Kapa’s Blog

Thought I’d share this candid photo I took of 6 week old Jorge, the expression on his face is priceless.

Came home today to find that my gorgeous wife had been busy preparing for this weekend baking koulouria, tsoureki and painting the eggs the traditional colour red.

A quick snap I took in the kitchen.

I’ll be off-line this weekend spending time with the people I love. I’ll take this opportunity to wish all family, friends, past a future clients a safe & happy Easter this year.

Kapa

Wow, what happened to March? Can’t believe how quickly it’s passed, been too pre-occupied with many things & before you know it April is here. My birthday was even last month & that day passed just like any other.

There was a couple of personal projects that just had to be done, I was on a very tight timetable with a lot to do. After a number of 15 hour days and help from family, finished on time.

There was also the Greek Festival of Sydney, which I wanted to attend. As luck would have it, never made it.

Inspired by a mate, New York Photographer Christos Hountas who updated his website recently, I have also started making changes to my website. They are still in “development” mode and I won’t make any promises as to when the new site will be on-line. What I can say is the colour scheme & layout will be very similar to my blog, however the look, feel & navigation will be similar to what I currently have. The website & blog will be more integrated, with links & references between the two seamless. More importantly for clients, I will be implementing a new on-line gallery as well as information & resource pages however these will be available some time after the new site is on-line. If you have any idea’s or suggestions, feel free to drop me an e-mail, use either the contact page from my main web-site or post a comment here.

Photography wise I have been busy as well. I have experimented with some high-key shots using multiple flash units, something I want to try with a bride however since the setup takes time (something which is usually scarce on a wedding day) I need to have the setup process down to a fine art otherwise it ain’t gonna happen. I even managed to shoot a couple Greek Orthodox Christenings, the first was twin boys, James & Peter (Dimitri & Panayi) followed by another boy, Jamie (Dimitri). One of the options I provide to clients is to provide them the images I shoot on CD/DVD that have been batch converted straight out of the camera, no additional editing or fine tuning on my behalf. This is great for parents as it allows them to pick & choose which pictures they want to print at their own leisure, and also saves them dollar$ as they don’t pay for my time to convert & print for them.

The drawback to this is that I find myself almost a month later I have not gone through the images in detail to pick, edit & post images for my blog. If you have followed my previous posts, I like to select about four to six images from each job, maybe stick to a theme, things I like, photographs that caught my eye, things that made me laugh, whatever.

Today, I have just done a very quick scan & picked just one picture. It’s one of the twins (James) in sitting in the baptismal Font.

I picked this one because this shot was actually quite difficult to get. If you have ever been to a Greek Orthodox Christening, at the time I took this photo, you have the Priest holding the child in the Font, the godparent is standing right next to him, next to the godparent you have the Priest’s assistant. To add to the chaos (apart from the fact it was a twin christening), I also had two over zealous paparazzi to deal with. I don’t have an issue with family & friends shooting around me, I’ll even help them out if I have time. To get this image I had to hold the camera over heads & shoot blind, relying on the autofocus to do it’s job & my experience to ensure I had the framing about right (hence the square crop ;-).

As always, 2007 starts of with a bang, fireworks that is.

This is the first time I have even tried to photograph fireworks, so the above is the best of a bad bunch. The “squiggles” are supposed to be straight, it’s the result of hand-holding the camera instead of using a tripod for long exposures. I knew it wasn’t really going to work however I had my camera with me & wanted to give it a go anyway.

A big thanks to Nick & Irene, a couple friends with an beautiful apartment that overlooks Sydney Harbour right at The Rocks. They opened their doors to many people, were great hosts, & it was much appreciated. We so close we could smell the gunpowder, & the fireworks were literary right in front of us. The kids absolutely loved it.
New Years Resolutions, I actually made one many years ago I haven’t broken, and that was not to make any more New Years Resolutions so I’m not going to begin now.

I wish everyone all the best in 2007, & may it be filled with health, love & happyness.

Kapa

Today was our first visit to the beach for this summer. The boys have been going to swimming school for close to 2 months now, there’s a huge difference between the pool & the beach………sand !!!!!

We spent the day at Coogee Beach, this photo was taken from next to the Coogee Surf Life Saving Club.

Our Koumbarie John & Rima had organized a BBQ lunch for all of us in the park overlooking beach, it was a great location, good food, good company, many thanks.

Right next to where we had our picnic, was an activity area for the kids, the most popular attraction for the boys was what they kept calling the “spiders web”.

The first time the younger one got up to the crows nest, he got a bit scared & was afraid to come down on his own. After climbing up & rescuing him, (that was hard work), he got back at least 2-3 more times & had no problem or fear getting down on his own, unlike his father……….

I’m guessing this was about my 38th, maybe even 40th squash competition I have played in. I stopped counting long time ago. Anyway, the team that was dominant for the whole season, who finished minor premiers by a clear 29 points ahead of us, ended up beating us in the grand final tonight. We did make them fight for it though, went down to the 5th game in the 4th rubber, can’t get much closer than that.

So congratulations Steven, Yu Wei, Yoki, Lee & Allan on your well deserved win.

I will also say thanks to my mates, our team, Bill, Kos, Tunks & Paul, it’s been a great season, & undoubtedly the best part of our squash nights is sinking a few cold ones after the game, talking crap & laughing. Cheers guys !!!!!