building’), but I was really happy with my one for ‘shine a light on what matters to you’. Today I found out that it was a finalist in the competition, and while I didn’t win or get a highly commended it was awesome to have my shot rated so highly by the judges. A really good picture tells a story…but sometimes the story behind taking the picture can be just as interesting.

The Idea

Now the idea was to take a photo of something that mattered to you. Which is pretty much code for ‘take a picture of something that will make you look better by showing you care about it’, so I figured there would be a lot of photos about the environment and about poverty. While these things definitely matter to me…I wanted to do something that was a little more positive.
Seeing as I spend pretty much all of the time that I’m not working, sleeping or being a parent, training for the Ironman, I decided to take a photo of something to do with that. I’ve seen footage of me running, and that certainly isn’t an image I want to capture or share with other people…and taking a photo of myself swimming was probably going to result in the loss of my camera, so I settled on a photo of me on the bike trainer.

The challenges

I wanted to take a photo with a slightly longish exposure so that there would be an impression of movement through my legs being a blur as they pedaled, and seeing as we don’t have any lights in the shed where I train I figured that a long exposure would also allow a lot more light in. So my plan was to set up the shot by getting Josh to sit on the bike so that I could get it framed and focused, then shoot the photo with 10 second timer so that I had time to run over to the bike and start pedaling. But when I got everything set up in ‘Manual’ mode on the camera it would only allow me to set a 2 second timer, which was not nearly enough time for me to get onto the bike.

So I could either use a different mode on the camera and let it do the work…or I would need a camera assistant. Seeing as my main reason for joining ‘Clique’ was to get better at using the manual settings on the camera, I opted for getting a camera assistant to press the button to take the shot. Regrettably the only camera assistants available were a 12 year old Beagle/Labrador and an 8 year old boy. I went with the 8 year old boy (and anyone who uses this quote out of context against me is a terrible person!) Now 8 year old boys have many redeeming features, however sitting next to a camera, waiting for their Dad to scamper over to a bike and say ‘now’, pressing a button, waiting for Dad to unclip from his pedals and scamper back to the camera to review the shot and then say ‘that was good but I need you to do it again’ and then repeating this 15 times when they would much rather just play on the monkey bars is not one of them. Pressing a button on the camera without also moving the camera is also not really in their repertoire…and neither is staying really still while the camera is taking the long exposure.

On the bright side, being brutally honest about whether you should have a top on for the photo is a real strong point. The reality of using these bike trainers is that you do a whole lot of exercise without any real air flow, so you sweat a hell of a lot…so I normally do these sessions just wearing my cycling knicks. But with the innocence that has broken the heart of many a parent Josh inquired ‘Dad, are people going to see this photo?’ ‘I hope so’ I replied…and after a few seconds consideration ‘Well they probably won’t want to see you without your top on’ was his considered conclusion. So ‘capturing the moment honestly’ went out the window and the cycling jersey went on.

After about 10 attempts the shot still wasn’t working. If I pedaled at a normal pace, then my legs were moving so fast that my legs disappeared with the long exposure. And the shot looked really flat. So I shortened the exposure, put my phone with the torch on at the bottom of the trainer and put my laptop in front of me so that there would be a bit of light on my face. After another couple of shots I had worked out that if I pedaled really slowly, then I got the effect of the blurred legs I was after. Unfortunately, my camera assistant worked out that he really didn’t want to do this anymore and so he headed off to do something else. To add some further excitement we were about 10 minutes away from when it was time to put the kids to bed.

There was every chance that the entire night was going to be a waste of time, so I dragged Katie away from the kitchen and asked her to take the shot. Her first shot was almost perfect, so I excitedly made a few minor tweaks and saddled up for the winning shot…only to have my phone run out of batteries and lose the light at the base of the trainer. So Katie grabbed her phone and we went to try again…then the laptop ran out of batteries. So I raced it inside and charged it for a few minutes. Then with children who should be in bed revelling in the anarchy of not being in bed, with a laptop with about 5% charge and a phone with even less, and with any chance of actually doing a training session on the bike completely eviscerated, I saddled up for one last shot…and it worked!

