Back when I was just a little tacker I lived in the country, but on rare occasions I was fortunate enough to have been taken to the cricket or footy in Melbourne.  My grandfather was an ex-VFL footballer and a state cricket selector, and as such had regular access to tickets for all the big games at “The G”.  I’ve been dusting off all the old prints I took with my plastic Hanimex 126 from one particular Xmas Test (a match between two “Test” nations), and running them through a new Canon MP980 scanner.

1979

The Test in question was the 1979 Australia v West Indies Boxing Day clash, and aside from being able to see the games greatest names in action right in front of me, it turned out that one of the players actually bowled against me later in my own cricket playing life.  On a related note, I once clean bowled the Sri Lankan opening batsman in a one-day game, but that’s another story.

Anyway, because the tickets came from my grandfather I was seated in the Members, right in the middle of the actual players section. This gave me the very best access possible to snap photos of the legends that shaped my sporting life.  Dennis Lillee has always been Australia’s greatest fast bowler, and you can sense a real charisma and confidence in him as he makes his way down the race.

After the game, the players exit the MCG through the Members doors then walk through the public surrounds of the ground to get to the team bus. I don’t know that this happens much these days but it led to a situation where you could easily approach them and ask for an autograph or simply say hello. As you can see by the lack of hysteria, or even many other fans, times were very different back then.  I have a memory, which may well be just imagination, that I asked Dennis if my Nana could wash his clothes for him that night.

And here is my Nana with Joel Garner, who was everybody’s favourite West Indian. Not only was he huge at 6′ 8″, he was also a gentle giant. He was more than happy to hug Nana as I took the shot.  I’m pretty sure that’s Bob Simpson in the background autographing something for a young girl.

The most powerful and dangerous batsman in modern cricketing history is a debate that could rage for quite a few beers. Many would say Adam Gilchrist, and it would be hard pressed to argue against that. Then there are Lance Klusener, Lance Cairns, Ian Botham and many more.  For me it is still Viv Richards. There is something to this man’s incredible arrogance that makes it appear to the general public as supreme confidence, which it probably was. Whatever the case he was amazing to watch, and on this particular tour he didn’t make one score below 70.

In this shot he is coming back up the race after being dismissed on 96 (probably trying to hit a boundary for his ton).  I’m wondering what possessed me to stand right in the middle of the race to take this shot. Today’s attendants wouldn’t allow such boldness.

1983

I don’t remember going to this match in 1982, but I am fascinated to know how I got so close to the presentation. You must remember that my camera at that time had a fixed lens of probably 50mm, so to get this tight a shot I must have been in the front row of the onlookers.

Tony Grieg (ex-English cricketer, and Australian TV commentator) interviews David Gower as he accepts the award for player of the series.

At the time I was taking all these photos on such a cheap little gadget it never occured to me how much I would appreciate them in the future. In fact, it is part of the reasoning behind my developing thoughts on the unnecessary focus people place on technical perfection and expensive gear. The more time I spend on Flickr, the more I am disillusioned by people who are pushing over-Photoshopping and totally “perfect” images instead of capturing the real life events going on around them. Their amazingly crafted images might look wonderful on a wall, but who is buying them for that purpose? We just look at them on our screen and say ‘wow’, then click “Next Image”.

These old, badly crafted snapshots taken at the MCG gather value over time, and I wish I’d spent more of my life with a camera in hand.

Junior paparazzi stalks the backlots of Hoppers - I get younger looking every day!

My friends in the Deep Purple tribute band, Stormbringer, were engaged to perform at a Bike and Car show held by the Outlaws Gang. I went along to shoot them as well as the many hot (not in the ‘stolen’ sense I hope) vehicles on display. A windy and overcast day brought excellent photograph conditions to capture the detail and immense attention given to these bikie’s babies. After a few hours of suspicious looks from some of them, they eventually softened up and enjoyed the attention I gave them once they realised I actually appreciated their work.

An amazing bike - wins every show in which it's entered

This Triumph engine is larger than that found in some small cars

This could happen to you if you look at a bikie the wrong way.

From a gorgeous old Ford.

Chopper art.

Bikies doing what bikies do best - making noise and messing up the place

Image from my best-selling self-help manual "Chicks can look cool too".

The winners

Check out the full set of images at my Snapshots gallery.

Bike and Classic Car Show 2006

Last night, I undressed her and sat her down next to my hot pizza.  She was flushed red with excitement at being given a chance, but I was still rather hesitant, even a little nervous.  It wasn’t until she put on her party dress and tiara that the truth was ultimately revealed.

