My nephew the photographer

I've previously posted excellent photos taken by my nephew Julian, but now he seems to be getting very serious about the art. Check out this fantastic shot of the Gold Coast.


Here's his technical commentary for those who understand such stuff - it's completely meaningless to me; I've not mastered anything more complex than an auto-focus point and shoot digital camera.

• "Taken using a 1976 Pentax SLR... looks like the 30 year old shutter mechanism and light meter are working perfectly... :)"
• "It's exactly what I wanted, dark contrasts, bright borderline over exposure that brings out the highlights and reflections.. I ran every shot at just above neutral values..."

Colour and movement

Check out this great photo taken by my nephew Julian. Amazing colours and he caught the dancer in mid air!


Here's the accompanying article he wrote for his university newspaper.

Bonsai

My Mum has been growing bonsai trees for the past twenty years. Here are some of her best ones. I'm not sure what most of them are except the last one which is a Tasmanian Myrtle. To give you some idea of the art involved in bonsai, this is a tree that typically grows up to 55 m ( 170 ft) tall. After twenty years this one is only about a foot and a half tall.

The third one - some sort of pine - is my favourite.

Goodbye summer

Yellow aspen leaves
Summer's melancholy
Joyful memory

I was inspired to write this haiku because we saw our first signs today of the leaves turning.

An artist in the family

On my recent visit to Australia I discovered that my sister Joanne is a very talented artist. I'm not sure whether this is a recent development or whether she's simply chosen to keep her talent hidden until now.

Actually I shouldn't have been too surprised since my sister's husband is a talented painter, as is my mother and as was my late paternal grandmother. But I was blown away by Joanne's ability to turn a piece of clay into a living thing in no time (the total process with painting and glazing and firings takes days, but the scuplting only takes her a few hours).

How do I exercise my creative drive? By designing business processes and software architectures (yes, I'm a geek and proud of it.) I get the same buzz from that as my more talented relatives get from creating works of art, plus I make pretty good money doing it.

Here's a picture of one of my sister's 'rejects' which I commandeered and have hung on my wall. Yes, I've taken out a call option on all future rejects.



This is the only frog my wife ever wants to have in the house!