The Batblog by Photobat | Portrait and Wedding

This is Ken, or Dicko as i’ve known him for about 20 years. We met when I was a cub and he was a scout leader. Now i’m not a cub and he isn’t a scout leader.

He is retired and plays with the trains out in Evandale, just behind the market. He has built himself a little diesel locomotive that you can go have a ride on every second Sunday.

Renee and Nathan may look familiar to a few people, you may remember there from this wedding photo. That was years ago and now they have added Lachlan to the family. As per the wedding, standard location was thought about and then dismissed for something unique and a bit more meaningful. Enter Salamanca Market, the biggest and busiest market in Tasmania. So along with a cute 11 month old and 2 adoring parent we also had a few hundred Hobartians and tourists to work with. It was a bit of fun, one point I was walking backwards up the hill into a throng of small tourists who really were more interested in looking side to side at wooden fruit than straight ahead at the rapidlt approaching photographer in reverse mode.

Lachlan was awesome, such a great kid. This is really the best part of my job, hanging out with clients on their wedding days and then coming back and meeting the new additions when they turn up.

We spent a little time at a village called Saama, it is located on the top side of Efate about 40 minutes drive from Port Vila. There are more photos to come from the village itself, these images are from the Chiefs (last image) chicken farm. It is encouraged for the men to stay and work in the village, and if possible to create some money. The chief is leading by example and has set up a chicken farm up the hill from the main village. It is only in start up phase but there are a heap of chickens running about and strangely, a cat. It seems that the cat does not each the chickens only the rats who try to get the eggs. He does love a treat of coconut, which is fed to the chickens in these photos by Irene the chiefs wife.

Thje first thing that hit us about Port Vila was how dirty it is. after that we noticed all the colour. It was everywhere and just added a feeling of fun to the city. These shots are taken around the main bit of Port Vila, there are lots of other bits but this was the main touristy bit.

If you think people are nuts about the world cup here, you should head to a developing country. Vanuatu was World Cup crazy when we were there. There were flags everywhere, some real flags some home made, the bakeries had flags on cakes, stores were decorated, soccer balls everywhere and people had wrist bands to show their team. Even the rubbish trucks had flags on them. We stayed in an area called Seaside, the suburb included the poorest area in the city. Most of these shots were taken around the streets there. Not everyone has TVs, we discovered many community TVs were set up and left on all night so that the locals could gather and watch the games. It was great to have something to discuss with the locals, sometimes we didn’t have a choice, it was the first thing they asked us. “What do you think of Harry’s red card?”  I’m not a football person but did pay attention to all the news so i could join in conversations. These conversations lead to some amazing things including a tour of the slum like area of Seaside. More on that soon.

Heaps of blog posts will be coming soon with shots from Vanuatu. Yes there are some tropical type of photos but there are also some social documentary shots from some of the poorer areas of the main island Efate. And there will be more tutles, including our sponsor turtle.

5 Silvers for some prints and another silver for a wedding album. The wedding album went on to take out 2010 Tasmanian Wedding Album of the Year. Second time in a row i’ve picked up that one. Very happy about that. I’ll post the wedding album in it’s entirety soon… maybe even make it a slideshow.

Thanks to all the great clients who he were involved in making these shots happen!

Over Easter Vikashni and I managed to get a little bit of a holiday in Cairns to see the rain and Brisbane to see the hotel room and Alice in Wonderland (expected so much more Mr Burton…) and the Gold Coast to have a little look about. Here are a few random photos of places, animals and views that we saw.

Yes, I took no photos of the beach at Surfers, we got quite wet in the rain in cairns while looking for a waterfall we could hear but the fog/rain kinda made it invisible and also saw a 500 or so year old fig tree which was surprisingly cool.

Just back from Queensland, so here are a couple of photos of Canberra from ages ago.