Moonlight Serenity
So only a few people besides me know how ironic this title actually is, because the winds were blowing like a hurricane and it was freezing cold, but luckily my girlfriend was brave enough to stand there with me while I waited and waited to get this shot 
Yes, you're truly amazing and I'm sorry you got frostbite that night. Just kidding. Come on I'm not that cruel! She didn't get frostbite, but it really was freezing! Anyways, 30 second exposure as the moon was rising and as the waves kept crashing over the rocks... this is my favourite photo of late! Oh, I suppose you'll want to know that this was about 10K east of the Bay of Islands... somewhere through a maze of tall person height bush. And yes, we crossed the guard rail a ways back
Sunset Sailing
While most everyone had begun their dinner in Port Douglas, I on the other hand was sitting on the beach next to the boat house watching the sun go down waiting for the ideal photo opportunity. I shared the beach with a few other German tourists who also had the same idea, but where I had my tripod, they found a somewhat level rock on the beach... anyways, cursing ensued when that didn't work, and I got a chuckle out of it. And eventually, this photo.
Great Ocean Road
This photo was taken somewhere along the Great Ocean Road, I believe at the very beginning of the road, but I can't remember because I'm losing brain cells and I don't write things down like I should sometimes, but anyways, I think this photo was taken very early on... I liked the ominous clouds and dark ocean contrasted with the light at the far end of the ocean near the beach with the mist coming up off the ocean into the hills. Another of the photo contest submissions for 2009 at my work.
Mossman Gorge 2009
So this time, the main swinging bridge at Mossman Gorge was closed due to structural concerns... great! I can't tell you how many times I've walked over that bridge... anyways, it leads to the rest of the circuit walk around the Gorge, so this time, the walk was limited to the swimming hole (packed with tourists) and the river down stream from the swimming hole This is a shot I took after hiking down that river enough to get a shot with no tourists in it. Not 30 seconds after taking this shot, the tourists arrived again, curious as I was...
Castaways @ Mission Beach, QLD
So this is the back of the resort that I'm currently staying at in Mission Beach, QLD. Within only a few minutes I'm able to walk from my room, out the back of the hotel, and onto this amazing beach with awesomely soft sand Tomorrow includes a try on one of the Blo Karts that's like a sailboat, but with wheels, and you run up and down the beach at speeds of up to 90 km/h!
Time for the now-that-I-have-more-time-to-update update... so Castaways turned out to be a great place to stay overall. Starting from the late arrival and courteous greeting even after 10:30pm, to the helpful staff in the morning in terms of organising the spa treatment and the boat across to Dunk Island, to the over and above help one of the staff gave when I realised I had left my phone charger at home. They really make you feel like a special guest here. One of the unique features of Castaways is their amphibious landing craft, "Sea Legs", which carries passengers from Mission Beach outside the hotel, to Dunk Island. This craft has rubber wheels and can also drive on the beach, so it's a bit James Bond-ish and people tend to snap your photo as the boat comes up out of the water and drives right up the sand. This keeps your feet (legs, shoes, clothes, etc) from getting wet as opposed to alternate means of getting to Dunk. Pretty cool experience over all and I hope to return someday.
Blessed
I know, it's been over a week and no new photos... shame! But I'm still housesitting for the next week and then travelling back to the States for a week so maybe I'll have some new stuff once I get back to my house and normality again.
I got a letter in the mail today from one of the directors of the World Vision community in this town in India where one of my sponsor kids lives and it was describing where he lives: it's still a town that hasn't developed in the least in terms of transportation infrastructure, etc. and there are still horse drawn carts used in daily life. I began imagining what it would be like to grow up there as a kid, to help out your family with the chores of cleaning the house made of dirt, and rubble, and bamboo, and helping with the planting and harvest so that my family could survive and try to make somewhat of a living...
I thought of the differences and how stark those differences are between us and that for some reason, somehow I live relatively wealthy and without trouble and how and why that is... why me, why was I born into one of the top %'s financially in the world, the odds of that seem pretty low actually when you think about it. I'm typing up this blog entry, and my sponsor kid and his family may never have even imagined a computer, much less tools appropriate for doing the trade they depend on for a living. This really is blowing my mind this morning.
And I started thinking (ok maybe not only just in this moment, but this really hit me this time) that maybe I'm blessed for a reason, not to hoard all this wealth and blessing to myself, but maybe I'm blessed in order to be a blessing to others. It's humbling to think that I don't have a clue about the life of these kids and their families... I can sit over here and have no right to try and adequately describe how I think they're still blessed because they have family and a place to live, etc. but in reality, who am I to sit back and judge who is blessed and who's not based on relative social status and financial stability--especially from my comfy chair in my comfy living room.
It's easy to try and characterize a people from a distance, but I think we probably get it mostly wrong until we sit beside them and really listen to them and experience the life they live. Time to start doing something more with what I've been given.
More stats to convince you you're rich if you're reading this later, but for now a few quick stats... Almost half the world's population live in China, India, the US, and Indonesia... of those 3 BILLION people, approximately 1,489,069,156 (just simple math using the following links below) of those people live on less than $2US per day. Come on, tell me you'd make it out ok if you tried living on $2US a day. That's $720/year. Wow. Signing off for now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty
Kids
So I'm housesitting at the moment for a total of about 5 weeks and I don't have all my gear with me so it might be a bit sparse on the photos for a little bit, but I'll try to throw in a nugget every once in a while as often as I can. This one I got with my new 70-200mm f/2.8 lens right about when the dog had enough of the cat... just in case my boss is reading this while you're on holiday, don't worry, they're both fine quite unlike the pool pump...
Kids
Somewhere Down the Road
Hey, so I noticed I was cutting it close to not getting one new photo a week in here (man how a week flies when you have deadlines!) so here's the latest... Since some commenters, or only one I guess, lamented the lack of words in previous posts I just wanted to take a minute to say one thing: this is a photo blog, more of a photo essay of sorts, not to be confused with an editorial on taking photos with a few photos added in for good measure. Most photos--I would assume--do fine on their own without me adding my own words... A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say, so I will refrain from adding my comments such as, "as I was driving down the road, the sun struck the grass at such a beautiful angle and color that I had to slam on my breaks and set up the tripod for a quick few shots before I lost the light forever, and so this is the shot that I came up with! Aren't you amazed!" because for me and most viewers, I'd rather spend my time admiring the photo unless of course, there was something out of the ordinary that happened in getting the shot (such as the time the Sasquatch literally came out of nowhere and kicked me in the shins while I steadied the tripod). So, without further ado I hope you do enjoy today's photo of the road I was driving down when all of a sudden the sun came out of the clouds and...
Somewhere Down the Road
