A letter from Fiji...

the ITM Fiji 400

Fiji for your next conference? Have a look at this fun day.... with thanks to Rosie DMC and of course thanks to Rosiloa for permission for the use of their tracks from their latest album: Ancient Pulse...

If you are having trouble viewing this slideshow (and waiting a minute or so for it to load didn't help) then there is a smaller but less clear version to view here

The Beautiful Dress

I have to admit I had never seen a truly amazing dress up close. There are so many beautiful dresses around, and Fiji weddings tend to be more casual anyway, I think; and I guess back when I was wedding dress shopping all those years ago it was in a small town where dresses were made to order rather than there being a lot you could see up close. I read bridal magazines of course, but you know I expect those to look amazing, after all they're being worn by models... 

No one had seen Rebecca's dress, and when I asked if I could take some photos of it it was still hanging in its big bag. Everyone gathered around in Bec's room as it was unzipped, family and close girl friends and as it slid out I thought it was possibly one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. It was soft, silky and the most beautiful subtle colour, with sparkling crystals picking up the form... but the best was yet to come.... 

But I get ahead of myself. Nathan and Rebecca, an extremely likeable self assured young couple, were getting married at the Shangri-La Fijian, a resort I really like, and not just because of its beautiful location surrounded by lagoon and beach on the Coral Coast south of Nadi (this is the view from the bride's room, stunning huh? and the lagoon side is different again).

 

The wedding was attended by a large group of close and obviously loving family and friends, and was an amazing day. Rebecca owns a hairdressing business and I'll state here that I'd like to shoot hairdresser's weddings from now on! The hair and makeup were just beautiful to shoot, and the details were stunning....

 

While the Bride and her best girls worked flat out doing the gorgeous hair and makeup, over where the groom and his party were getting ready there was lots going on too. Apart from the quiet moments both parties were sharing as they prepared, there were also celebrations of Greek tradition over at Nathan's room that were fascinating (to a girl from Dunedin) and a very worthy photo subject on their own. But I won't share those in detail here.... this post is sort of about the whole wedding, but mostly about the dress....

 

So to the best part: the dress. The reason this dress is extra amazing is because it is the sort of the dress that doesn't look its best on a hanger or even on a model, even though it still looks pretty incredible on either of those.... it.... needs.... a body! Almost no one could wear this dress like Rebecca did and I hope she proudly shows it to her daughters and/or grand daughters one day; to really come alive this dress needs perfect arms and upper body, and curves: a combination that almost nobody and certainly no models can provide. It looked amazing.... and so the magic began...

As we walked down the stairs the dress lit the muted surrounds...

 

It shimmered in the middle of the Shangri-La chapel...

 

Amongst all the friends and family it was the centre of attention...(can't help it, love the movement in this image)...

 

It caught the late afternoon and evening light...

 

 
 

at times it looked nostalgic like a scene from a classic movie...

  

and it moved, swirled and flowed as they danced... 

  

So that Nathan only had eyes for his wife....

 

I have many other favourites from this fantastic day, and I'll probably put up another post of other quirky faves. But in the meantime there's more with the "sneak peek" for everyone on facebook: so I'll end with saying thanks Rebecca, Nathan, friends and family for including me in your fantastic day! Oh and of course where was the dress from? Arushi Bridal of course; if you're thinking of indulging in the dress of your dreams for your big day I now have a definite opinion: go for it!! 
 

where in the world are we?

Sadly the title is not a competition with rich prizes, so for everyone except Wilson who has already recognised it the answer is we spent 4 nights last week in... Suva! For the rest of the world Suva is the capital of Fiji, and is around 3 hours drive south of Nadi (where the international airport it).

Our stay in Suva is remarkable for the fact that although we have now lived in Fiji for 3 1/2 years I have never spent more than 2 hours at a time there, generally driving in, going to the apple service place and "cost-u-less", grabbing a quick coffee at Bulaccino Raiwaqa, and heading home, taking the obligatory photo of Korovou (here and here) on the way out. What this means is that everything I know and believe about Suva pretty much comes from blogs:- Paradise not found, Oceanic, Awesome Cake, and Lunch in Suva... Yes that's right, I went to Suva expecting hoards of intelligent witty folks who make erudite comments while dining in quirky restaurants, even though I was wary of muggers and hepatitis (yes thanks for that Albie). 