I am, of course talking about a bottle of wine.
Now, take a very close look at the label.  Try to ignore the very distracting dress – yes I know, it’s up there with Chris Judd’s girlfriend’s 2004 Brownlow Medal dress.  Those of you possessing better than average wine knowledge will immediately consider four key pieces of information.

1. It’s an Australian wine from either the Barossa, Tasmania, or Victoria.  So, it’s very unlikely to be awful.
2. It’s a Shiraz Cabernet – the Great Australian Red.  This blend is surging locally, and as evidenced by a recent tasting I attended, with very good reason. The rich, juicy spice of shiraz tempered by a dry, refinement, teasing the delicate palates of real wine lovers.
3. It’s 2008.  This would indicate that it’s far too new to drink now.
4. It’s a cleanskin. This will tell you that it’s going to be cheap, but it could give mixed messages on quality.  Right now Australia is nearing the end of a massive wine glut, resulting in much premium wine having to be sold as cleanskins or house brands simply to retain the necessary smaller bottle runs of premium labels.  This means you are very likely to be drinking $15-$45 wine out of a $5-$10 cleanskin bottle.

The real reason I am writing a post about this wine is yet to come.  One of our bottle shop chains opened a new store about a month ago. As part of the opening specials they offered cases of this variety and a Chardonnay.  I bought a dozen of both because:

Each bottle was $2

So, what would you expect from such a new wine at such a low price?  BBQ fodder at best?  Can’t be worth cellaring because it wouldn’t age well?  Wrong on both counts.

I didn’t even bother to let this breath and took a gulp immediately my glass was ready.  And boy, was I in for a surprise! What my glass delivered was a wonderfully engineered blend of both grapes, starting with a smooth warmth on the back of my tongue that continued down the throat without burning anything along the way, and a gentle reminder at the front of my mouth that cabernet also lives here. With time that trademark plum shiraz sweetness grew until I wanted to take more into my mouth at each sip.  In no time at all the bottle was gone, and I was seriously considering opening a second even though it was after midnight and the movie had finished.

So the lesson for today is this.  If some cheap, trashy-looking girl gives you the eye whilst you’re treading the liquor store boards, don’t immediately dismiss her as somebody else’s troubles for the night.  Squint your eyes a little, try to imagine her in a party dress, and imagine the potential rewards you’ll reap if you treat her well.

I’ll be revisiting this little beauty a couple of times every year for the next five to see how she blossoms.

The trip started in dubious fashion, but proved to be probably the most fun I’ve had since being away. White water rafting in Malaysia, on a hot day, in warm water, is absolutely fantastic!

On entering the van I proceeded to the back where the one remaining seat was. On my way I passed an Asian couple, the female telling me I can sit in the front. How nice of her to suggest that I sit in the child seat in between the driver and the guide, when there is a perfectly good seat available behind her. I muttered a polite “I’m right thanks”, and kept going. I don’t know whether she was looking after her Hong Kong mates (I found out later they were all from HK) or simply had a brain fade, but either way I was going to sit where I wanted to sit. The girl who’s belongings were taking up the last remaining available seat seemed terribly offended at having to move them, but my raised left eyebrow seemed to get the message through. Ultimately, I got the best seat in the house, with room to stretch my legs on what turned out to be a three hour ride. For the best part of these three hours, the Über-tourists (1 Portugese, 1 Macau, 2 very HK, 2 modern HK) alternated between Nintendo DS, iPod and sleep, behind either ridiculously Japanese super-sunglasses or those plastic sunvisors that pull down to create tinted welding masks, with towels placed over legs and any nearby windows (except mine – and they wouldn’t have wanted to try!).

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

Meanwhile an absolutely fascinating, thrilling and at times nerve-wracking ride through Malaysian villages over twisting, turning, rising, falling and bumpy roads ensued. It seemed that the driver was getting us in the mood for the rapids. The tourists missed the lot. I didn’t.

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

I tried to begin a conversation at a meal stop with the girls who were sitting next to me, and I initially thought they were just plain rude as they looked away then walked off. I discovered later that they simply didn’t understand English and didn’t know how to say so. Conversely, the girl who suggested I sit in the front turned out to be very nice, and we chatted about photography for a couple of hours on the trip home. Asians certainly aren’t anything like me, but so far they all seem pretty good once you get to know them. I am a little more nervous about Hong Kong though, now that I’ve met a couple of them. It could take a lot of work to make friends there.