The result

and if you want to see the photos that won the competition…head here

April 26, 2014
Entering a new Territory

In the past, the prospect of getting a new car was enough to leave me so excited I couldn’t sleep at night. The thrill of the hunt, the ridiculous levels of research, that moment when the car was all yours to drive! But we are about to get a new car, and I can honestly say I’m more excited about getting some new headphones I’ve ordered. ‘Why?’ I don’t hear you ask…well because this is going to be the car that clearly lets me know that I am currently leaving ‘Youngpersonsville pop. 18million. Thanks for visiting’ and entering ‘Themusickidslistentoistooloud Town. pop. way too many. Enjoy the decline.’ In other words, we’re getting a people mover.

Not just any people mover, an SUV…an automatic diesel one. Which is pretty much the equivalent of walking into a pub, ordering a shandy, demanding a straw to drink it with…then putting Enya on the jukebox.

But why Chris?

The baffling logic appears to be, that if we get this new car, we will be able to spend more time taking other people’s children to things. Which, I think you’ll agree, is a pretty sweet sales pitch. Plus I believe that it negates the need to get a vasectomy, as you no longer have testicles. Look at the money you’re sort of saving!!!

For those of you who don’t know, our current car is a modified Subaru Forester. It looks awesome, it handles beautifully and it goes ‘Waaapshtt’ on each gear change. Admittedly it was a purchase made solely to please me…and a rather sad attempt to show that I was still fun and interesting despite having three kids in the backseat (in truth, the only real difference between me driving this car, and some sad middle aged lump driving a convertible sports car, was that the two year old in the backseat of my car meant that at least I had had sex in the last 2 years.)
On top of that, the brushes on the lowered suspension have to be replaced regularly as a result of having to deal with things like driveways and speed humps, if we get more than 350kms out of a tank of Premium unleaded we feel like somehow cheated Saudi Arabia, and it does draw a fair bit of attention from the boy-racer types (we also once had someone yell ‘The Fast and the Furious!’ at us in the car park of the Ballet Centre…clearly no-one involved in that situation was going to see the ballet). It’s also freaking expensive to insure. Every little unusual sound could be the start of a very expensive problem…and you live in constant fear of a policeman pulling you over and having a look under the bonnet.

The joy of driving

Perhaps the biggest reason for me realising that it’s time to let go of my fun car and learn to the love the beige, is that I’ve lost the love of driving. I used to view people who said ‘A car is just something to get me from A to B’ with the same level of contempt I reserved for people who said ‘Why would you eat that foreign stuff when there’s a Maccas just down the road?’ But sadly I’m starting to see it from their point of view (not the Maccas people…they are worse than Satan). After all when was the last time I went for a drive just for the fun of it? When was the last time I pushed my limits as a driver? When was the last time I went for a drive and thought ‘Well the people I’m sharing the road with are all clearly focused on what they’re doing and so I should just enjoy my driving, rather than spending the entire time in cat-like anticipation waiting to respond to their stupidity? (for those playing at home the answers are, ‘2002’, ‘At a track day at Calder Park’ and ‘Not in living memory’). So what’s the point of having a ‘driver’s car’…if your current driving experiences are at best sporadic and uninspiring?

What’s more, this new car will probably have a stereo you can hear over the road noise, it will have crazy mod cons like USB and Bluetooth and GPS…it will even have a DVD player built in so that I can become one of those people I hate with DVD players in their car! And who knows, maybe getting an automatic transmission won’t be the first step on a slippery slope towards becoming one of those people in Wall-e who just sit in floating chairs while machines do everything for them.

I think that this is the hardest part about this new car. A Territory makes so much more sense than the car we have now. But it is just such a clear indication that I’m slowly sinking into that comfortable arm-chair called ‘middle age’…and while my early 20’s self looks on in horror at what I’ve become, instead of raging against the machine and fighting for my right to party… I just turn to the salesman and ask how much more would come out of my pay every fortnight if I got the arm-chair in leather.

