Mercury

Long Weekend; Sydney

With Sydney looking for ideas to promote the city during the WORST month of the year (June - weather-wise), they enlisted the help of Brian Eno. They came up with the idea of the Festival of Lights. Eno's contribution was his projected light-art that would be beamed across the harbour on to the sails of the Opera House as well as some other surrounding buildings like the Museum of Contempory Art.

I had a dodgy compact cam shot of the Opera House, but wanted a better keep sake, so drove into the city at 10.30 on a Friday night and set about capturing something a little more magical. I wound up having about 30mins of shooting time as the lights went out at midnight, but by this point, I had captured a few decent images. My favourite of which is here!

The following day, my old mate Aaron was up from Melbourne for the weekend, and along with the usual suspects, we headed to the Royal National Park to have a stab at some Mountain Biking. I of course also took my camera and managed to get some strobed shots of the guys smashing it thru a puddle. The weather was unusually hot for my self-proclaimed worst weather month in Sydney, and the conditions were perfect for a quick swim in the ocean in Maroubra before later heading over to Todds place for a dinner and drinks evening.

The following day was Matty's birthday celebrations, we headed into Kings Cross to the Czech beer cafe where about 20 of us dined on lots of meat. And Beer. Awesome :)

This left the bonus day of the weekend to recover from the weekends fun, that evening, I went to 6 a side soccer and banged 2 goals in - and it felt good!
- Easy day with soccer at the end - 2 goals

Future Reflections

With an old friend in town to stay with us for a while, Lauren, Charlotte and I embraced the late Autumnal sunshine that would be the last warm-ish weekend before Winter.

Saturday saw us competing in my weekly beach volleyball competition, where we took on all -comers and won! before heading back to the pub for a few quiet beers. Later that evening, we headed into the city to celebrate Kiri's brithday at the Spanish Tapas restuarant, Encasa. Very tasty, and lots of Sangrias consumed by all, things got a little hazy from there, but not so much so that I couldn't remember then heading on to the karaoke bar with everyone. I belted out Under The Bridge by the Chilli Peppers, and everyone else did some awesome renditions of goodness knows what!

I very hazy & sleepy day followed! We did however manage to get ourselves back into the city to check out some artists exhibiting on the sidewalks at Luna Park. Again, blue-sky and 23 degrees was the perfect way to be doing this. We didn't attempt any rides, as, lets face it - who would with a hangover head on their shoulders?!

We took the opportunity to walk back to the city over the Harbour Bridge and then stopped for a couple of beers along with some lovely pizza at The Australian (pub). Nice weekend indeed.

Oxford Comma

Barrington Tops, Central New South Wales.

This year, Australians (and 'temporary' residents such as I) in New South Wales have been duped. We have lost two public holidays due to them falling on a Saturday, and the government deciding that it would be in the best interest of commerce that businesses open on those extra days. So with no Anzac day off... we couldn't wait to get outta Sydney and take advantage of a rare long weekend in 2009.

Good Friday saw us drive from Sydney North about 4 and a half hours to a National Park called Barrington Tops. The Tops represent the Northern Most region of the Great Dividing Range that rolls from Victoria (North of Melbourne) up past Canberra & Sydney. The Scenery is basically like the Blue Mountains on Steroids. Far more rolling hills and many more valleys to stare down - at least it felt like that anyway.

Rog & Claire had gone on a day ahead of us to beat traffic, and had set up camp at the Devils Hole Campsite. Which was about as far as a Honda Civic would go off road without falling off its axels. From arrival, it was simply a case of keeping warm and fed around an awesome camp fire... where the men on camp would have to go out on fire-wood scavenging missions - not so easy at high damp altitudes.

Cloud cover would often fall in faster than I could toast a marshmallow. You would look up and be staring thru gum trees, and get an image something like the Blair Witch Project. The first night, was cold... even with several glasses of Red Wine and Rogers infamous campfire Stew inside of us.

The following day it was time to see a little more of the place so we hiked the Polblue Swamp trail and checked out some huge Toadstools... or mushrooms - I'm never sure how to tell the difference. Regardless, it was very nice to get back to nature after spending the preceeding months at the city and the beach.

Another night of huddling by the fire, Uno and drinks concluded out camp trip... by this point, nearly everyone present had caught a cold and was ready for an early traffic beating exit. After getting the place packed up on the Sunday morning; Lauren and I took the car back down the mountains stoping to take some shots here n there and appreciate the running water. Running water like I've only ever seen in other continents on this Earth. Nice.

The remainder of Sunday back home, could not have been more relaxing. Sydney seemed empty, all aside from 32 Lindt bunnies Lauren had brought home from work. With a lack of chocolate not an issue... I lounged and tinkered with my photographs until the evening came... and then - oh the sleep of all sleeps after two cold ones at the Devils Hole. I kinda see why the campsite had an intimidating name... though maybe "The Devils Fridge" woulda been more apt.

One Day Like This

V festival 09 - Australia, Centennial Parklands, Sydney.