Pedro and Donna turned out to be good company throughout the day. I approached Pedro as we waited at the train station for the final transfer to the rafting location. His accent led me to believe he may have been German, and he could speak good English, so I thought he would be worth getting to know. Turns out he is Portugese but with a German mum. His partner, Donna, was very quiet but sweet, and is based in Macau (effectively HK). I’m going to a nearby island tomorrow with them to do some snorkelling.

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

Pedro and I were the two front paddlers on our craft, led by Snoop Dogg. So named because that’s exactly who he looks like. It seems that tour group guides in both Thailand and Malaysia never have real names. They always go with something memorable.

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

The rapids themselves were rated 3-4. This made them moderate, and although I was apprehensive when first seeing them from the train, once I got into the water I felt totally at home. I think I’m a natural at this as I was able to easily ride the waves and used my paddle intuitively to keep balance. Three or four of the half dozen rafts capsized during the run, so I think we did well to remain in control for the entire 30-odd kilometres. I took four opportunities during the trip to leave the boat for a body-ride down some of the more gentle rapids, as the water was warm and my camera was in it’s waterproof case.

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

The second half of the day was spent in torrential rain, making it even more fun. The ride home was via large speedboat and the surrounding dense tropical mountains were very much Jurassic Park. All in all, it was an awesome day, and one that I could repeat daily if time and money allowed.

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

From Asia – Malaysia, Padas River rapids

There were a surprising number of bouts featuring kids – I mean under 12 kids. However, they took it very seriously, and it was amusing to watcht the mums urge their boy on to hurt the other, whilst complaining that the other boy used some illegal tactic to harm their own son. This was another one of those times when I wish I had my fast lens and DSLR camera.

I’d like to talk about the long and arduous process I put myself through in choosing a suitable point and shoot camera for my upcoming travels. I own two Canon DLSRs and an old Powershot S50, but I wasn’t prepared to lug a big body and even bigger and expensive lenses all around Asia for 53 days.

Oh – yes, I’m leaving my office job and travelling through seven countries from June until August. You’ll be able to read (I hope) a daily blog update from me, including photos, once I kick it off.

Back to my shopping challenges. I originally wanted to take the camera scuba diving, so had almost settled on the Canon G9 – it’s compact, the best quality money can buy in a P&S (point and shoot), offers most of the professional features of an SLR, and is able to be matched with a number of professional waterproof housings. However, it only offers a 35-210mm lens or something like that. The telephoto is OK for travel, but you can’t shoot landscapes and large buildings without a wider lens. Whilst researching the Canon I fell in love with the Panasonic Lumix FZ18 as soon as I picked it up, but was worried about the size of the body and the lower quality of image. After trying it out for a couple of days I have nothing to worry about. No, it won’t fit in my pocket, but I intend to be using it all day anyway.

Those of you who know much about P&S’s will realise that their sensors are very small, and with the large amount of pixels shoved onto these sensors the resultant images are usually quite noisy. However, the FZ18 limits the sensor to a reasonable 8Mpx, and cleverly drops it further to 6 or 5 if it has to salvage image quality in lower light situations. From a practical standpoint, a quality Leica lens offers 28-500 – a fantastic range for travel photography, and the camera incorporates a bunch of excellent travel-related features that will make my life much easier. Features such as voice and text tagging, timezone management, fast and intelligent auto settings, lightening auto-focus, custom modes, RAW, full manual control and an incredible anti-shake mechanism (isn’t shooting handheld at 1/15 and 500mm, and getting tack sharp results science fiction?) mean I’ll be able to concentrate on taking photos and enjoying my trip, and worry less about the technical aspects of photography.

Initially I decided not to bother shooting whilst diving, as there is no dedicated waterproof housing available for the Panasonic, however I recently discovered the EWA-Marine range of underwater and all-weather bags. These fit pretty much any camera type with the use of a lens adaptor, so one of those is winging it’s way to me now.

I took the Panasonic for a test drive at the Carlton v Brisbane game last week, and as you can see from the results, I was able to get right in amongst it from way up in the stands. There is a reasonable amount of noise at these higher ISO’s, but you know what? I don’t care. Unless I am planning to enlarge and print an image, the intention is to capture an event and I think this camera does a very good job in almost every circumstance.

The Fev on the lead

Fev lays down on the job

Heath Scotland feeds out a pass

More to come tomorrow, as I wander around the city of Melbourne at night.

