Around Christmas 08

Ange and Ev

I like this pic of Ange, you can see reflected in her glasses the tungsten sky from the three pics of Aiden a couple of posts ago. The only thing is the dreaded fence - such a grim suburban backdrop, one which frequently invades photos taken at home. When Ev is smart enough, this fence is moving two terraces down, and then the background should become more workable.

These stragely coloured ones are shot with coloured gels on the flash. I particularly like the one of Ev, and of course Aiden's face-pull. The small ones on the right are from the tram cruise - tricky light and space, but nice colours in the clothes and cool skin tones.

Portrait of Jacques

December Hong Kong

December is feeling great - I've been out quite a bit with the camera, light has been great, and I've learned a few things from Jens which I'm now able to put into practice. Firstly the finishes on these photos which is done in RAW conversion rather, so in other words before the file is created, rather than via photoshopping an existing file. I think their contrasty, detailed and volume oriented feel - almost a three dimensional feel of depth - is really nice, and offers a higher dynamic range than a normal photo would. For example there is detail in the bottom of the bridge in the tram photo (we went on a christmas tram ride through Hong Kong with a group of people from Sheung Sze wan which was lovely) that would not be visible with a standard output. The photo above of Aiden on his bike I really really like. The backdrop is an old demolished restaurant which the Gov closed down, and then fenced off to prevent it being operated on the sly. I like its bright colours and the way they worked with the bike's colours and shapes and Aiden in jeans and t. The single bit of graffiti - PIMP - gives it a bit of sleeze-feel in what is really cheerfully coloured, but also about urban decay. Unrelated, but in the same style, we have my version of Dreams of a Tatooed Man - Ev after finding and experimenting at length with Freja's winnie the pooh stamp.

I think I've posted a pic of Grant's Ultima GTR already, but he was giving it a wash and fired up the engine (you have no idea, a very smooth and tight
aeroplane quality noise to it) and I couldn't resist - it is such a superlative machine. I get tricked into thinking these sorts of cars are small because they are so low, and invariably offer cramped accommodation for people, so I put the small one in here to give you an idea of scale - big big vehicle. I also learned that it was used as a test-bed for the McClaren F1, which I know you (rightly) have an appreciation for. And there are some visual parallels, like the over-roof vent, which in this case feeds a massive supercharger.

Finally, check out these - supergroovy and stylized - again something that Jens taught me - these are all taken with a yellow gel filter on a flash, with the camera metered on the sky (nice detailed sky in this case) and then the camera's white balance set to tungsten, which renders things other than yellow-flased skin blue, and gives you these sorts of results. Hope you like them.

Cousins

I loved talking to you on Saturday. I'm just refinding myself in post SFC exam limbo - please let me pass that and not have to revisit it (he says hopefully, wanting that rush of joy, fearing the crushing frustration and disappointment). I suspect you are somewhat more adept. Thought I'd post this - got the kit out - black backdrop - took some pics of your boeties and their cousins, and pasted it together in a collage. When the lights go up, they don't mind a bit of posing - for now, for ever? Also did a family port for my mate Jacques on Saturday for their adoption agency interview/application. Made a groovy pop art thing out of it too, like this.

Fabulous SA

I loved coming to SA for a number of reasons - you being a huge one - and the staggering beauty of the place. There are things I don't like too - not sure if this is me changing because I've been away for what suddenly feels like quite a while - or because I've become more set in my ways and am more judgemental than Iused to be. Being judgemental is not something that I've thought a good thing, but sometimes it's helpful and even necessary I suppose. The photos that I put into this slide show are either airbrush type portraits - a look that is achieved with post-processing in RAW before outputting the file - or daylight flash photos taken in the evening so as to leave some colour in the sky. Hope you like them. It was such a positive, lovely surprise to see you.

Sai Kung Stingrays

I've been a woeful poster, but are we in some sort of accellerator here. How is it possible for time to whizz like this - almost another month - zzzing! Hope you like this - a photo sequence from a sunny autum's Sunday morning. Super excited to see you in two weeks.

A month whizzes by

It's been a month full of weekends working - which has meant limited camera time - and frankly not much worth posting. That's not to say nothing has been happening though, and I have two bits of big news - the first is that WE'RE COMING TO SA - ANGE AND THE BOYS FOR THREE WEEKS - AND ME FOR A WEEK AND A BIT - IN LATE OCTOBER. My dates are 17th to the 28th. I go first to Knysna for a bit of beach time with the and then to Pretoria to see you - hope the dates will suit you - and we can do something over the weekend when school's out. I'll give you a ring to chat and see what's possible.