The first thing we discovered while trying to get to the school convention (which is the reason we were in Suva) is that Laucala Beach is not in Nausori. Yes that's right the two are not even close. Don't ask. We still got to our destination in time by some miracle... Second in Suva they have lovely water front housing...NOT! The above image just fascinates me, these are squatter houses built illegally as far as I can gather from the locals (feel free to chime in) over some pipes by the river. But it's looks quite picturesque no? This is just down from the KFC which marked our turnoff. Why didn't someone just say "turn right at the KFC"?!!!!!?!

While the kids were in convention, which was by the way extremely good, and will feature in another post (yes, still not sticking to the chronological thing, sorry Lee; also I will still post about Udu, trip home etc); I sneaked away a few times for a bit of tiki-touring. Suva downtown is fascinating, a real mix of old colonial buildings and new shiny ones, including the big-box style MHCC which even has escalators! I looked up "lunch in Suva" for dining ideas, and would have offered my services to go and dine with them and take photos, however I sensed that having an overweight 40+ year old kaivalagi with a huge camera tagging along would have completely and utterly blown their street cred... instead I simply read and appreciated the run down on the hibiscus festival food (as we were staying just up the hill)...

The idea to photograph the contrasts in downtown Suva is not actually mine, Neil Stollznow was the one who originally started taking these sorts of images showing the old colonial Suva contrasting with the new high rises. But I had to continue the tradition, even though I didn't feel inclined to wander too far incase I never found my car again. Note that the streets are quieter than usual- it's after 5pm, so everyone's heading off home... 

 

To finish I will shamelessly post something er... lifted from one of the above blogs, her reaction (aieeeee it burns!) reminds me of me eating with the other parents at Vivrass MH foodcourt (and nearly snorting water out my nose); though I did have to buy it myself. Someone please syndicate this guy immediately! We need to see more cartoons like these...

Na Vale ni Veitaba

As always when we've been away in NZ I'm behind the 8-ball. One of the reasons for that is that often I will either go somewhere with no internet, or I drop the macbook in for some sort of tweak or work for a week while I'm over (as I did this time). Then I always get back here and chase my tail for a few weeks and the first thing to go is the blogging.

I am absolutely loving the photos from Udu and will share a few soon. As I was saying we were heading for a destination I wasn't familiar with, I just went with it and enjoyed the view. One of the things that surprised me was my improvement in understanding Fijian. Lets not overstate this, really it's just the progression from only understanding "Bula" and "Vinaka" to having maybe 10 words more I can understand (even if not pronounce); but in Labasa (which I loved; big, busy and clean) I spotted this shop (photo above) while I was waiting for Eileen and I could actually translate the sign: the house of photography! I knew this because one time Isoa greeted me "Bula Dauveitaba!" (Hi Photographer! well I hope that's what it is...) and I of course replied respectfully ;) "Bula mBosso"... 

Anyway the trip took us across Vanua Levu, and out to the east coast where we caught a boat at Wainigadru (I can't pronouce this one either, it's as bad for a Kaivalagi as trying to say Nagado...: g is a "ng" sound and there's an n tucked in before the d that you can't see...)... here's a sneak peek...

Aunty Lena and I went and had a look at the village pool while Eileen organised us some goods and transport, then we boarded and went on our way.... (that's the Wainigadru shop above, and some copra is on the roof above the sign on the other building)... to be continued...

So I'll have to stop now and get back to actual photography work... I will show more soon, infact I'm toying with a comparison of the Dunedin farmers market (in New Zealand) with the Labasa market (where we stopped briefly on the way home). But for the rest of the afternoon it's head down over computer, and the valeniveitaba? today for me that's right here at the computer and printer ...in my lounge!

Deepest Darkest Labasa

I've been on a trip with friends to Udu in the north. Don't know where that is? well actually I didn't know where that was either! Even as I was travelling there. But I did know we were firstly flying to Labasa, on the other big island in Fiji: Vanua Levu. Pretty much everything I know about Vanua Levu is from here of course...

Well Labasa was a surprise! It's really neat, clean, prosperous, sort of like the little hick country town in the back blocks with a big income from the surrounding districts. I really liked it, and of course I have LOTS of photos to get round to sharing. 

