the sound of green

It’s a lame attempt at a post, but I’ve been bugged for them, and when approaching two months with no traffic, it’s better than nothing.

I’ve held of mentioning this at all, because there was a chance that it wasn’t going to happen today. But after using my own gear for a year, work finally bought a some gear for me to use – a Nikon D700, a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, two SB-900 flashes, and a bag to fit it all.

At lunchtime I made the call to find out the payment had gone through, and dropped into the city to pick it up – and have spent the rest of the afternoon since playing with it all! I’ll post a full review of it sometime soon, but for now, you can enjoy the pictures (unfortunately captured on my old body) of how unpacking it all went!

Let’s face it, she gets fluffy. Pretty quickly. And when she’s fluffy, she really goes all out.

With her parents away for two weeks, they figured it was best for her to get a haircut before they left, so that she’s not weighed down and spending her whole time moping about the house. And for the first time, I actually got around to taking the before and after photo.

Prepare yourselves.

I know, I know. Most unimaginative post title in the world. Deal with it!

This post does come a little late – I was  up until 3am, and surprisingly (depressingly? Unsocially?) enough was actually online from about 1am onwards. Perfect time, you would think, for writing a post that would usher in the new year, one which I’ve mentioned I’m quite excited about. But instead of busy writing any post-celebratory thoughts, I was busy getting a little something ready for today. As I did mention earlier, I was thinking about a photoblog for 2009, and after all the glowing positive feedback received from one reader, I decided to go for it. Beth also seemed quite excited about the idea which, I’m sorry to say Sam, held a lot more standing.

And so here it is! I present to you a photoblog, one which will be posted on each day, and one that will stretch me as I seek out photo opportunities a lot more frequently. Enjoy!

james burke | photoblog

I’m back after an entirely unplanned and spontaneous few-day hiatus from all things online – I didn’t plan for it to happen, but it just sorta did. And it gave me time to think.

2009 is fast approaching, and amidst the news of blogs I follow daily closing down in two days time, I’ve been thinking about what is going to happen for myself in terms of photography, blogging, etc. The logical explanation has been simply this: combine the two and start a photoblog. It’s something that’s semi scared me, however – I’ve seen too many photoblogs start out posting a photo each day, and soon fade off into oblivion. The good ones I see post one every day, and keep it up – but I struggle sometimes to pick up my camera for a week or two at a time.

I’ve looked into various themes for a photoblog, that could possibly liven it up – because my other, more heightened fear is that my life simply isn’t interesting enough for regular, daily photoing. One option that I toyed with was to pick a certain, obscure time each day – 12:39pm for example – and take the photo then. While it would have worked back when I was only employed from 6pm onwards, these days a time like that is more likely to find photos of my office desk four days a week, and a photo of home home day another day – leaving exactly two days for something interesting and creative. Because although there is a lot of crap out there, I doubt anyone’s going to suscribe to a photoblog that has almost identical photos five out of seven days each week. The self potrait theme has crossed my mind once or twice – but mainly I wonder about what kind of comments it will derive from Beth, posting a year’s worth of photos of me. Sure, this w0uld be as a good a time as any to photograph the changes that are happening (more on that to come), but I don’t think I’m that self-involved. And especially don’t want to be seen to be that self-involved. What that leaves me (at least, as far as I can tell) is stocking up on photos that I can then post on days where I’m stuck in the office, or stuck elsewhere, and simply can’t shoot.

It’s going to be a good year, photographically wise – I can tell. I’m starting it off nine days in (if the timing works) with a brand new body and lens, a couple more flashes, and a lot more kick in my kit to boot. My experimenting with the wonderful world of wireless flash and actually lighting my shots is only opening up my mind more and more each time I shoot, and the possibilities keep me lying awake at night, dreaming of what could be. The studio is about to undergo a bit of a face-lift, with a couple of additions that will hopefully make it much more shooting-friendly (and may even see some more use out of it – who knows!), and even work-wise, we’re building from the simple foundation that we laid this year with the magazine photography, and hopefully building strongly on top of that. I’ve got quite a few more jobs on the books for the first half of this year than I’ve ever had before, and I just can’t help but think 2009 is going to be a good thing.

It’s definately not the gear, the environment, the mindspace or the inspiration that’s holding me back. It may purely be fear. Am I that scared of failing that I won’t even venture into the world of photoblogging? Surely it’s something that would only benefit me as I stretch myself to pick up the camera a lot more to proactively shoot (close to) each day. And I sure as hell know I need that stretching to start to grow myself into the photographer I want to be, let alone begin to clock up those 10,000 hours. So I’m asking your help.

What do you think? Good idea? Doomed failure from Day 1? Anything?

The gastro lasted for a week, and the cramps oddly stayed after all other symptoms had passed – and so, two and a half weeks on after cramps, I was off getting an abdominal ultrasound today, to check that there’s nothing wrong.

But this explains my lack of blogging and tweeting over the past couple of weeks – I’ve honestly not felt like doing much of either. Blogging in particular – most of the time I would usually blog in the evening, and that was when the cramps were the worst, and sitting at my desk did not make things any easier.

And so, I’m a bit sick of it all. Wishing it would finally clear up. But for while I’m stuck with these weird symptoms, this is what I think about it all:

She’s officially an adult now. And while her birthday may have been back on the 20th October, it’s not official until we had outside confirmation.

She’s officially an adult now. The bag says so.

Wednesday morning, 11:43am, our newest edition to the house was born. Max. Maxwell Carl Jackson. Maxasaurus. Take your pick.

(He’s a little bit cute, no?)

… the subordinates steal the supervisor’s hardware.

He’s away on paternity leave, being the proud father of a new baby girl. And I figured he didn’t need his cinema display while he’s at home.

It makes me feel considerably more apple.

Yesterday was our 1st Anniversary.