Aiden started rugby which he is really enjoying - boys and girls all together - and the girls are some tough stuff as it turns out. Here he is in his new kit - which he fancies a lot. We took Ev along on the first day - how naieve - he got very cross when the whole thing started and he was not allowed to participate - you need to be four or older to play.

Typhoon Nuri

Typhoon Nuri came to town yesterday, and it was pretty WOW. The big rubber tree in the driveway came down and closed it emphatically. I had parked one car next to Brett's house to hedge the damage statistics, so we were still mobile. When we went out to the shops in the mid morning there was botanical chaos all round - I've never seen so many trees uprooted, snapped off at the trunks, and generally deprived of branches. Every car is covered with a layer of little bits of leaves, not whole ones, chewed up ones. Amazing fury.

Ev's birthday boogy - woohooooooooo

We go to the Olympics and Ev has his second birthday bash

On Friday night we got tickets to go to one of the Olympic events being held in Hong Kong (and here, dutifully, is the Olympic flame that burns at each venue - all six odd stories high of it) which meant going to see showjumping - not my first choice of sporting event of course, but the only really accessible option - the other HK events are sailing. That being said, it was a lovely thing to go to. For a start, the crowd was frankly huge. My guess is that the majority of people, yours truly included, had never been to a showjumping thing before - so there were a lot of officials with signs telling people how to behave - which basically meant keeping quiet (with a big crowd that's quite an achievement) while the riders took their turns - a very mind your manners (Manors) and cucumber sandwich sort of thing. However, beneath the veneer it remains a really tense affair, with people dressed up in all sorts of national colours, jumping up and cheering and waving flags when their riders had completed their rounds. It gave the whole event a football match with a mute-button feel - though the mute failed each time when a pole went down (or someone fell off, as did a Kiwi rider, who was as unceremoniously dumped onto one of the fences as our rugby team has just been at Newlands) because plenty thousand people would let out an involuntary and simultaneous "ai-yaaah" - expressed with a falling tone, which is the cantonese equivalent to oh no, but with a lot more dramatic effect. I'm not terribly wowed by horses, but these were excquisite - just desperately beautiful animals, and the riders very elegant and composed on the outside. The tension of it all was very much on display when one of the two Hong Kong riders completed a perfect round at top speed to get himself into first place. The crowd went wild, as did Patrick Lam, the rider. When he cleared the last jump and crossed the line in 86 odd seconds, he leapt up in the saddle, punched the air wildly as he galoped around, and then took off his riding helmet and flung it into the crowd. It was much more of a motor-cycle grand prix head-space than a polite cough into the picnick blanket in the shade of the Range Rover. I thought it greatly contributed to the atmosphere. Here he is on the left above, galoping around without his helmet on while the crowd roars its approval. You'll have to click on the small horse pic on the right above to see the detail, but I took it to give you an idea of how beautiful and beautifully groomed the horses were. I also liked the dragon hedge which formed part of the arena - cool touch that. On the way out I took this cool picture over the Sha Tin river at the back of the stadium which I thought was very Hong Kong - a Jumbo floating seafood restaurant with lit pagodas, a wall of Sha Tin housing estates in the background, and the Olympic slogan in the front. All in all it was a heap of fun - must be a hell of a (brief) rush to see a big track and field final.

EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY - EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY - EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY

Ev's birthday is only on Monday - but I'll be out of town next weekend so we had the party today. It was super-hot and the usual humid, so lots of sweating from running around, and pink faces to go with it. Ev had a ball, discovered he was in a dancing mood, but insisted on the same song being played again and again while he cavorted around beaming away. Ange made him a cool cake, a racetrack two, in keeping with his committment to things automotive, which Aiden very nearly trashed just before the party by slipping and falling, and getting his elbow stuck in the corner in the process. I think I might have been a bit abrupt with him at that point, but it was very repairable as it turned out. I've shot a little .mpeg clip which I'll post here when I've worked it out, in case you fancy some boogying lessons from your littlest brother. He's now 97cm tall, and a very solid and cheerful two year old. I'm looking forward to his birthday proper on Monday, and it's been really great to have Ange's folks here, taken a lot of the bite out of the distance. I hope you're having a cool weekend - hope to chat to you tommorrow.