February 21, 2014
My best photos of 2013

It’s been an interesting year. It started with all of us living at my parents’ house, then we spent a couple of months moving into our new home and finishing things off, I also got to apply for my own job (thankfully successfully), battle for 6 months with the local council about building a deck (a Pyrrhic victory at best) and discover that ‘no, it’s not just the light in here…I have some grey hairs!’
So to finish the year on a high note, I thought I’d select my favourite photos from this year and tell you why I like them.

So in no particular order…here are my favourite photos for the year (I’ll be honest, the photo functionality in this WordPress theme isn’t dazzling, so you can always just head here to my Flickr site to see the photos without the reasons why I chose them)

I had travelled past Victoria Park a couple of times on my way to work and thought ‘that would be a great place to take some early morning shots’. So I got up before sunrise and headed there on a cold winters morning. I really love the way they have made the park open to the public and made it a lot more inviting, while still maintaining some of the elements of the spiritual home of the Magpies…and this photo came the closest to capturing that.

I took this one while I was on a lunch break from a course. I had set myself the challenge of only shooting on the 50mm and was trying to get shots to enter in the Age photo comp which had the theme ‘light’. I liked this shot…sadly the Age didn’t.

I was taking some photos after my interview with Geraldine Quinn, and I tend to put my lens cap in my mouth when I’m shooting (if I put it down I lose it and if I put it in my pocket I sit on it)…clearly Xavier thought this was what one does with a lens cap and I couldn’t resist getting this shot

This photo was taken just before we headed on to stage at an open mic night. I’d never sung on stage before…and may never do it again, so I took the opportunity to grab a shot.

Luke Vesty and I headed down to St Kilda pier to take some long exposure shots. It was a really good learning experience, and it was awesome to have someone else to shoot with. This photo was the pick of the evening.

On the night our choir (The Septemberists) were performing, I figured this was an excellent opportunity to get some experience shooting photos of bands on stage. I set myself the challenge of shooting everything manually (exposure, f-stop etc). It was a complete disaster…so out of desperation I took a shot of some worn out sneakers, on sticky carpet and with an amp in the background. It said pretty much everything I wanted to say about rock n roll

Admittedly this is more about the back story than the image…but I do love this shot. About 10 seconds after this shot, a woman walked along the beach in front of me with a child on her back. She had a hat that resembled a bright yellow turban, and it was unfurling in a golden wave behind her. With the white sand at her feet and the blue sea behind her, it would have made an amazing photo! But at the same time, Xavier was tottering towards the sea. I had to choose, the shot or the child?! I went for the child…but I still have a few regrets 😉

This was taken on an excursion to Footscray. I’m not a massive fan of excessive HDR…but I reckon the balance is right in this one. I also had a weird moment where I had taken some shots down near the the river of a guy in a red hood looking towards the city. When I looked at this photo I saw someone in a red hood and thought ‘That guy was following me!’ But it was a different person…I think.

Once a year we make a pilgrimage to my Uncle’s farm for a family get together. Under a tarp in a shed lives his beautiful Monaro. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it tearing up a paddock…but I hope I get to hear that glorious v8 again.

So many of Mick’s songs are amazing stories, told with complete honesty. And I think I came close to capturing the same thing in this portrait. I got some nice ones of him smiling as well…but the eyes on this one catch me every time. I was also pretty nervous taking a photo of someone whose work I really respect, so it was great to get a few images that really worked.

After a drive along a corrugated dirt road and a brief walk you end up at this lighthouse on the Gippsland coast down near Sandy Point. Obviously this shot would have been a lot better with some hefty ND filters and a long exposure…but I don’t have any ND filters and I do have 3 children who were running all over the place near the edge of a cliff. So this shot had to suffice, but it’s definitely a spot I will return to.

It’s getting harder and harder to get the kids to sit for even 10 seconds for a photo…and even harder to get a shot where it doesn’t look like they’re posing. So I will treasure this photo for a long time as it truly captures Josh at his best.

