He has the best outlook on life. Every chance he has to be somewhere new, he’ll explore it. Every time he sees something unknown, his curiosity shines through.
But if in the process he ends up in a really, really comfortable position, then nothing is going to get in-between him and his enjoyment. 
The littlest bear no longer will sit or lay down in the bath. Since discovering he can stand, that’s all he’ll do.
He’s got cheek. And he knows it.
I’m going to be a father. It’s something that at times I still can’t get my head around. It’s an entire life-changing event.. My whole world is going to be turned upside down in an instant. Insert another life-changing cliche here.
The simple fact of the matter is come May, I’m going to be responsible for another life. Bop is going to be personified in a way that will completely change our outlook on life for its duration. Bop will cease to be Bop. Bop will then take on the name that we’ve chosen for him or her, and the only reminder will be the “bop” letters that I’ve been making over the last week. It will be a visual memory of what we called our son or daughter while they were still in utero.
I get asked every now and then both where Bop comes from, and if Bop is going to hang around after they’re born. Thankfully the question that hasn’t been asked is whether Bop is actually the name we’re giving the baby – my patronising look has been spared, and is still safely looked away. I’d like to think that people would think we’d have a bit more understanding and thought for our child’s future than to land them in life having to explain their name at every turn.
Bop came about after an original name for our still-unborn baby was considered, almost put into practice, and then slightly changed to become Bop. And no, I’m not going to either confirm or deny what the other name was. That one will remain locked up. As for the name sticking around once our baby is breathing on its own, I don’t see it hanging around at all.
Before our housemate’s son was born, he was known to one and all as Rocky. Short for Rock Monster. Rocky was all we knew the ever-growing bump as, and I for one thought that I would struggle to make the transition from Rocky to whatever his name was actually going to be. And if I hadn’t lived through the same thing with their son, I may not have been so happy to bandy around the name Bop. Once Rocky was born, it was a non-issue. I think perhaps once my tongue slipped, within 3 or 4 hours of his birth, and I called him Rocky. But even that felt weird, as if I’d called him by his wrong name – which I clearly had. As soon as he was born, and we were informed of his name, the shift in my mind was instantaneous. And so I’m not worried about Bop being called Bop after they come out.
That said, I’m glad I made the letters. They’re lowercase, painted black with a glossy clear coat. And while initially there was some debate as to whether they were going to be wall-mounted or shelf-sat, I’m glad they’re going to be in our kid’s room. A reminder of the journey that this is. And of the hilarious times we had watching him or her kick and make Beth’s stomach move.
Big hello to the person who reached here googling “intraveneous shooting panadeine forte”.
I hope you found what you were looking for.
The windows of the apartment next to ours are covered with foil. Initially there was one piece of aluminum covering the gap between two perpendicular venetian blinds, something that while semi-amusing, wasn’t all that out of the ordinary or explainable. Today however, the entire inside of the windows is covered with foil. It’s pressed right up against every single edge, right into the corners, and smoothed against the glass. All light from inside is blocked from spilling out; all light from outside is stopped from entering the room.
Seeing this, our curiosity is piqued. Discussing what it could be, we have a few laughs about the possibilities. Nothing more is thought about it, however, and we head down to the pool for an evening swim before dinner. The water is brilliantly warm, and it’s not long before the water is warmer than the breeze coming in off the water. Beth jumps out, having had enough of the water, and heads up to the apartment before returning with a laugh.
It turns out that the guests in the apartment next to us are visiting from the UK. The lady from that apartment met Beth outside the doors, wanting to explain the slightly weird use of foil. They’re a film crew for a television show back in Britain, a show that airs during the day there. They’ve been crossing live to the crew next door to us during the show, which due to the time differences turns out to be in the middle of the night our time. The foil, as the lady explains, is so that they can sleep during the day to be awake on London time for the show. There’s something to be said for traveling and working in such a manner. For starters, there would be no requirement to adjust yourself to the local time zone and enduring jet lag. No struggling to sleep, or struggling to wake up at odd and ridiculous hours. No return jet lag once you got home either. The only issue with that would be being able to isolate yourself enough from the local time zone, so that your body wouldn’t start adjusting by itself. You’d have to completely block out all outside light sources, and restrict yourself to only going outside in such a way that would be in fitting with the time zone you are continuing to exist in, even though you are on the other side of the world.