If you’ve ever thought about starting your career in IT then our Hawaiian Shirt Day yesterday  must just about seal it for you.  Never mind the fact that it was actually the Creative Design team that came up with the idea.  Hey, you don’t think these things can be left to the actual IT department do you?  I am a little surprised we weren’t looking for our whitest t-shirts and pants for “Mac v PC Day” though…

If you want more career incentives, go check out the rest of my shots from the day.

Donna, Ken & I travelled 90 minutes to the other side of the bay to Zante Estate winery, where we experienced the art of hand-picking Chardonnay (the other varieties weren’t ready yet). Today’s gallery shows some of the fun we had, but the best part of all was eating and drinking during the break.

Our hosts put on the tastiest Greek food I can ever remember eating. Delicious marinated meats, dips, home-grown salad etc. And some Retsina wine that is normally only made for the family. Great stuff – apparently made with pine resin! If you don’t believe me go look it up on Wikipedia. They were even so nice as to give me six bottles to take home afterwards! It’s very refreshing and should be drunk very cold. Has a white wine flavour initially, with a kind of Greek spirit kick to it once you “chew” on it for a moment.
Of course I also purchased a mixed dozen of their retail range, and will try them out in the next few months.

Thanks again Duane – it was great to see the wine-making process, and to meet your family.

I spent Friday afternoon at Princes Park in Carlton, watching Chris Judd’s first run with the Blues, in a practice match against the Western Bulldogs. He played as you would expect him to – like it is only him and the ball out there on the park. It’s going to be an exciting year!

More important was the final chance to farewell the legendary Robert Heatley Stand, which has stood for everything that Carlton fans hold dear about their club, but is about to be demolished to make way for redevelopment. This shot was taken from the stand at half time, as the fans played kick to kick on the ground. Ah, those were the days.

Two things stood out as I sat quietly in the stand, observing human behaviour around me. One is that no-one ever seems to get hit by a stray football. You can see how many people are on the ground, and there seems to be a football for at least every four people out there. Yet, every flying football I could track seemed to land safely on the ground.

The second is that most football fans are not exactly mental giants, and many are simply oafs.
At a game in which coaches should be experimenting with every idea under the sun, we still have the crowd roaring disapprovingly whenever too many handpasses are strung together, or an obvious passing option is ignored for the more risky centering ball. I just shake my head in tired amusement, never surprised, but always wondering why people around me can’t see the things that I can.

The oafs are the ones that simply must abuse anything on the park that is not wearing the colours of their team. Never mind that the eyesight of these oafs is clearly sub-standard, and those that wear glasses to assist seem not to understand the rules of football! Never mind that every noise that comes out of their mouth (because they are just noises, not words) explodes like a projectile into an atmosphere of women, children, small dogs and other oafs with the volume and venom more reasonably attributed to someone at war!

Football grounds are fascinating places, and a little chilling at times. I looked around me as I kept shifting in my old boarded seat, and wondered how many of the people here today were part of the “Carlton Crew”, or which of them ran the local crime syndicate. After having watched a couple of episodes of Underbelly, in which the Robert Heatley Stand was the meeting place mid-week for Melbourne’s most notorious gang members, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering “how many murderers and drug-dealers have I sat next to, possibly even shared a laugh or a clap on the back with?”. Now that the old stand is being demolished, I can satisfy myself with the knowledge that the MCG Great Southern Stand and any part of the Docklands Stadium doesn’t hold enough character for these types. This season I’ll be cheering on Chris Judd as he delivers a perfect pass into the chest of the Fev, safe in the knowledge that I will be sitting with harmless, common oafs.

I’ve only been vaguely tempted to buy a Playstation 2 previously, but now I have a burning need. I WANT this! WANT WANT WANT!
Ok, so anyone playing this thing will end up looking like a total dork. Especially as the guitar looks like one of those plastic toys with buttons instead of strings that get confiscated from little kids five minutes after Christmas.
The game itself works a little like the Dance Dance Revolution atrocities you may have seen over the last few years. You need to hit the right buttons on the fretboard and strum at the right time to match the display. Sort of a Simon Says for the modern generation.

But hell, in spite of all the dorky crappy plasticness – this game totally rocks!

And with tracks like Ace Of Spades, Bark At The Moon, Higher Ground, I Love Rock n Roll, Iron Man, Killer Queen, Smoke On The Water, Symphony Of Destruction and many many more how could it fail to?