Every year, we go away to Hanmer Springs for an annual Swing Dance social event. Part of this weekend away always entails a dress up theme for the main Saturday night dance, and this year the theme was ‘dress as your teenage self’.

Now this is a theme which is guaranteed not to disappoint! We decided to take along the camera, and not miss out on the opportunity for some great photos.

Swing Dancing is a partner dance that was the predominant dance craze through the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Sharon and I are both avid swing dancers, and we teach at the local public swing classes as well as taking our own private classes and swing dance performances. (On a side note, we will be teaching and performing at the upcoming Jambalaya festival in March 2011, so if you are in Auckland around that time you should come along!)

The local swing dance club here in Christchurch is called The Swingtown Rebels. The picture on the right here is a picture I took of Sarah and Becky, who run the club. Sharon gave this image the royal rebel treatment, and I think that the end result is awesome.

If you look carefully, you will find a picture of me in the photos below… but I am not telling you which one is me – you will have to guess.

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Sharon and I have recently returned from a 3 week adventure in North Vietnam. Vietnam is a crazy place. The culture is radically different to that of the west and our visit through Vietnam was met with a mixture of amazement, fascination and frustration.

The primary reason for our visit to Vietnam was for a holiday – to experience a different culture and to feed our adventurous side. The last 18 months have been pretty tough for us, with a sick family member necessitating numerous long and stressful trips half way across the globe. Vietnam was an opportunity for us to go away and have a little fun.

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Today we were rudely awoken at 4:35am by a massive earthquake here in Christchurch, New Zealand. We were lucky and our house did not sustain any massive damage – and thank god we had left sandbags on the studio lights!

All the camera gear is stored on a shelf about 5 feet off the ground. The 70-200mm f2.8 had taken a tumble, but looks like the lens is OK. Luckily the rest of the gear did not fall off the shelf!

We took a walk through town, and there are a number of buildings that did not fair too well -  mostly old brick buildings, which is really sad. At the end of this post are some of the photos I took during a walk through town this morning. My Partner Sharon has also posted images she took on her blog.

So far there have been no reported fatalities, which is a miracle considering the amount of damage. We were very lucky.

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My partner Sharon grew up learning about photography the old fashioned way. For her it started with a pinhole camera as a school science experiment and then later through the use of film and developing in the dark room.

Me – well I am of the new generation. Whilst I can claim to have used 35mm film in a point and shoot camera when I was younger, I have never set foot in a darkroom – let alone dipped my grubby little fingers in the chemicals. My experience with photography has predominantly been digital, with Photoshop as my darkroom and the closest chemical involved in my development process being the occasional glass of Whiskey.

Sharon came across a toy plastic pinhole camera that can be loaded with 35mm film, which she gave to me as a gift. So, I set out on to create some images with the most basic form of camera there is – the Pinhole!

Long story short, I discovered that using a pinhole camera is complicated, especially when you are used to the instant feedback of digital.

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Lunchtime rolled around today and as per usual, I was starving. My stomach – rather than the clock – was telling me that it was time to eat.

But what to eat?

For lack of any other ideas, I fell back on an old favourite; a Spinach and Feta omelette. It’s hard to go wrong with one of these.

Spinach and Feta omelette

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I live in a beautiful country. But not just any beautiful country; I live in the South Island of New Zealand – one of the most coveted, scenic and beautiful places in the world. I tend to forget this and admit that I don’t venture out nearly often enough.

A few years I saw a list of the top 50 places to go before you die, which had been created from a survey of 20,000 people. It listed the South Island of New Zealand as one of the top 5 places in the world that people wanted to visit. I try to remember this when I’m sitting at home on my couch and not outside enjoying the world.

Recently my partner and I were invited to a wedding which was ‘inconveniently’ all the way over on the West Coast. We live on the east coast, but what the hell, we decided to make a weekend of it – pack the camera!

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