Project 52 - Week 2

This weekend, I got to babysit for my friend Leah.  Her son Silas is one of the cutest and most chilled out kids I know.  He's 13 months old, but while I was babysitting, all I had to do was make sure he didn't put his finger in a socket.  Otherwise, he entertained himself.

While I was babysitting, I thought I might practice taking some pictures.  Photographing HA is easy cause he poses however I tell him to but children are a completely different story.  They move around alot more and they decide when they want to smile.

I had hoped the weather would be nice, but, in true Aussie fashion, it was raining.  I took some pictures of him in the apartment but alot of them had very messy backgrounds so they weren't great.  However, I did get a few cute ones.

The one below is my favorite from the session.  I think he was looking at HA at the time trying to decide if he was ok with him being there or not.  Silas has very expressive eyes.  In nearly all the pictures I got, you can look at it and make up what he's thinking based on his expression.

ISO:800
1/640
f5.3
Focal Length: 165mm
Add Color Pop 2 action by thecoffeeshopblog.com and an additional vignette

I'm also participating in a group Project 52 with MCP Actions.  They'll provide a theme every week and you provide the picture.  This week's theme is "Illustrate a Song". I'm still working out what I can do for this theme.  If I come up with a picture, I'll post it later this week.

Christmas in Australia

Because HA went home with me last year for Christmas, there was an agreement that I would stay in Australia with him this year. I made this agreement over a year ago not having any idea where I’d be living or where I’d be working. So as Christmas got closer and closer and I continued to live in Australia, I realized that I really was going to have to spend Christmas in Australia.


I began to worry about gifts for HA’s family. My personal motto on gifts are that they should be items that someone wants but would probably never buy themselves. I don’t like to buy the “easy” gift – perfume, dvd’s..they make great gifts, but where I can, I like to make them a bit more personalized. So, I asked HA for the rules around gift giving. His response – “We buys each person a gift". There were going to be 11 people at Christmas – not including Adam and I. That's alot of gifts to buy! So I set out buying gifts. I picked up a few in the US when I was home for Thanksgiving but the majority of my shopping had to happen in Australia. Unfortunately the shopping in Australia sucks….especially in Canberra. So given this, I ended up have a number of gifts shipped from the US. Even without much help from HA for ideas, I ended up with gifts that I felt good about.


Before I go much further here, I think it’s very important to explain that Christmas in Oz is NOTHING like Christmas in the US. In the US, there are constant holiday songs, all of the malls are decked out, there’s a Santa at every mall, and…there’s a spirit to Christmas. It’s not like that here. I didn’t hear one Christmas song on the radio, the only Santa I saw at the mall was skinny and sitting in front of a green screen so you could be photoshopped onto a beach, and the decorations in the stores were depressing. To help with trying to get into the Christmas mood, I purchased a little tree and hung some lights in the apartment which helped a bit.

So Christmas Eve rolls around and HA and I walk into work (we got to wear jeans!). We work for a half day, then go home to finish wrapping presents before we have to catch our flight. We end up having to take three decent size suitcases b/c of all our presents. We finally get to Brisbane after our flight had to circle for 45 minutes in the air. Unfortunately, we were so late that his brother and nephews had to go home to sleep so we couldn’t all have Xmas Eve dinner together. In my house, we have a very quiet dinner of chili and cornbread and then stay up playing board games. In HA’s family, they have turkey for Xmas Eve dinner – poached turkey. I didn’t even realize it was turkey until after dinner – I had thought it was pork. It wasn’t quite the traditional turkey dinner I’m used to but it was nice to have a bit of familiarity.

We got to stay in the "adult house" while we were there.  Meaning we stayed with HA's sister at her house on the river.  It was actually really nice to have a bit of quiet time.  The three nephews were alot of work.  I grew up with girls - I'm not used to having so many boys around.  The picture below is of his sister's house on the one sunny day we got.  I'd like to note that they live right on the Brisbane river which is now flooding.  I've included a picture of the river as well.  Since we were there, the water has risen 4 to 5 meters.  Their house isn't on the flood plane and expect to be ok though.

Looking down to the river. Most of the land you see by the river has flooded.

On Christmas day, we get to his parents house mid-morning and very quickly get to opening presents. The three boys hand out the presents – at least that’s the same – the youngest handing out the presents. I quickly realize, though, that HA may not have given me the correct rules for gifts. I’m starting to notice that there are a lot of gifts being given by multiple people – primarily by the couples. Example: HA Sister and Bro-in-law gives me a gift. My suspicions are quickly confirmed when both his sisters say “why didn’t you go in on gifts together?? You didn’t need to buy each individual person a gift”. Hmmmm..at least I know if I do Christmas with them again.
After presents, dinner starts to be set up. As we had turkey for Xmas eve dinner, can you guess what we’re having for Christmas dinner? That’s right – SEAFOOD. Well, seafood and a lot of pork & ham. This is a tradition in the HA family – one that I think I struggled with the most. The seafood dinners weren’t new to me – we have one every time we go to visit HA’s family. But they were different. So we sat outside under the covered patio while it rained and had seafood.


Christmas dinner - notice on the top picture that the skin is pulled back from the pig leg.

Much of the rest of the time we spent in Brisbane was spent at his parents house playing the Kinect that I got HA. The boys really enjoyed it and it kept everyone entertained. I did get a break on Monday when HA’s mom scheduled a spa day for all the girls. That was really nice to get a massage and then relax with champagne in the spa.

This is HA and his nephew playing boxing on the Kinect.  His nephew has a broken arm so everyone had to play with one had behind their back.  His nephew beat everyone in the family.