I included this one as a reminder to always take your camera wherever you can…and that if you see a shot unfolding in front of you, take it! I was in a rehearsal studio surrounded by musos and empty Jim Beam bottles and feeling a little self conscious of being the guy with the camera. But I saw the singer from one band having a quick chat with the members of our group through the studio door and decided to take the shot. I’m really glad I did as I think it captured both a moment and a character…even though you can’t see her face.

At age 3 Holly told me to ‘Take the camera off your face’…so it’s fair to say getting photos of her has been a challenge since then. She had her 5th birthday party at Fairy Fields and in one room the only light was coming through a skylight, I stood up on a chair and asked her to look up and before she could complain I took the shot. If I ever take a better shot of her, I will be a very happy man.

I love this photo for a number of reasons. The shot I wanted (of the wind turbine at Toora) was a disaster, and I was on my way home when I saw this. Actually stopping the car when you’re already late, getting out by the side of a road where cars are hurtling past at 100kms/h and waiting for a 30 second window where there isn’t any wind or cars to ruin the shot can seem overwhelmingly frustrating. But sometimes, it pays dividends.

A storm had just come through and the light was amazing. Our deck had just been completed and Xavier was out playing in the residual rain. I got this shot set up while he was playing and then asked him to turn around and smile. He chose to walk off. If he had a speech bubble it would say ‘Yeah sure Dad, I’ll just stand here and smile while you take a photo. Idiot.’

Working for a Govt department that works with a lot of people in crisis, I spend a lot time trying to tell stories without identifying anyone. Clearly that is starting to flow into the photography of my own kids. But I just love Josh’s pose and Xavier’s clear exuberance at being allowed to roam free. Either that, or Toora’s criminal were about to face the wrath of a new superhero and his sidekick.

December 29, 2013
Creativity…I kinda got me some

At the end 2012 I made the bold decision to focus on being creative for a year…so as I round out the year, I thought I’d have a look to see what worked and what didn’t…and to see if it made any difference to my life.

2 Degrees of Melbourne videos

One of my goals was to shoot and edit some videos of local Melbourne people who I think reflect what a great city Melbourne is. On the plus side, I got three of these done…and I was really happy with them (Andy White, Mick Thomas, Geraldine Quinn). On the downside…I only got three of these done over the course of an entire year, it’s not like I’m creating episodes of Sherlock FFS!
But on the whole I think that this was a triumph for creativity…they pushed me out of my comfort zone in terms of asking relative strangers to come and do something for nothing…and definitely out of my technical comfort zone as I tried to be interviewer, sound guy, camera man, lighting dude and editor, all on very basic equipment. But if the essence of creativity is doing a whole lot of work and not getting paid anything for it, then this was an unparalleled success. Plus I got to have Andy, Mick and Geraldine just hangout for a coffee and chat in our kitchen…and that is freaking priceless.

Singing

Another goal was to get some singing lessons and possibly sing in public. This was also a success. I did singing lessons with the amazing Emily Hayes (if you’re in Melbourne and want to learn to sing I cannot recommend her highly enough) and that lead to joining a choir called the Septemberists (we sang an entire Decemberists album…in September). Getting to rehearse and then perform with a group was an amazing experience, and getting to sing with Katie Hull-Brown and Emily during my singing lessons was again a great opportunity to push myself well beyond my comfort zone. It also got me back to playing a bit of guitar. But most of all it made me realise that there are few sounds more captivating than voices singing in harmony.

Photography

I really wanted to push myself with my photography this year as well. One of my goals was to do a masterclass with Veeral Patel, but my moving house…and his heading off to shoot the Tour de France made it impossible to lock in a time that worked. But I will do this…oh yes, I will do this (or possibly hide myself in his luggage and head over for next year’s tour!) I did manage to do some long exposure photography that I was really happy with,

St Kilda pier

A shack just outside of Foster

and took some portraits that I thought really captured the subject as a person rather than just an image.