But for today just two from the airport. I have a new camera (thanks P&V for the help, and Miriam of course), and a new instruction book to read as well. So I tried out shooting black and white in camera. The good thing about a black and white jpeg is that you just reduce the size and it's ready to blog, yay (not that I'm claiming they're perfect of course). So here we are: Labasa in black and white...

 

 

I liked the contrast between the two cultures here (and of course the obvious relationship between the people in the moment). The girl from England is free to travel alone, wear a sleeveless top (though she's certainly not really wearing anything skimpy or tight) and talk unchaperoned to the guy from Vorovoro where she's just been staying... a note: she made a point of telling me how great it is there too, so it must have been another great experience from the friendly north, just like those I will share... in later posts... And if I write vina a va a levu it's not because the "k" has jammed on my keyboard... more to come...

nb: I also had a lovely photo of 2 kids peeping out the window waiting for the plane... but it occurred to me it's no longer cool to post pics of kids without permission eh?

It's a bit dark isn't it?

I wrote this post, then lost it... which of course meant it was another 3-4 days before I could be bothered having another go. So this time I won't waffle and will keep it short and sweet. and throw in a couple of clips...

So we had earth hour again, like last year, and again it was a lot of fun. There is always some worry that it will clash with the Hong Kong Sevens, as it did; however this year the radio stations stressed that it was all about turning off lights (and the TV could stay on). I was never sure about this light bulb business, despite the fact that Treasure changed all it's light bulbs to the eco friendly ones several years ago, but it made sense after watching this clip (below). Sadly it also exposed some short givings in NZ's prime minister...oh man! I voted for him! But then again what is a "blue-green" to do? basically I want to vote for someone who lowers taxes except for polluters...

Anyway so I popped some of the photos from earth hour, taken in candle light, into the above story board (thanks to "dress it up" for the action) for Katrina to post on the Treasure Blog... and the GM said "er it's a bit dark isn't it?' (hulloooooo? it was dark?). I told him it's nothing the D700 won't fix...

In the meantime here's one more related video. enjoy. remember on the slower connections press play, then press pause and wait for it to load. Then you can watch straight through...

as promised....

Well I promised a few posts ago to share a video clip I really enjoyed, and finally I'm getting around to doing that. It really spoke to me, and to have someone like Zack Arias admit to occasional loss of confidence really made me feel better about my own self flagellation... anyway why keep talking, have a look for yourself. If you're on a slower connection like me then press play, then press pause. Let it load for a while, then it'll play straight through.Or if it really won't play very well watch the original here...

Pretty cool huh! Also very timely for me, as I'm working on building a photography website, is his website critiques which of course confirmed I'm not quite on the right track!! OK but probably what I'm doing is appropriate for the market here.... But do have a look at the critiques, they are not only really informative, but Zack and Meg are really funny! I'm talking about Zacks wife Meg there of course, not me (Over here Meg and I would call each other "yaca" (yah-thah") which means namesake, to save confusion...). 

One of the points Zack made was that when he opened some of the sites (he used different words of course) he couldn't tell what they did, what sort of photographer they were, so how was someone going to know whether or not they should hire them? This question of what sort of photographer came up a few months ago for me. I have oddly for some reason thought that like many of my fellow mwac's (mom with a camera) that I was a child and family photographer. I offered to take some shots of this family for practice (and thank heavens not for a hefty fee) but when we got out there it suddenly occured to me that despite fine fine training from QCCC I actually hadn't taken a family photo in a long time, so why on earth did I think I was a child and family photographer?! And I knew I was no Tara Whitney... But it was good practice...

So similar issues come up building a website though it's interesting to see a style and type of photography emerging despite myself. Sometimes I can see such a distinct improvement, and other times I discover stuff I like so much from a few years back that despite the lack of technical know how I had then I wonder in despair if I've actually gone backwards! 

Talking of technical know how this cracked me up...

 

This is Richard from the fabulous Red Leaf taking a workshop at the recent Beyond get together. Desiree who took this inspired shot says to tell all of you they (redleaf and their photography, textures or workshops) are well worth checking out...

Finally I found the first photo of this post deep in the archives, and it has the most wonderful grain! It's from the D70 and I've looked at the exif data, but I'm still at a loss as to how I achieved that... This is basically sooc (straight out of the camera) with no work done, it was shot as a jpeg., though my save for web has altered the grain a little (never mind for these purposes). What I did have to do was take out all the spots from all the muck on the sensor! oh my word! No wonder I liked the 50mm f/1.8 lens so much back then, I'm sure going below an aperture of 2.8 was the only way to hide those damn things!! 

