The Unreal Me

Happy New year everyone! I hope you all had some great celebrations with people you care about and are looking forward to an awesome 2009. I spent Christmas eve and Christmas day with family and it was all good!

Now that the new year is here resolutions are the order of the day and while I have a rather large list I’ll mention just a few of mine.

First is to run another 1/2 marathon and beat my current time of 1hour 53 minutes. Until yesterday I hadn’t been running for 4 weeks but as they say “Start out as you mean to continue” so I got up and did a small run along Tamaki Drive in the middle of the day – damn it was hot. I don’t want to do that resolution any more…

Second. I am going to spend a lot less time on my computer. Yup, surprise surprise I spend vast quantities of time on it. Some productive, creative and interesting, but most of it not. I’m going a bit cold turkey to start off in that apart from work and a quick email check, several days a week I am not going to go near it at all. We’ll see how that pans out but I started it yesterday and while it was tough it was very rewarding. I actually got some writing (Not on a computer) done.

Third, I am going to attempt a photo a day. Every day, rain or shine I will take a photo. I will then post it up at the end of the day or if time is tight I will save them up and post en masse at the end of the week (So you might see up to 7 in one go). The key thing about this challenge is that it keeps me photographing and thinking about photography. A side benefit I see from this also is that if I just start taking random snaps to fill my quota I’ll be unhappy with the results so I’ll actually try harder to shoot more interestingly and of higher quality.

I have also joined the Flickr group 365 in 2009 where I will also be posting the photo a day. I encourage anyone else to join this group too and if you do, let me know.

So now that’s out of the way, here is my first two photos covering January 1st and 2nd.

The first while not a cop out, wasn’t difficult to produce and is not very flash. I was trying to think what to shoot and then stopped to think about how my day was going. I was relaxing, enjoying thinking about photography and about to have some whiskey so I combined them into a photo.

Relaxing on New Years Day

You may have noticed the insignificant role that the whiskey plays in this photo. I would like to make it clear that this is no metaphor for reduction of my whiskey consumption this year – no no no…it’s just that if I had of kept it in the shot, there would have been this ugly umbrella pole sticking out the top of it thereby making the photo even worse.  Totally my fault for setting up an awful shot.

Now, day 2 is a much better attempt I feel and I personally like the result much better. I got up at 4am because I couldn’t sleep and thought “while I’m up why not get out there and get a sunrise” so I went to Shoal Bay under the Auckland Harbour Bridge and waited.

And waited, but nothing was happening. Everything looked dreary and boring so I decided to jump down under the bridge and take some shots of the supports. When I did – WHAM – The sun burst over the horizon and I got about 5-10 minutes where I shot the crap out of the sunrise. I learnt a lot – primarily how damned hard it is to manage exposure with super bright sunlight smashing you in the face.

Sunrise at Shoal Bay, Auckland

So there we have it. Two days down and 363 more to come. I should end this by saying that one last resolution I have is to become good enough at photography this year to actually get a job in the field. Anything – assisting, small business of my own, or toilet cleaner at the Photo Warehouse. Given my noob-ness in the world of photography it’s a tall order but I’ve set it as a goal for the year because only under pain of forclosure do I want to go back to fulltime software engineering and I need a lofty goal to get me moving – fast!

Have a great one!

Uncategorized 365in2009, Computers, Photography, Running

Last Sunday, November 2nd I completed my first ever 1/2 marathon event in the 2008 Auckland Marathon and I am chuffed. A year or so ago I wouldn’t have thought I’d be running a 5K race let alone a 21.09Kms 1/2 marathon! Actually, to be honest I wouldn’t have thought I’d have run around the block.

In one of my training runs leading up to the event, I had ran what I thought at the time was 22Km in 2 hours 10 minutes so I thought if I could nail 2 hours for 1Km less, I’d be pretty happy. As it was, on race day I found out the training run was only 21Ks just like the 1/2 marathon, so when I finished and my time was 1 Hour 53 Minutes I was blown away. I chopped 17 minutes off my time – groovy!

Most of the race I felt pretty good (Except for going up the hills. I know now I need LOTS more hill training) but I did however find it damn tough for the last 5K’s and my pace dropped off a bit. Up until that point I had been going along at around 5:15/Km, but finished at 5:36/Km. I was also quite surprised at how off-putting it was missing a distance marker; I didn’t know exactly how long I had to go and whether I should up my pace for the end. That and people were starting to pass me regularly which is a little depressing. My instinct is to put on the gas so as not to be passed, but of course you run the risk of running out of fuel and collapsing in a heap, with jelly for legs.

But in the end I crossed the line, wobbled a bit, made it out the exit gate and met up with other runner friends for a good hearty lunch at Mexicalli.

Sorry I don’t have any photos, my wife was trying to get some with my SLR and she’s not used to it, so all the ones of me are blurry and too tiny.

Uncategorized Running