We were in Coolangatta and then drove down to Byron Bay. Byron was a cool looking place but absolutely rammed with people on a busy weekend so we ended up at a place called Brunswick Heads – a beautiful little town with a setup that’s pretty close to the ideal that I always had in my mind for bringing up a family.

About as close as I wanted to get to Surfers Paradise

The jokers in the rental place gave us a gold rental car on the Gold coast…

Sadly not the rental car…

The second most venomous snake in the world apparently… Glad we didnt see any!

I had a really crap camera with me but somewhere out there is a big pod of dolphins feeding and riding in the waves…

I have been to Melbourne a few times for work, but finally got the chance to have a good wander around the lanes and check out some of the street art.

All photos on an iPhone.

For a long time it was a permanent fixture on my camera because I could never find anything else that was as good in low light, or produced the Bokeh that it was capable of. I think my brov is still in the midst of that addiction and often reminds me of the strength of a low f stop fixed lens.

Obviously it produces a very specific style of image so is not always suitable, or even useful for much of what I shoot these days.

I like to dig it out from time to time though, to remind me that photography gear can be very simple and yet still powerful, and just moving your feet and getting creative with one lens is always a good reminder of where it all started.

Picnic in Balmoral and a dusk wander…

Long walks through some ancient rainforests…

A short break for probably our last 2 person holiday for a long while in Noosa…

Good to be able to get the big camera out for something other than work for the first time in a while….

Exhale…

Saw fins in the water soo many times from the shore, and was about 50 feet away from them snorkeling but they were more interested in finding their lunch than coming to say hi…

Riding the bow wave…

Huskisson harbour

The whitest sand beach in the world, fact (according to the Guiness book of records)

These guys were just chilling beside the path while we were on a stomp through the park…

HUGE beach…no one else around…

Washed up and not too happy about it…

The beach had weird little excavations all over it, some creatures had been busy during the low tide…

Seagull doesnt know where its going…

Explain these shapes then? No idea how they formed…

In between rain showers I took it for a quick stroll down the beach to test it out.

So far there doesnt seem to be much drop off in the auto focus speed or image quality.

There are hundreds of crabs who live in the corner of Manly beach by the rocks, and they all come out at sundown.

All the seagulls here like to hang out on one leg…

This shot is not tweaked at all other than basic levels – the crabs are pretty multi coloured…

They move sooo fast its hard to frame a clean shot before they duck out of sight.

It’s been a moody few days with the first big southerly storm of the approaching winter coming in  – plenty of swell but ruined by heavy onshore winds and rain…