HA also took me for a drive to the Gold Coast to have a nice lunch on the water and then a bit of shopping (thankfully it didn’t rain that day!). On the drive to the coast, we stopped at Yatala Pies which apparently are some of the best pies in the country (think savory pies – not sweet). The pie was pretty good. I had a steak pie with mashed potatoes and peas. It sounds gross but it’s pretty yummy.

Yatala Pie - Steak pie with mashed potatoes and peas

On Thursday, we said good-bye to HA’s family and headed on to Sydney for New Year’s Eve! But I’ll leave that for another post.

New Years Resolution

For 2011, I have two resolutions.  I don't generally do resolutions because no one ever sticks to them.  But I thought I would give it a go.

Resolution 1 - Exercise more so I can feel better about myself
Of course I would love to lose some of the weight I've put on but more importantly, I want to feel better about myself.  Whenever I exercise regularly, I always feel more energetic and confident.  I do better at work and at my relationships.  I think this is important.  I don't want to focus on a number of pounds or inches to lose.  I think that's just a losing battle.  Instead I want to focus on setting a goal for the number of times I should exercise each week.  Prior to the holidays, I was doing pretty well at getting some form of exercise around 3 times a week.  I think that's fairly reasonable.  To help me stick to my resolution, I've come up with a list of actions to take.

How to get there:
1.  Hire a personal trainer.  I had a personal trainer for awhile when I was in AZ.  I found it very motivational to have someone to answer to each week.  Trainers are cheaper here for some reason so that makes this action alot easier to act on.  I've already got a list of three trainers to contact for quotes.
2.  Go to bed earlier.  Right now, I'm in bed anywhere between 11pm and 1am.  This isn't good.  This means that I can't wake up in the morning to exercise and I'm too tired after work.  I'm going to try and be in bed by 11pm at the latest.
3.  Log eating habits and exercise schedule.  Whether or not I blog this info - I haven't decided yet.  In the meantime, I have an app for the phone which will allow me to track all my food, exercise and weight.  I'll start using it more regularly.

I'm hoping that by putting these online, I'll feel more obligation to actually do them since people I know read this and will probably ask on my progress.

Resolution 2 - Practice my photography
I've seen online that alot of photographers do a 365 project - meaning that they take or edit a picture everyday and post it somewhere online.  I'll be honest - I'm not going to do a picture a day.  So knowing that, I'm going to do a 52 project - one picture per week.  I will take or edit at least one picture per week and post it to the blog.  I'll include all the details on it and any actions/edits I might have done. 

Mom - do you want to join me with this project??

So, here is Week 1 Photograph

Christmas Dinner Table

 I thought HA's mom did a fabulous job of decorating the dinner table for christmas and felt it needed to be captured.  My only regret with the picture is the background.  I didn't think through the composition of the picture and captured the TV on the patio - not the best background possible.  Here's the information on the picture:
ISO:  400
1/80 Shutter
f5.6 Aperature
I've applied two actions in PhotoShop Elements - Pioneer Woman Colorized and Pioneer Woman Fresh Color

Thanks Mom for turning me on to Pioneer Woman.  She has a great blog for photography.

What's everyone else's New Year's Resolutions?

Oprah-stralia!

The country has gone crazy!  Crazy for Oprah!  It's amazing to me the hysteria that this woman can invoke.  From the moment she landed, all of the news stations have been following her around.

Yesterday, she filmed two shows at the Opera house.  350,000 people turned up to try and get tickets to the taping.  There were only 6,000 tickets to give away.  Hotel prices are tripled for this weekend and this is AFTER Oprah has left the country (I know b/c I was going to go to Sydney but it's too expensive now). 

One of the television stations showed a woman burst into tears as Oprah drove by and waved to her.  This woman had to be in her 30's.  I thought only teenage girls burst into tears when Justin Beiber walked into a room.

On Sunday, HA and I were in Kingston getting dinner and there was a man in a suit with an earpiece.  My first thought wasn't "oh, the prime minister must be around".   No, no - my first thought was "wonder if Oprah is in town?"

This is crazy and the amount of tourism that will come out of her visit here will be on the crazy scale as well.  I'm ready for her to go home.

Photography as a Social Experiment

As part of my photography class, I have to go out into the city and take pictures of random people or things.  I'm finding that people react very differently when they find themselves the subject of a random photographer.  I'm wondering if a person's reaction is indicative of their personality?  You find some people will cautiously look at you to confirm that you are, in fact, photographing them.  Others turn directly to the camera and smile.  And then there are the ones who get visibly upset, throw you a dirty look, and move so you can no longer photograph them.

Earlier this week, I went out to the bus exchange to get some motion shots and while I was there, I caught this guy on his way home from work.  The shot won't work for my photography class but I love the way he smiled at me and gave off a very friendly vibe.

Happy to be going home

I've also started my own Flickr stream to capture all the photos that I like the best.  I'm finding Flickr is a great resource for creative ideas (stealing ideas would be more apt). :)

Dana's Flickr Photostream

Lola has arrived!

My new camera bag arrived today.  Less than two weeks after I ordered it and only a week after they shipped it.  HA and I picked it up today at lunch and I just very quickly opened it.  It's beautiful.  I'm so excited to get home tonight and load it up with my camera!

I'll post pictures later with a full review!

Watery Wednesday - Lake Burley Griffin

For my Uncle Alan...

Taken with a Nikon D5000 in the evening.  This is Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, Australia.  The tower in the background is the Telstra tower.  This was taken as an entry for my photography class.