So North Tce has these gorgeous light displays lighting up some of the buildings. It was up as part of the festival of arts, but they’ve been so popular that they extended them. I’ve been meaning to go down with a tripod for ages, but kept putting it off…anyway, I finally got around to it. It was a bit of a rush job because I was illegally parked, though, so excuse all the converging lines!

See the people standing in fron of the building in the shot above? They were full on, flannel-wearing bogans who insisted on taking useless photos with their shitty camera phone…standing directly in front of me in EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT. Grrr. Did I mention they were wearing flannel?

In other news…I’m buying a car tomorrow!! So expect a flood of images of my new baby to follow :D

With impeccable timing, the international kite festival was held at Semaphore this weekend, just in time to enjoy the gorgeous weather we’ve (finally) been having lately. My cousin Craig and his wife Julia are over from Melbourne for the weekend, so I went to spend a bit of family time with them.

And good news…Julia is officially up the duff!! Another couple I know are about two weeks away from labour day, and ANOTHER friend told me the other day that he and his wife are having their third bub…it’s baby season alright!

Family aside, the kites were amazing. Although pointing my camera at such a beautiful blue sky did make me realise two things: firstly, my sensor is filthy, and two, I need a polariser like whoa.

Just to give some kind of idea of scale…some kites were huge.

Anatomically correct cherubs!

These disembodied legs were my alltime favourite. (For some inexplicable reason, disembodied legs have always amused me. Go figure.)

Last night, after the kite festival, I went with a couple of friends to the mind-bogglingly overpriced Beach House in Glenelg to play mini golf and dodgem cars. Good times. Amazingly, I didn’t come last at golf! There was one or two holes that may have gotten the better of my temper, but no permant damage to any golf equipement = no proof…

The house I’m living in now is the first place where I’ve been able to have a real garden, and I quite like getting out and pottering around in it, trying to coax things to grow. (So much so that my mum bought me this fantastic shiny red watering can and – wait for it – a gardening hat for Christmas. I think this is possibly the first hobby I’ve ever had that my parents actually encourage.)

For everyone else, parsley is almost a weed. For me, it’s something I have to carefully nurture and love because apparently there is something about me that makes parsley, well, die.

Lookit all that capsicum bounty!! When I bought some little cap seedlings (aaaaages ago) I think they’d gotten mixed up at the nursery because half were regular capsicums and the other half were sweet peppers. The peppers turned out to be so much better though, because they grow much faster…what the heck am I gonna do with this much capsicum?!

I will cheerfully admit I have no idea how to actually EAT eggplant, but the little guys are so cute and adorable and shiny! I’m sure I’ll find something. Maybe veggie lasagne.

I grew corn! It’s well and truly over but I haven’t gotten around to pulling it out yet. Looks like this little insect’s made it into a new home though.

BOOYAH. My giant watermelon! Actually, out of two sprawling watermelon plans (which are fighting with the pumpkins to see who will take over the entire garden) all I’ve grown is this one mega melon, and another teeny baby melon that I think has stopped growing altogether. I still haven’t eaten this big mama and for all I know it might taste like ass :/ I really hope I haven’t let it take over my yard for nothing.

In other news, last night I spilled a glass of wine in my keyboard. At first I was amazed that you can spill so much over anything on a keyboard and it still worked, but today I just discovered my ctrl key has stopped working. Grrrr. I forgot how slow everything is when you can’t use shortcuts. No more photoshop till I get a new keyboard!

Adelaide is in the middle of the country’s longest heatwave on record right now, with 11 days over 35 degrees and counting. (Not for the first time, I’m wondering why people choose to live here deliberately.) It’s kind of getting me down. My body has a narrow window for optimum efficiency between around 15 and 30 degrees, and anything outside of that is a bit beyond me!

The heat is incredibly draining, and it really saps so much of your energy, both mental and physical. It’s really hard to make myself leave the house, because I know that even my stuffy, un-airconditioned house it still preferable to the sun (it’s really bitey these days, you can feel yourself burning after about thirty seconds). So I’m bored, sick of being inside, and even though the heat kind of kills my appetite I still feel gross and lethargic and unactive. So! I joined the gym today. I’m not sure how it will go but I’m really over feeling so bloated and nasty. I also bought rollerblades, but I’m not sure where to use them even if it weren’t 40 degrees outside so for now the gym will do.

Revolting weather aside, the new job is going well. The people in my office are a hundred kinds of awesome! I don’t know if this is normal when you work in a more creative field, maybe creative people are naturally just more my flavour, but I’m a big fan. I still can’t get used to the feeling of getting up and actually enjoying my work. I’m not saying I wake up and can’t wait to bounce off to work, because let’s face it, I’d rather sleep than pretty much anything else in the world, but I definitely like what I do and who I work with!

I’m still having a few teething problems with the D2x, especially with strange white balance and colour casts… bias aside, I honestly do believe the 5D is a better camera for real estate work and I’d probably give a lung to be working with a Canon and a 17-40 again! — but I think my pictures and my editing are getting better with practice, and with a bit of work I think I’ll get there.

I think using a dslr has turned me into a camera snob. Or maybe P&S cameras really are just that crap. They never know what to focus on, they’re fuzzy and grainy… they handle low light like penguin handles flight… So many reasons to hate them.

Of all the shots to be nice and sharp, why this one?!!

Dougie’s gigantic birthday treat: rocky road sundae. A challenge at any time but more so after a big night with a lot of beer and not a lot of sleep. 

My biggest problem with Menzel’s little Fuji camera is not that it makes shit photos, although it is more than capable of doing that. No, the biggest issue I have is that it IS capable of taking some very nice photos…it’s just you seem to have no control over when that happens. Same settings, same light…one shot will be a cracker and the next will be a steaming pile of crap, and I have no idea why!

In other news, I’m doing my first RE shoot for T&T on my own tomorrow. With the D2X. I’m a tiny bit nervous, cause I’m still getting used to the Nikon way of doing things. (I have trouble with white balance, especially! Stupid sneaky Nikon and their stupid inaccurate WB.) It’s a bit frustrating because I know I could handle this stuff just fine with 5D…I know Brad (the head photographer) went out of his way to press for me for the job, and I want to show him what I can do. 110% all the way tomorrow!