Turns out, covering your windows with aluminum foil and speaking to your neighbours after dark isn’t such a stupid idea after all.
Yesterday my Macbook Pro died. It’s off getting fixed, and in the meantime I’m posting from Beth’s computer. It does mean there won’t be any TTD shots until I get my machine back, unfortunately!
Been shooting a fair bit, though the blog and flickr traffic may suggest otherwise. I’m back in the game however, with a bit of a sneak peek into what I’ve been doing.
More to come later.
This has to be easily one of the coolest things I have seen in a long, long time. I’m a sucker for anything techy that is decent, yet this just blows my mind.
Yes, I realise that for now it’s merely a representation of what some people think the future may be like… but I cannot wait until that time is here and now.
(via Unpluggd)
Seeing as Bec was nice enough to tag me on Facebook, I thought I would finally write up my 25 Things – be they interesting, thoughtful, or just plain fluff. We’ll see. This is a direct copy/paste, but some content is better than no content.
1. The basics – I am 23, work full time plus my own business, am married, have a puppy, and am a photographer.
2. I’ve never actually completely ever finished one job and started afresh in a new one – every work transition has been drawn out over a couple of months of starting the new one while still working the old one, etc. In fact, in my current non-self-employed job, the transition from when I started working 1 day/week up to 5 days/week has taken over 14 months.
3. My puppy Zahli on the most part is a perfectly well behaved dog. She doesn’t bite, she doesn’t destroy things other than her own toys, she eats fine, all that kind of stuff. But she barks. Knock on the door or ring the doorbell, and she’ll bark until you’ve said hello to her. That said, she knows certain people who come around enough, and will happily wait in silence until they’re in. And don’t get me started on the two new dogs that moved in next door in the past couple of months.
4. Beth and I live with another married couple, and for some reason most people cannot get their heads around this. Please understand that the house we live in is perfectly suited to such an arrangement – we live downstairs, they live upstairs, we share a kitchen and laundry, and have our own living spaces. That said, we love our housemates to the point where when neither of us are doing anything, or are having a night at home, invariably all five of us end up sitting around together. In fact, we often hang out when us or they come home.
5. There are five of us living in this house – said housemates have a 3month old baby boy, who is the best baby you could possibly ask for. His name is Max and I take great delight in being Uncle James, and that he smiles every time I see him.
6. I recently weighed in at as much as 130kg (as of 2nd December). After heading to the doctor to enquire about a solution to the stomach cramps that persisted after a bout of gastro, I found I had high cholesterol. Currently, 2 months later, I weigh 115kg, and am proud of myself. I also blame my job for the weight, as I weighed around 118 before I started there.
7. I aim to keep losing the weight, and get things as they should be for once. To that result I’m off sugary things and saturated fats – as well as eating a lot of fruit. I also started running yesterday for the first time, and it was the first time I’ve run since high school compulsory athletic events. Scarily, I enjoyed it, and am doing it every day on my lunch break.
8. I choose to get up at 6:30am every morning, leave for work a bit after 7am, and start my work day at 7:30am, when I could quite easily not start til closer to 10am like my boss. For those of you who know me pre-Beth, you’ll know that flies in the face of my then go-to-bed-at-5am sleeping habits. But it means I beat the traffic, get work done without other people distracting me, and get to finish for the day at 3pm.
9. Beth has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. Meeting her and getting to know her over the subsequent weeks was an insanely exciting and incredibly happy time, as we both kinda knew from the start where it was headed. Knowing that it was going to happen while still getting to know each other made all the things we did, all the days we hung out, all the time we spent sitting on the couch watching crappy TV and talking over the top of it that much more special.
10. I used to be a lot more arrogant. In fact, I used to be fairly arrogant. I used to think that it was more born out of being confident (perhaps overconfident) in all situations, and taking pride in myself, my acheivements and my people skills – but the fact is, it was purely arrogance. And while I’m not as actively outgoing as I was, and don’t relish making conversation with new people quite as much as I did (without that arrogance to hide behind), I much prefer the person I am now.
11. Being a photographer was not something I ever dreamed of doing. From a young age through to high school and even the beginning of Uni, there was the desire to be a pilot, a physiotherapist, an IT dude, an aerospace engineer, a paramedic, a cameraman, and even right down to such specifics and a gaffer or grip. Yet looking back through my life so far, I see how I’ve ended up as a photographer, and am grateful to be able to draw on some of those other things I dabbled in to hopefully make me a better photographer.