Geraldine Quinn

I tend to put the lens cap in my mouth when I use the camera…Xavier clearly likes the look

But at the same time, I didn’t spend nearly enough time using the ‘manual’ setting on the camera…and relied on Lightroom to make the images really work, so there is still a lot of work to be done.
Also, 90% of taking a great photo is actually being there to take the shot…an average photographer who is actually there, has a much better chance of taking a great shot, than a brilliant photographer who isn’t there. So one of my big aims for this year was to get out and about to take more photos. But with three young kids and a house renovation to keep me busy, I only managed to head out for a dedicated photo session 3 times for the year. Which is pretty shitfull…but leaves a lot of room for improvement!

Surprising synergies

Not only was this the title of my highly unsuccessful 2002 business/management book, but it was also one of the big things that my year of creativity taught me; creativity in one area opens up creative options in others. If you go to a gig and ask if you can just stroll up on stage and take a photo, you will most likely be politely told to sod off. But if you’re there to sing…then you have full access to stage and can take shots like this with impunity.

And if you walk up to Mick Thomas and ask to take a quick portrait shot of him, he may explain that he has better things to do with his time…but if you’ve just filmed an interview with him, he might let you take a shot like this.

And if you shoot a video with Andy, you might be asked to ruin breakfasts around Melbourne by appearing as a page 3 boy in the Sunday Age.

So in conclusion…

While I certainly didn’t dedicate sufficient time to being creative, the benefits I got from the time I did put in were fantastic. My videos and photography for my day job came ahead in leaps and bounds, I got to meet and work with some people who I really admire and I had some experiences that I’ll remember and draw upon for the rest of my life. The challenge will be maintaining it next year when so much of my focus will be on getting physically ready for a tilt at the Melbourne Ironman in 2015…and of course not thinking to myself every time we visit someone out of Melbourne “I wonder if I could get any good photos there”.

December 21, 2013
2 Degrees of Melbourne: Episode 3 – Geraldine Quinn

Late last year I attended the live recording of one of my favourite podcasts (for the podcast fans among you it’s ‘The Sweetest Plum‘, I suggest you go out and subscribe to it). Part of the entertainment was a performer called Geraldine Quinn who was introduced as ‘a local star on the cabaret scene’ and my first thought was ‘Oh Christ, here comes a jazz hands solo.’ Now admittedly this was based on a single cabaret experience from about 15 years ago in Las Vegas that involved a very large gentleman dressed as Cher from the ‘Turn back time‘ film clip, yelling songs and telling dick jokes…but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let go of my ill-informed prejudices!

Anyhow, it would have been socially awkward to have just stood up and walked out, so I stayed and listened to Geraldine rework a well known song into a song about the two guys who do the podcast (Declan and Nick). The lyrics were really funny and she clearly was a fan of the podcast, but what really made me reframe any misgivings I had about cabaret performers was when she hit the chorus like the proverbial freight train. Not only could she sing…but she could REALLY sing, and she had a voice that filled the whole room and said ‘I’m not doing this by halves, I’m going to give this everything…and by the end of it, you will almost like a Whitney Houston song!’ (you can hear the podcast here, Geraldine is about 80% of the way through).

So when I embarked on this little project of interviewing people who represent my favourite things about Melbourne…I knew that Geraldine had to be one of them.
Now it may have taken about 2 months of organising to finally sort a time, but on Monday she came into the 2 Degrees studio (aka the dining room) and here is my interview with her

Two Degrees of Melbourne – Geraldine Quinn from 2 Degrees of Separation on Vimeo.

I’m really happy with how this video came up…so happy in fact that I had to break with the traditional ‘black and white’ look of the other videos because the colour version looked so good. A huge note of thanks to John for bringing me a tripod at very late notice when the base plate to mine failed to re-appear…and an even bigger note of thanks to Geraldine for making the time to be interviewed and being such a great interviewee.
You can check out where Geraldine is playing on her site or on her myriad social media sites…but whatever you do, get out and see her, you won’t be disappointed!