I didn't make my feelings secret of how bad the last one of these was when I went 2 years ago... the lineup - so mixed up it made the UK top 40 sound like a Pink Floyd album in comparison, beer queues the worst I've ever seen and, well, that's enough.


This year... no margin for error, the lineup looked good, and I smuggled my own bottle of Vodka in to negate queueing up for beers full stop. Excellent move - cos guess what - those queues were still there... we're talking nearly an hour to get a drink - way to keep the festival vibe up V.

Anyhoo, the festival... it couldn't have been a more perfect day. The sky had zero white fluffy stuff in it, the temparature while hot, wasn't a scorcher, and friends were able to sit on lush green centenial park grass watching Duffy open the proceedings up, despite her grumblings of being first on for the first time in oh - a year or two. She was fun and sounded great. Next up was Elbow, I've been a fan of theirs since Asleep in the Back and finally got to see them live, not lively, but I didn't expect that, and again, a great way to enter the festival atmosphere as my vodka started to cement a foundation for the evening to come.

I did have to line up for some chips and a drink, which took all of 2mins, then I was back to the stage to meet up with Lauren and Oren again before heading off across the festival site to see Razorlight for the 2nd time in a couple of months - result! It was a very business like performance this time around, no frills - just fast hits with no small talk or smiles. By this point I was bellowing out every word of every song embarrassingly for the people around me I'm sure...

Time now for some dinner whilst queing up for food... again, not a great time - about 30minutes for some chips, but the Kaisers were playing about 50metres away so not the worst way to wait for food. They had the crowd, and indeed some of the queue rocking. I ate the last of my potato snacks humming "oh my god I can't believe it, I've never been this far away from home". The vodka was nearly done. Last top up was gonna need to last.

Next up, another trip across the venue to see Snow Patrol, The lead singer in very high spirits, so high, he kept forgetting lyrics to his songs, a little odd I must say, but everyone lapped them up and the stage show was great too...

Now for the grand finale... The Killers... Luckily we were all quite tipsy by this point, I'm pretty sure these boys were fairly average in reality, but banging out the hits from their first couple of albums was enough to get them through, even if the newer stuff was about as well recieved as a 3am wake-up call following on from a very spicy curry. I can't believe I've been going to V festivals since 1997 already, how time flies...

Russell Brand

Russell Brand, The Forum

Well, I have no photo's, no real measure to describe the gig and nothing else to base this blog post on other than to record a moment of my life in some kind of form.

So, Russell Brand... supported by Merrick & Rosso (Australian DJ's - kinda like Ant n Dec) - he was toooo funny. He had the crowd in stitches most of the time, and it was great to hear the old Essex accent in it's broadest form - even if it's starting to show hints of Hollywood!

"They wanted to put me on the sexual nuisance list for that!
I don't wanna be on that list...
...not for that anyway"

Paparazzi

Studio Lighting Day long workshop, Artarmon, Sydney

So as you may or may not know, I have been emersing myself in the world of photography over the past year or so, one thing that still felt very foreign however, was the use of off camera flash, and lighting people.

I decided to take a course with the same company I've done courses with in the past - a studio lighting course. I travelled over to Artarmon early in the morning and learned step by step how to light a low key shot and a high key shot with 3-5 studio lights, light metres and radio triggers.

The whole day was tiring, but massively beneficial to my learning and understanding in photography. I quickly shelled out for an extra brolly and a small softbox attachment for my flash... and started experimenting quickly.

Bring Change

ShapeShifter & Kora at the SoCo Mobile Cargo Club, Sydney.

The format of gigs seem to be one of those things that don't get tampered with too often. A concert hall, a bar or two, a merchandise stand, a stage, a band, a big crown, a lack of sufficient air conditioning; they're pretty standard. So the SoCo Mobile venue pretty much sold itself to me before I even knew who was playing. Actually, this is a lie, since the aforementioned is generally true; I struggled to work out what the heck this mobile venue would be like.

Benny and I decided to give this a whirl. We met before for a few beers discussing our thoughts of what we envisaged the gig to be.

We approached the venue, which basically looked like 4 shipping containers side by side, with some noise eminating from the steel. The doorman was like a circus freak... no offense - he wasn't ugly as a slate layers nail bag, but he had the crazy shades, massive Outkast style afro styled out with flares and a psycadellic skin tight t-shirt. Mad. We get in after have a laugh with said door staff and are greeted by a girl with 8cm long eye-lashes who gives us some blig to wear. The gig was sponsored by Southern Comfort, so it was all branded accordingly. In we go - to see an inverted sea of twinkle lights - on the ceiling. Couches and a comfort zone to one side, a bar straight ahead, and a stage not much more than 10cms in height from the ground. The band playing could be touched, if you really wanted to. I think it was women singing about "Gash" if memory serves. Nice.

Benny and I made our way through many of the manlier sounding SoCo mix drinks right before Shapeshifter would make it out on stage. By this point, the coke, red bull, ginger beer and SoCo had kicked in properly - not to mention the foundational beers... all this adding up to a totally healthy night, as we rocked out to ShapeShifter - great crowd, great band (who even came out and partied afterwards). Great idea. See it, if it comes to a town near you.