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The enchanted Forest – Pitlochry

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I kinda expected a dead body to float to the surface here, this place had the blackest water and the most eerie atmosphere, it was almost like you could hear the hooves of the horse bearing the knights (or goblins depending on your fairy tale) coming thru the trees…

Its actually a place called Faskally Forest in Scotland which is a completely man made / planted area, it was used as a place to train younger 'foresters' in the way of repairing areas ravaged by war. In any case, its a cool spot and apparently the fishing is pretty good too (no dead bodies that I could find either ;) )

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Coffee Helper

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I need to watch my kids around my coffee, I remember a few years back after roasting a nice batch of beans I woke up one morning to half of them in the bath tub and the other half out the back door :(
That was Chaos living up to her name :)
This particular day Tickles was being pretty helpful, gave me a hand putting the cooled beans into a tin, half ended up on the ground and I am sure i have a bit of extra grit with my beans but hey, it all adds to the unique flavour I suppose

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Airliners from YSSY

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viewed from my backyard :)

Somedays when the light is nice its enjoyable to hang out in the back yard with tickles, my Piccolo Latte (India Elephant Hills AA Grade roasted by yours truly if you really want to know) and watch the big beasts of the air sail past.
I was also just checking them China Eastern aircraft to make sure they had all their engine cowling bits still attached;) Between China Southern and China Eastern there are alot of flights from these two carriers now, and another interesting player, which by the looks of things is backed by China Southern anyways is Xiamen Airlines. Clearly these dudes opted for the cheap default livery (paint scheme) 'cause it looks like the Boeing showroom demonstrator :)
That said, anything that gets more 787's in the air is a good thing in my books, good onya Boeing for striking a blow against the ugly aircraft ;)

now onto my leet segway from Chinese airlines, my recent roast of coffee included a really nice batch from Mt Gaoligong in China and the aforementioned india Elephant Hills AA, these two blended together are awesome and with my new found style of the Piccolo delivery makes any day a good one :)

In Album 25/06/2017

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I only have 12.5 million other vivid images to go ;) but I'll save those for another day :)

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Here are my pano versions of the SOH, each shot is 3 images stitched into a panorama, I could have probably done it with a single image for each one at a slightly wider zoom, but hey where is the fun in that :) luckily the animations did not move too quick hence you can rattle of a few shots and capture pretty well the same animation frame..

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Navigator

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This child does not need a bloody map, she was working it up for the cuteness factor, she pretty well (like her sister) knows the zoo backwards, all revolving around the little icecream stand in the middle :)

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Vivid Opera House

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be sure to zoom in and check that detail
I think this years projections onto the opera house have been the best by far, the technical quality of the projections is quite amazing , the sharpness and resolution of the resultant images/animation on the sails was great.

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Pregnant Planet

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maybe not the pregnancy shoot Sarah Joy was after :) but thats one more down in my quest of the family planet series – chaos is the only one who has escaped so far :)

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I think its kinda appropriate actually ;) .. 'cause when women are pregnant its like they are the only ones on the planet ;)
Don't worry ya'all, i got a lounge to sleep on :)

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Real men go to vivid

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…when its raining and with kids and have a picnic.

I had promised Tickles I would also take her to see the vivid lights after last time leaving her at home and only taking Chaos, so this time we prepped up with homemade hot soup in thermos's, snacks, bread and soft drink (settle people this one has got less sugar than orange juice ;) and I needed some bargaining chips :) ) and headed into battle.

So we busted our way down to Kirribilli and had a giggle at the throngs of photographers losing their lollies over the 'puddle' shot ;) and setup for our picnic. It was pretty nice, hot soup, great view and company that pretty well refused to to let me take any pictures (i did sneak a few in tho ;) ) – on that note, the only opportunity to get a shot of chaos and tickles where they would let me, I could not for the life of me (in the split second I had :( ) remember how to adjust the flash to rear curtain sync, the last time I did that was like 4 years ago :) Its very useful for using the flash to get some light on the subject but allowing the shutter to drag (ie 1 or 2 seconds), long enough to pull in some the light in the background, hence my only shot of the picnic was crap, but its a nice memory.

So about half way thru our soup tickles pipes up with 'can we go on the bridge?' ….. yeah sounded like a great idea at the time, but when the good folk 85 years ago built the harbour bridge they did not really have dudes with prams in mind, i had to carry the blasted thing loaded with stuff up 5 flights of stairs, at least the cycle side (western side of the bridge) has a little ramp in the middle… that would be like really useful on the eastern side too.
Anyways we trundled across the bridge ohh and ahhing at the lights and we even made it to the south pylon where tickles promptly fell asleep, chaos and I were like … c'mon man it was your idea! Then it rained. I guess she timed the sleep well I suppose. So back across the bridge in the pouring rain, some might say a umbrella would have been a good idea at this point.. but real men don't use umbrellas ;) they also carry their pram and child down 5 flights of stairs :) Did I mention a ramp would have been useful?
All credit to chaos tho, not a single whinge at all and even when we could not get a icecream, seriously it would have got washed away :) she stoically battled on :) h/t chaos.

In Album 11/06/2017