A display upstairs in one of the houses along Prague’s Golden Lane. Conveniently, we happened to be at the Golden Lane just as the sun was setting, adding an even more golden glow to the place.

There are some shots which you know are going to come out well when you press the shutter, and to me, this is one of those shots. Using Lightroom’s “recovery” brought out the great tones on the book itself (it still looked good, but it was really improved) and I really like the colours and the shadows.

Prague, looking from the Western tower (on the Lesser Quarter side) towards Prague Castle and away from the Old Town.

Prague is easily one of the two most beautiful cities I’ve visited, along with Paris. While Venice is also a beautiful place, I prefer the old world charm of Prague and Paris which have somehow both still managed to keep their roots while becoming modern cities as well.

Taken the first day we arrived in Prague, there was so much to look at that I wanted to capture that I simply had to take panoramas all the time. This tower is at the end of Charles Kridge (Karluv Most); up here with us were another Australian couple — the male had a large white ‘L’ series lens and was photographing Charles Bridge in the sunset, the female was pulling things from the bag as ordered by the male. Some would say bliss, but she certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying herself.

We were, though!

This morning, while getting ready to go to work, I heard a disturbingly loud “crack” noise.  My first thought was that it had been a car hitting… something, but there wasn’t the telltale crunch noise that accompanies a car accident.

I looked out the computer room (or second bedroom, if you prefer) window to see the wires to our house (from the power pole on the street) flailing madly as though they were a whip and had just been, well, whipped.  As the angle wasn’t good, I rushed to the bedroom window and peered out through the blinds “Rear Window” style.  I saw a red Australia Post van hurriedly bumping and speeding along the nature strip on the opposite side of the road.   I have no idea whether it was involved in the accident or simply trying to avoid it.

As I reversed the car to leave for work, I reversed a bit more and noticed the power pole out the front of the neighbour’s house had a very large crack in it, around a metre from the exposed base.  I went to work and thought nothing of it.

Later in the day, I received a call from Justine — who was at home — to tell me the power was going to be turned off for “a while.”  I explained how to shut down our computers properly and again thought nothing more.

When I arrived home, around three hours later, there were large trucks up and down our street; in front of our house most were concentrated and I had to park around four houses down.  I asked one of the workers how long they expected to be, as I didn’t want our perishables in the fridge to, well, perish.  His answer, “An hour, give or take.”  Give or take what, another few hours?

Around an hour later, no sign of power so Justine and I went out to Grill’d to grab some dinner — we couldn’t use our oven to cook so had to do something, may as well get something we like –  but not before we had to get the guys to move their trucks so we could escape; we followed a truck reversing over 500m down our street.  Upon our return, the workers were still present though it looked like they were beginning to finish up.  Finally our power had returned: the clock read 12:18, indicating the power had been on for 18 minutes.  The initial estimate of “an hour” had been, in fact, two.

The total outage was five or so hours but lucky for us all of our food seems OK (at least after an initial check).  I wonder if there’s an Australia Post van out there with a rather large dent right now.

When you’re stuck for ideas, a dark room and torch are a great way out.

It might look like it was easy, but it took over a dozen shots to get this one, toying with varying shutter speeds (this was 15 seconds, which made it a lot easier and less rushed). I’m a little disappointed that I’m not visible enough — if I was a bit over to my right at least I would be the dot on the “I”, then it would be perfect.

Of course, it’s too late for that now. Still, it’s come out well since I was writing backwards, in the dark, with no points of reference.

We were down at Cape Schanck for the day as part of our monthly photowalk, when I commented to Chris that this section of beach reminded me very much of the beach that Cartman’s band, Faith+1 used for the shot of their cover.

As soon as I said that, and we realised the three of us could do the poses (we had our remotes too, which made things significantly easier) in roughly the right spots, we both decided that had to be our 365 days shot for the day.

Chris didn’t want to crop his square but I felt it looked more like the album this way, which is what I was trying to emulate.

Kind of a strange shot, this one. The thumbnail grabbed my eye because of the vast expanse of yellow; I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at.

The giraffe’s done a great job of camouflaging itself!

This giraffe is a baby giraffe, and as it wandered the enclosure, the mother giraffe followed closely behind to make sure it didn’t get itself into trouble. I remember when I took it that I thought the colours were strange, but in the end I think it is an interesting shot.

Very cute.

A bit unimaginative, but it was an overcast, boring, rainy day and those will do that to you.

It’s from the front passenger-side door on a black Mitsubishi Magna.