Island outing on Sunday

We had a lovely day on Sunday, were lucky enough to get a boat ride out to Loi Lams for a seafood lunch and then on to Mils beach with Tracy and Simon, their kids, and Ange's parents

Wendy and Ian. It was a beaut of a day - h

ot and clear, and the water was ultra refreshing. The boys dammed up a little stream that ran down the

island to the beach, it was freezing compared to the ocean. Ange discovered this by trying to sit down in it, much to her mirth. The boys swam in their life-jackets, I floated around like a dugong. It was great - home by 7 and a knock-out kip. Hope you had a great weekend too.

Ocean Park error of jugement

Two weeks no post - not great; apologies. In truth not a lot reportable or photographable happening. The exception to this is that Aiden has learned to ride a bike without trainer wheels. No photos of this though - me too busy playing the neurotic parent running alongside, to get it together. Learning to ride a bike, as you will know, is also about learning to fall off one. Aiden has not disappointed. At the tender age of four he has chalked up one Lexus SUV already - THANKFULLY it was completely unmarked in any way.

I've been preparing for an interview I have in Geneva on the 25th of August. I'll tell you more about it if I get it - hold thumbs though, I think it's worth having. Ange's folks are here to visit, which is great. Having people here closes the distance, and Aiden and Ev are having a ball. The pic on the right here features Ange's dad Ian and Ev. If you look closely you might be able to see that that Ev has recently landed on the side of his nose whilst running - across nice rough concrete of course. Now he is Ev "Scabnose" McG. I've also been able to watch a bit of the cricket, which has been a nice treat. Not sure that I think the English have been too sporting - I thought the whole issue with the site-screen was not quite cricket.

I go back to work next week, which will be interesting. I was supposed to work yesterday morning, but we had a typhoon near-miss and the city was closed. I saw the signal was up at 6.15am, and just rolled over and kept going. Great timing, and a pleasure because there was not much damage. Tracy and Simon's canoe and sailing dinghy broke free of their mooring, and went walkabout in the storm. We had to go looking for them, thought it was worthwhile because the worst of the wind had been onshore. We eventually found both, one just in the bay and one around the corner towards DS beach. Very wierd really, because you're looking for something on the rocks at water level, and they had both been carried way way up by the storm surge. It was almost as if they were behind and above where we were looking. Both are miraculously in one piece.

The boys had a bit of cabin-fever by today, and Aiden asked to go to Ocean Park, a theme park on the coast near Aberdeen harbour. In a blistering error of judgement I agreed to this, not very smart. Chinese schools here and on the mainland are on holiday. It was like going to a huge scrum. The water-rides that Aiden specifically wanted to go on were closed for maintenance too - adding insult to injury. In the end we collectively got to ride on the cable-car, and Aiden had a b-grade (in my experience) ride on a very mini abyss thing called the Frogger - pictured above. I think I have more empathy with the feelings of the two guys on either side of him; that was about it. The views were fabulous, but even the cable-way was conjested - as illustrated on the right. Rush hour recreating. Better analysis next time I promise you. The Olympics begin tomorrow - not sure if that is a big thing there, but it's huge here, given where it is. I have a ticket to go to a horse cross-country event on Monday morning - but it's not really the men's 100m, is it now? And, I have to work...

Macau Weekend

We went to Macau for the weekend - the Vegas of Aisia, Casinoville and architectural hallucinogen - its telecom tower competing with ultra-mod gambling cities, an artificial Venice, volcanoes, art deco originals and a 50 story gold shiny building that looks like the top half of a pineapple with its spikey leaves. Rampant chaos, explosive growth, the hint of an omnipresent underworld, all running at top speed in 35 degrees of South East Asian ultrahumidity. We navigated the first two of the three islands and went to the far side of the third, Coloane, where you can hide from the rest in relative seclusion and your kids can run on a beach and splash in a pool. But before I get into it I wanted to say that I was delighted to get this photo of you taken by Big George. I chopped out the rest of the pic, and built a groovy matching background - matching that is the quicksilver stripes on the Quicksilver top. Its so nice to get a pic of you, puts me in touch, and reminds me how you're rocketing - you look beautiful, fabulous, so I thought I'd post it here, where it pretty much belongs.



We did not much more than nothing, spent two days in the pool and on the beach to Fernando's, the best Portugese food in Asia, spicy, tasty, simple and volumous. Coloane has a black sand beach, (from the artificial volcano perhaps?), which I've only seen before in Indonesia, and the sea is an amazingly muddy brown - VERY different from the white-blue/green of SA. The hotel was lush, and the pool