HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year?

I'm late you say? Doubt it., I'm early. I'm wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year. HAHA> And its the year of the tiger. I say its my year this year :-) Things are feeling good, feeling positive for this year. Kudos for me yeah?

I love this time of year., the sun is out (most of the time), the weather is warmer. People are on holiday and it just seems like everyone is in a better mood. Its a great time to stop and re-evaluate your life and where you want to go. For me, I have a number of personal goals that I want to improve on this year, as well as resit my PCE1 which I failed a year & a half ago :'( feel free to shed a tear for me LOL. But look its time to get off my bum, no matter how I feel, dust it off and try again. You've just gotta get back up on that horse. Easier said than done, its taken me this long to get my confidence up again. The stink thing is that they don't actually send your exam paper back. So how on earth are you supposed to improve I ask? Its all pretty dumb really. But I have to do it if I want to get anywhere in my industry. Please pray for me haha.. no seriously please pray for me.

So I have consciously been getting out there and shooting lately. I had a ball at New Years. As you may or may not know, I live in a small apartment in town with my cool jap chick flatmate. We good friends now ay Aiko :-) She's a very good flatmate :-) Anyway she headed off to the Coromandels for the NY and so I had a few mates over to watch the fireworks. Ok so normally I would say that the fireworks on NY in Auckland aren't that great. (Well they really aren't compared to Sydney I admit). But being so close to them this year was totally friken awesome. I will share my photos below :-) It was pretty much click (wait 3 sec) click (wait 3 sec) click (wait 3 sec). Each pic seemed to be totally unique :-) gotta love it!

This shot was taken on the very moment :-) It was sooo cool counting down. I can't say I've actually ever done that for real. I think this year was a first. Thanks Channel 1 for advising the time. 2010 baby, first day of the new decade :-) I thought this was a little overexposed but still its cool :-) So the shots that follow will be a lil less BRIGHT! Hope you enjoy

I don't know why but this picture really reminds me of the 4th of July. Probably the colour ay? :P

And the cherry on the top was the full moon on New Years! Beautiful!
I love night photography. I really need to get me a new tripod. My current one was perfect for my old Fuji s1000, but for my canon 50D, hmmm. Lets just say its fine for normal landscapes but not very ideal for portraits. It actually starts to slide of kilter. Funny but annoying. Its a Kathmandu tripod that Doug bought me :-) Thankyou bub. Having a tripod is very very handy sometimes. Especially when you can't trust giving your camera to anyone to get the composition you want. And of course you simply can't go without it for night photography or any photography when you want that slow shutter speed. So I've been eyeing up a few tripods. I might just get one off trademe for around the $100 mark. I saw some very very nice ones at the photography store but I'm really not willing to pay $200+ for one just yet. I'll be saving those precious pennies for a speedlite :D

Anyway I think thats enough for one post. Speaking with Jacob who recently started up his own blog : http://jsauni.wordpress.com/, I felt motivated to post my own since I haven't done one since last year. I think I will really try and post at least once a week even when I don't have new material to share, I might share some old material and old favourites etc etc like I have done previously.

Hope you all had a fab New Year's celebration. Till next post!!

First pic of the New Year - Doug & I after the fireworks:-)