Monday 28 December 2015

Paris

 
 To be honest, I've been a bit stuck on what to write about Europe, I mean, what can you say that hasn't been said more eloquently and artistically by someone with actual writing chops? This goes a thousand times over for Paris - a place which haunted blokes like Hemingway, who has been known to turn out a decent sentence or two.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Travel Photography Calendars

Well it's been a bit quiet around this blog of late and that probably because the last 6 months have been anything but quite in our offline worlds.  We are hoping that we can inject a few more posts into the blog during some summer down time soon however I wanted to share with you a little product of my recent busyness and the trip...

The 2016 Travel Photography Calendar!

For those that don't know I've been putting together calendars pretty much every year for a while now however with all the travel this year trying to narrow it down to 12 photos was quite a challenge but I think the result is pretty darn good.  It features a mix of landscape (mostly natural) and wildlife photos from across three different continents so has a travel theme more than anything else.

This year I have also gone with a different printer and ordered in advance.  It was a bit of a scary process to go through for the first time but I think the end result was worth it.  The print quality is fantastic and it means it means I can sell them at a substantially lower cost.

The date pages are set-up with Australian public holidays and school term dates for all the states and territories, however I can ship them anywhere in the world.  Plus I'm pretty sure the moon phases are the same everywhere...

You can order them from my web site: 2016 Calendars
Or if you are not in Australia from my Etsy store.

Sunday 5 July 2015

Reims - It's French for Champagne! (well, not actually)



Deep beneath the town of Reims in France, about 2000 years ago, before it was called Reims and before there was such a thing as France, Romans were digging chalk mines (actually probably they had other people do it for them). Someone was digging chalk mines for the Romans. I'm not sure why they needed chalk, they hadn't invented blackboards yet I'm pretty sure. Maybe teachers still liked to fling chalk at children, even when they didn't have blackboards? But I digress. The Roman chalk mines left big holes in the ground, holes that were cool in summer and big enough to store lots of stuff. So the French came up with something to put in the holes. Champagne! Lots and lots and lots of champagne. So we went there. And we drank some. It was nice. We went to the Taittinger Champagne House and they took us on the tour of the aforementioned cellars. Between the Romans being there and us being there, there had also been monks there who left carvings and such around the cellars, as well as random staircases that originally would have led up into their monastery but now lead nowhere. I love being in a place where you can (try to) imagine all the people who have been there before you. Then they gave us champagne, and that was also nice.

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Photo Tips: Wildlife Photography



I'm not an expert photographer but I've had a bit of experience with wildlife photography in Australia, North America, Southern Africa and Europe now so I thought I'd go through my equipment for this trip, how I shoot & process and add as many tips along the way as I can.  While I'll try and keep it fairly general I'll probably be focusing on our African Safaris.

Freiburg and Triberg


The view from our accommodation...

If there’s one thing I love about the Germans (and to be honest, there are lots of things I love about the Germans), it’s the way they utterly embrace and celebrate whatever season they find themselves in. I think it comes from living in a country where the seasons announce themselves to much more definitely than Australia. When I’ve been there at Christmas time in the past, every house is adorned with traditional Christmas decorations – not the neon-lights-you-can-see-from-space kind (though those can be fun too) but carved wooden candle-holders in the windows and evergreen wreathes and beautiful old nativity scenes and gluhwein drunk in the snow at little stalls at the Christmas markets. This time we were there for spring, and Freiburg was going to be ready! Every window was decorated with traditional wooden eggs with delicate painted designs and spring flowers were growing in profusion in every garden. My prevailing memory of our visit to Freiburg, a university town in the Black Forest, was the market that was on around the church at the centre of town, where the locals (and tourists) had gathered to buy fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables, local meat, wooden toys and flowers – lots and lots of flowers. We wandered there quite happily for quite some time, also popping into the church, which had some pretty stunning wood carvings to see.

Friday 26 June 2015

On to Europe we go - Munich and Neuschwanstein


Two continents down, one to go! We sadly bid farewell to Africa after some R&R in Johannesburg (seriously, we didn't do one touristy thing. We hung out with a friend, did some shopping and went for coffee). We were also meeting Will's sister Fi in Munich so, as I said to my friend Tara at the time, finally I had someone to tell my travel stories to without them saying, "Yes, I know, I was there. And you made that last part up." Hooray!

Saturday 13 June 2015

Okavango Delta and Morami, Botswana


The Okavango Delta is somewhere Jackie and I had been looking forward to for a long time and was actually the primary goal of time in Africa. However things didn't quite turn out the way we had planned...

Our African safaris were one of the first parts of this trip that we found and booked in so that we could time our flights properly, which was great, till our Botswana safari fell through.  This resulting in much scrambling and searching while we were away in North America till we found another group safari on dates that fitted with our flights and was within our budget (which was, admittedly, not very high).  As it turned out, we were the only ones on the trip which was a little weird but also had some perks.

Sunday 7 June 2015

Chobe National Park, Botswana


Chobe is a national park in North East Botswana (and the name of a river on its border) that is world famous for amazing wildlife.  We stayed a couple of nights in Kasane and were lucky enough to have three trips into Chobe, two as game drives and one as a boat trip.  We saw heaps of amazing wildlife but here are a few highlights.