The Batblog by Photobat | Portrait and Wedding

More on Wednesday…

After Athens we headed to Crete, initially we were planning on heading to somewhere else but trying to get the maze of flight and ferry connections to work, Vikashni and I decided that Crete was our best option.

We stayed at three very different places0, the best being Kato Zakros a beachside village that was tiny. Fantastic to wake up to the sounds of the water and just walk a few meters to the Tavern for breakfast.

Windmill ruins, Lasshiti Plateau

We rented our car from this guy in Sitia, Mr Kazamera

The most historic monastary on Crete, Moni Toplou, is across the road from this little church.

One of the friendly patrons in Kato Zakros

Some old gentlemen having coffee who we completly managed to not have a good cross cultural conversation. Even with thephrasebook we couldn’t communicate that well, we pointed at words and phrases and they pointed at their eyes… it seems that when you go to have your afternoon sit down, reading glasses are not high on the to take list.

Ag. Georgios

The historic little town or Herakloin, not recommended to drive their at peak hour…

 More photos soon… next stop Folegandros

We spent yesterday in the Hobart Botanical Gardens taking photos of people pointing… it will make sense when i post about it properly later… until then.. here are some shoes.

I have just added about 2 months worth of images into the portrait of the week section of Photobat.net. For those new, i set myself a little challenge to do a portrait each week just for practice. That was about 270 weeks ago and i’m still going.

The above shot isn’t in the Portrait of the Week, there is a different one. I thought i’d put up an other shot of the Albanian accordian playing busker/begger from Athens. He seemed to be a hit from the post below.

Click here to see the latest shots for portrait of the week

The latest Straight from the Photobat is now online, and now you can read some previous newsletters as there is an archive of them listed to the right side of this page, under the Flick photos. Go have a read, and if you like, subscribe by clicking here!

The latest Tasmanian Life came out yesterday and features some of Kala and Michaels wedding shots. They won’t see them until the get back from their honeymoon in the US, so i thought i’d put a photo up for them. Hope you guy are having a great time!

Another quick shoot before I left. I met Libby at my BNI breakfast and got talking which turned into this family portrait session. It was very timely because Libby’s eldest Alex managed to score herself a job in Melbourne while I was away.

So we took some shots around their home and then up at the Trevallyn Reserve which was just up the road.

Thanks again for the really enjoyable shoot, and congratulations again Alex on the new job, I hope it is being fantastic for you.

Some photos from a little old town called Athens. Things that first hit us about Athens were, the amount of graffiti, how dirty it was and in some places, the amount of cats.

Really, the fascinating ancient sites would be much better if there wasn’t a whole city around it! We stayed in Plaka, right in the old part of Athens. It was really good to get up and just have a wander before the tourists really arrived. One of the most dangerous things in Athens is probably Bretto’s.

I had a message from Tom while I was away letting me know that the 2008 Canon Australian Professional Photography Awards were turning out to be very different from previous years. In a word, it was a bloodbath. Many of great photographers were scoring much l ower than usual, so I was terrified about my images. In the end I did manage to get 3 Silver awards for the below images and I was over the moon about it!

I’m really glad the awards were hard this year. I talked to some photographers and the tough judging is only doing good things for the industry. If what received a gold award the year before, a similar shot probably shouldn’t be getting the same result the next year. The awards are all about improving the industry, and if the similar images keep getting the same awards each year, the industry will not move forwards.

Big congratulations to some of the friends who took out categories this year including Damien Bredberg, Nick Melidonis and Peter Adams. Very big congratulations to Mercury Megaloudis who was one of the many photographers who opened his studio to me when I was first starting out and shared his knowledge. You can see all the top winning images here.

Also, the Tasmanian Division of the AIPP has some really fantastic photographers, quite a few managed to get awards this year which was fantastic to see. It’s not unusual, most years Tasmanians fair very well in the awards. So well done to Alice Bennett, Phil Kuruvita, Richard Bennett, Janie Boyd, Rob Burnett, Sarah McGregor, Janet Perkins, Jan Perkins, David Walker and Ian Wallace for getting more awards for Tasmania!

So my winning images are below, again this year all from commissioned work.

Pip Branson as Rufino the Catalan Casanova, Shot while shooting, Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen in Hobart

Marek, from the British comedy group We Are Klang.

Renne and Nathan. I nearly entered this on last year but changed my mind at the last minute.I’ve regretted not entering, so I had to enter it this time. It’s one of my favourite wedding shots, which is why I have it as a massive canvas in the office!

It’s cold in Tasmania, rain, wind, storms and the rare bit of blue sky welcomed us back after a few weeks in Greece doing the honeymoon thing. Thanks to everyone for their congratulatory messages, we had a fantastic wedding day, it all turned out the way we wanted to including some of the best light I have seen in a long time (Of course i have to say that, i’m a photographer!). Vikashni my wife got me a bit teary when she appeared silhouetted at the end of out wedding alleyway. I’ll post more about the wedding soon and hopefully a couple of shots that the uber talented Rocco Ancora took for us.

I’ll be posting alot of shots from the trip over the next month or so, all in catagories. We ended up in Athens, Crete, Folegandros and Santorini, with Folegandros being the stand out. So some photos below to get started and many more to come.

You can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet… it goes in a little bin that may, or may not be empty…