Best go now, coming up soon will be pretty scenic pictures of Fiji and the kids. Because we haven't had enough of those lately and it will give a break from all this navel gazing...

...and some more

So as you can guess I'm sitting at the computer with photoshop open and having the usual crisis of confidence. Zack Arias described it beautifully in a clip I am going to embed in the next post, but in the meantime I'll just say (again) how hard it is to look hard and objectively at your own work as I've had to do lately (in the process of building a new website)... What am I getting around to? Well I thought it might be nice to take a break and post some photos I really love. No, not because of any great skill on my part, simply because it was the most stylish and lovely wedding (the sort where frankly it's pretty hard for a photographer to fail) of two really nice people. Did I mention that Lisa sent me pineapple lumps and beautiful organic coffee? Really I should have paid them... here's some more...

{leaving the chapel}

yes, everyone was crying, actually Chad was crying too. But I won't post those... beautiful emotion...ok, I was crying too, I'm terrible like that. A wedding should be as good as a blockbuster movie no? I think it's a real privilege when people allow me to be their wedding photographer...

OK I'll stop now... no, one more, just to show the beautiful reception set up between the pool and the sea, influenced by Lisa's design skills...

Congratulations again Chad and Lisa, what a beautiful day...

(PS a note on the last photo... I took along my 8 year old to act as a voice operated light stand while I did some shots of the reception set up. It didn't work as well as it should have. In this photo I had to crop/clone him out. He has walked into the frame with the sb800 and pointed it at his own face which really ISN"T big enough or white enough to act as a reflector! the terrible thing was I didn't notice this until I downloaded these shots...but there's enough and they're fine)

  

next time....

When we were over in NZ recently we were invited to camp at Lynnore and Andrew's "private" campground on part of their farm where they camp with their friends. We didn't really have time to get the tent out of storage at Grans', so we just went up for the day... and what a great day!

The weather was hot, infact hot enough for kids who live in Fiji to go swimming in the river. The Middlemarch area is also known for the most spectacular and rare cloud formations. Well apparently the cloud that day wasn't as good as it gets, but I thought it was pretty amazing... Lynnore and I headed out with the cameras and took turns with the circular polarising filter and basically agreed to spend longer exploring and photographing another time, though the next time will probably be in Fiji. We were playing with our 10-20mm lenses, so if you think my photo of the dog's nose looks close, trust me... it was really close! The kids played all the great games you play when there are no TV's or electronic games, in fact I didn't capture Tom who was down at the river fishing, then enjoying the wide open spaces on a borrowed bike; or Alice who was away helping with the irrigation (and learning to drive)!

It was a great day, but I will stop talking show a few images that really don't do it justice. Next time (next year) we will bring the tent and camp!

The almost surreal thing was going in less than 48 hours from playing on grassy river banks to sitting in the tropics on the barge we were catching home to the island after our flight. Or am I the only one who finds this sort of thing surreal, is everyone else used to the marvel of international air travel? Certainly it's wonderful to be able to still find a place where you can watch kids enjoying simple play without modern technology... next year....

Why we didn't buy pressies...

for everyone when we went to NZ recently.... 

Prouds department store in Nadi after the water went down (you can see the watermark up on the escalator in the full size version).

This furniture store lost all of its stock when the flood washed it out the windows. But I like the irony of the sign "sorry we are closed"  (in case you hadn't noticed?!)...

Taking a break from the clean-up...

and back down to it...

Over at the river Bulaccino was already cleaned up and open for business. The kids were still leaping off the bridge which was really not so smart, as various debris including sofas were floating past... So I took two photos and then went in (I didn't want them to start playing for the camera)! It was the 19th of January, and we hadn't left the island since the 29th of December! so it was great to catch up with some friends (including the one waving in this photo)...instead of present shopping for our trip home...

Nadi luckily bounces back incredibly fast, and there's no reason at all not to continue to visit Fiji as normal... and yes, this was no excuse for not taking presents home... some of the best shopping in Fiji is tucked away safe and sound... in the departure lounge of the Nadi International Airport!!

PS: A big hi to Aunty Lee: more photos of the kids soon...

PPS: D200 with the 17-55mm lens for versatility, topaz adjust filter used here too...