12. Beth never used to be ticklish, and it used to bug me as I’m incredibly ticklish. Get me started, and you don’t even have to touch me for me to be rolling around laughing uncontrollably. I take great joy in the fact she is now more ticklish.
13. I am secretly proud. Not in an arrogant/showoffish way (I hope), but I do take pride in what I have accomplished.
14. I am almost daily frustrated at my inability to use my studio more. People photography is probably my first love in photography, and what I want to make my name doing, yet I so rarely actually get anyone down there in front of the camera for me to constantly practice my craft.
15. I wake up each morning and find my dog has gotten up from her bed, jumped up onto ours lightly, and very gently worked her way down under the doonah. The position I find her in each morning? Lying in between Beth and I, on her side, with her head either on my pillow, or inbetween both pillows.
16. I had an operation on my hip three years ago. I had torn cartilage in the hip joint, which made it painful to stand still for too long, or walk more than 10-20 steps. After the op, I wasn’t allowed to sit up for the first couple of weeks – either standing or lying. I got sick of that pretty quick. Funny thing is, when we were watching Bondi Vet a couple of weeks ago, when a dog had the same thing, they just chopped the top of the thigh bone off. Glad they didn’t do that.
17. I have on my desk a Tickle Me Elmo Extreme (TMX) and a What the Duck plushie. I can’t decide which I like more (prob WTD atm – but perhaps purely cos I’ve only had him for a few days). Elmo often gets raided for batteries when I’ve forgotten to buy in bulk for my flashes, and one has gone flat downstairs in the studio.
18. I never paid back my parents all of the money I borrowed from them for my first digital camera body. And while I have spoken to them about it, and we laugh about it now, it still haunts me.
19. I now regret buying my MX-6. And don’t look forward to trying to sell it. I just want it to be gone, and get my new car. I loved it. But it has to go.
20. People often think that either a) I’m less nerdy than I actually am, or b) I know more about computers than I actually do. Both are because I am only partly nerdy. And I can hide it well.
21. I read a fair bit. Nothing amazing, mostly just mind-numbing fiction, and not necessarily books I would want to own. But the thought of having a study with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books makes me far too excited.
22. I spend down time at work looking through design blogs that have furniture that I like, and contemplating whether I could reverse-engineer the pieces I like, and make them myself.
23. Something that seems to shock people, I am quite handy, and enjoy working with my hands. I do most of the handy-work around the house, have built small items of furniture, built a changeroom in my studio, gobos for the studio, and the wardrobe that Beth and I have. I have more ambitious projects I’m currently about to start on and cannot wait to start. I don’t know what it is, but my brain is just wired the way of making and building things. I do have my dad to thank, who spent a lot of time as a kid teaching me how to do the things he did around the house.
24. My dad is someone I admire incredibly, even though I never actually say it. He retired when I was 6 due to having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and has never been able to work since. He’s suffered with it for basically as long as I’ve been alive, and as such I’ve never had a dad who would run around with me kicking the footy or things like that. I’ve had my issues with him (mainly when I was a teenager, and thought I knew best), but for the most part I appreciate what he has taught me and instilled into me. I entirely have him to thank for the fact that I’m a photographer, and that it is my dream job. I love that I get to talk to him now and ‘talk shop’, and then realise we’ve been yakking for a couple of hours. At some point, I would like to spend some time shooting with him, and have a great desire to digitise some of the things he’s shot over the past 50 years since he bought his first camera. And I love that he knows he can ring me in my office, and have a chat about stuff.
25. I am incredibly excited about the future. It literally keeps me up some nights, as I think about things, and try to plan some of how to make it happen. The long-term goals include working for myself full time, and Beth working with me. I sometimes wish I was 40 already, so I could see whether we’ve made it. I get excited by the fact that Beth wants to work with me, and I know that her presence and input will take the business further than I could ever have imagined on my own. The part of the dream that I’m not sure on yet, is whether I ever make the jump to start paying a non-family-member to work with me, but I do know that if I do, birthdays will be considered public holidays for each employee, and they’ll get a paid day off.
While I’m still winding down on my very short observations of the US Presidential election…
I have a crush on Barack Obama’s voice.
Seriously. That is one smooth, deep voice.
I caught him on Letterman the other night, and while it was about 8 weeks after it had aired in the States, I sat there enthralled, listening to his voice more than what he was actually saying.
That’s a voice.