November 11, 2013
The Septemberists choir

Readers of this blog may remember that one of my challenges for this year was to learn to sing. I didn’t have any real intention of performing in public…I just wanted to be able to sing ‘Yankee Bayonet’ with Katie (my wife) when The Decemberists inevitably invited us up on stage to sing with them (admittedly it was not the world’s most realistic plan). But when my singing teacher (the brilliant Emily Hayes) told me she had a friend who was putting together a choir who were going to sing Decemberists’ songs…I knew that the universe had other plans. So I joined the choir.
Now I should stress that ‘So I joined the choir’ wasn’t as simple as that. I’ve agreed to play basketball or cricket games on a whim, and I’ve gone on long bike rides with people who I’d never met but I suspected were a lot fitter than me, and I’ve agreed to MC an event at winery even though I’d never done anything like that before. Because at my very core, I felt that I could do it or at least do a sufficiently decent job that I could fool people in to tolerating my presence. But singing? That was something I really didn’t feel comfortable doing in front of people. Plus I knew from a few people that men who are willing to sing in a choir are pretty thin on the ground…so there was every chance that I would be the only guy singing…which would make it really hard to simply pretend I was singing.

So when Katie I walked into a flat in Thornbury for our first session with the choir, I was pretty comfortable with my plan to fake a phone call and make a run for it if I thought that anyone in the room was going to Linda McCartney me.
But of course these people weren’t there to make fun of me or to delight in my mistakes…these were Decemberists fans! So of course they were wonderfully welcoming an accommodating. Best of all, while the vast majority of choir members were women…there were three other guys!
The choir was the brainchild of Erica Pringle, who had arranged five songs off the Decemberists album ‘The King is Dead’ for choir, and was then teaching us all of the different parts, and being incredibly patient and encouraging…and doing all of this while pregnant (Colin Melloy may be able to do the many of these things…but he hasn’t done any of them while pregnant!)

Tricks for young players

One of the big mistakes I made going in to this was that I thought we would all just be singing the songs as they sound on the album…and this would be fine as I knew those songs inside out. But that’s not how things work in a choir. Sometimes you’re singing the song as the per the album, sometimes you’re singing it with totally different notes as a harmony…and sometimes you’re singing one part one way while another part of the choir is singing it another way. It’s a bit like going to a job interview and having everyone suddenly start talking French half way through…it’s baffling, but it does sound cool.
I also didn’t know whether I was a tenor or a bass. I had narrowed it down to these two (because that’s where the guys were), but I had no idea which one I was…in fact, to be honest I didn’t even realise that there was a difference between the two. Fortunately we had one guy who could sing the tenor part really well and one guy who could sing the bass part really well. So I just applied my years of learning as a child in Church, and copied whoever was closest to me.

The gig

Our weekly Monday night rehearsals soon segued into a performance at an open mic night

which in turn gave rise to a session in a rehearsal studio

and then suddenly we were on stage in front of an audience singing, and it was awesome! Yes I hit a couple of notes which were off, and yes I may have sung a few words that have not yet appeared in the English language…but no one noticed because that is the joy of a choir. When you make a mistake it is absorbed…and when you all do it just right, it sounds freaking amazing.

So would I recommend joining a choir? If you can sing, or if you’ve ever wanted to sing…then ‘yes’ you should. There will always be a litany of reasons why you think you can’t do it…but the most rewarding things always do. If nothing else you may find yourself on a Tuesday night in a pub with a beer in your hand having complete strangers coming up and telling you how much they enjoyed your singing.

So while my year of focusing on creativity may have got off to a slow start, I’ve now produced a few videos that I’ve been really proud of, taken some photos that I’m really happy with and performed on stage with a choir…the challenge is now to get even further out of my comfort zone and do something truly memorable.

Sadly I haven’t got any photo of the choir or myself performing (apparently taking selfies mid-song is considered ‘poor form’), but I did get a couple of shots of the other performers on the night.

October 1, 2013
Night time photography

One of the things that I love about photography is that there is always something new to try (and of course new gear to wish you had). I have recently been trying a bit of long exposure night-time photography, and figured seeing as I have done it twice, I’m clearly now an expert and it’s high time I started dishing out advice.
I was originally going to do a bit of an explanation of what long exposure photography is and how you do it…but then I realised that all you have to do is type ‘long exposure photography’ into Google and you can find any number of people (hah, who am I kidding? You can find any number of men) telling you how to do it. So instead, I’m going to tell you a few of things I’ve learnt after my first couple of forays into the field.

ISO 400, 17mm, f5.6 30 second exposure

What do you need?

Camera – Clearly you need a camera that will allow you to keep the shutter open for an extended period (most DSLRs will let you go for 30 seconds).
A tripod – no matter how steady you think your hand is…taking a photo for 30 seconds without using something to keep the camera steady will lead to an image that looks a little like the last thing you saw before you passed out having consumed ‘snake blood’ on that trip to Vietnam.
A torch – Ideally you will be shooting somewhere that is has almost no light pollution (ie light coming for streetlights, or houses etc), which is great for your images. But it’s not so good for setting your focus or changing settings on your camera…or working out where the hell you put the lens cap.
A torch can also be really helpful if you are trying to frame a shot and can’t see anything through the viewfinder. You can shine a torch to get an idea of where your frame starts and stops.

30 seconds can be a long time

This is particularly true if you are standing alone in a field in absolute darkness, and all you can hear is the heavy breathing of cows and their occasional footsteps. It is incredibly unnerving and you will regret watching any horror movie you have ever watched.
However you will not leave, because the 30 seconds it takes for the camera to take the shot is like a distilled version of Christmas Eve when you were a kid, or that time you spent shaking a Polaroid picture back in the 80’s…for that 30 seconds, the photo you are taking could be an award winner, it could be one of the greatest photos anyone has ever taken, it could be AMAZING!!!
Then the photo appears on the screen on the back of your camera and you realise that you must have moved, or that thing you thought was in the shot actually isn’t, or that you have got the ISO/apperture/shutter speed wrong. And so you reset the camera…and spend another 30 seconds living in hope!

That photo looks amazing!…on that tiny little screen on your camera.

Unfortunately, while the shot may look fantastic on the screen on your camera…by the time you look at it on your computer screen, you’re going to see a lot of ‘noise’ (this is a photography term for anything in a photo that makes you walk away from your computer and swear). But don’t worry. You can remove a lot of the noise in programs like LightRoom, and if you managed to get a great shot without any noise or movement on your first couple of tries, everyone else would hate you.

ISO 6400, 17mm, f2.8 30 seconds

Plan your shots…if you can

While I was driving around Sandy Point during the day, I saw a couple of things that I thought would be really good to have in a photo. So I identified a couple of landmarks that I would be able to use when I was driving at night, with zero visibility other than what was in my headlights. It worked a treat.Having said that, my whole reason for heading out that night was to get some photos of the big wind turbines down there. This would struggle to have gone any worse. In my mind, the spinning blades would create an amazing effect with the long exposure and I would be hailed as a genius. In reality, the blades were spinning so fast that after a 30 second exposure they were invisible…and so I had a brilliant photo of a pole. Needless to say, the job offers haven’t been rolling in.
But on the way back from the wind turbines, I spotted this little shack and pulled over to take the photo. There was a service station across the road about 200m away, and while it was closed there were a few lights on which gave just enough illumination for me to get this shot.

ISO 6400, 17mm, f2.8, 30 Seconds

Bring a friend

You are going to be doing a lot of standing around in the cold, trying to be very still for 30 seconds and then swearing under your breath…why not share this experience with a friend/fellow photographer (ideally someone who is both). They will probably have different gear to you, so you get to see how it works (and if you should buy it), they will probably have different ideas and approaches (which you can steal and claim as your own), and standing out in a field under an enormous canvas of stars is a pretty amazing experience…but it’s much more fun to be able to share that experience with someone.
Most importantly, if you are stuck out in the middle of nowhere in a field of cows and there is a psycho killer waiting in the darkness…you don’t have to be faster than the killer…you just need to be fast than your friend.

ISO 400, 28mm, f11 & 30 second exposure

If you’ve go any tips or tricks I would love hear them…and if you’ve got any questions about any of the photos in this post, I’m more than happy to answer them.

September 12, 2013