At the Wagin Woolorama in March a feature was a parade of Wedding dresses. The dresses had been worn by local women over the course of the last one hundred years.
I loved the variety in the dresses, from the plain and simple dresses to the hugely frilly and puffy and decorated gowns. It was fun to imagine who might have worn the bridal outfits on parade, which were all worn by models in the fashion parade.
Some looked a little worse for wear, and some would have benefited from a quick run over with an iron, or at least a bit of hanging and steaming. But they had all been saved by the brides who had worn them, either recently or in the dim past.
It wasn't until after the Woolorama that I learned that there was a wedding dress exhibition on at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. Unveiled - 200 Years of Wedding Glamour was an exhibition visiting from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This is the last photo I took with my Canon EOS 5D mkIII camera and CanonEF 28-300mm F3.5-5.6 L IS USM lens before they were irreparably damaged. By falling off the tripod. The sound as it hit the road was sickening, and I couldn't bear to look at it so quickly put it back in the camera case and hoped that when I woke up in the morning everything would be OK. But the next morning I took a quick look and saw that the casing of the camera was cracked. After Calling Canon Professional Services I was not feeling hopeful. The 28-300mm lens, I was told, does not take kindly to bumps. So I packed them up and sent them off by registered post. And waited. For ages. Until I finally had an email today.

I have just checked with the tech and unfortunately the news is not good. The impact that the camera and lens have taken is quite bad. The impact on the lens has cause the damage also to the camera. The lens has a bow in it and requires every barrel in the unit which makes the unit uneconomical to repair. The camera requires a new mirror box, shutter unit and main circuit board. The cost of these 3 parts alone goes over the value of a replacement product.
So this means that to repair both units it would be cheaper to buy both new....

Frantic phone calls and emails to the insurance company and the camera shop (in between picking up kids from school) has resulted in a new camera and a new lens being ordered. And the insurance company should cover all the cost except the excess fee of $100. That's over $6,000 - which I couldn't have afforded without the insurance.
Now I just have to hope that it arrives before my next scheduled shoot on Thursday, or I'll be using the backup camera...

The Western Australian Professional Photography Awards will be judged next week. And I won't receive any awards. Because I won't have any photographs being judged.
That is down to me not studying the entry conditions hard enough. Or reading between the lines...
The rules and conditions of entry read: "Once you have entered online you must print and mount your entries and send in an official AIPP Print case."
However I think it would have been more correct to say "Once you have printed and mounted your photos you should complete the online entry form and send them in an official AIPP Print case." Because there wasn't enough time after entries opened online to then print and mount the photos and get them to Perth by the closing time (5pm today).
I rushed the printing of my photos last week and got them to Southern Picture Framers in Bunbury last Friday so that they could be mounted according to the instructions (on 16" x 20" foam-core and matted with white). I went to Bunbury and picked them up yesterday, and went online to complete the online entry form today before the 5pm deadline. After making sure the digital files complied with the regulations - in the right format (jpg saved at minimum compression), colour space (Adobe RGB), at the right resolution (300ppi) and the correct dimensions (2362 pixels on the longest side) I began to upload the digital files to the AIPP website.
THEN I realised that not only did the online entries need to be received today, but also the physical prints! Judging starts on Monday! OMG!!! Why didn't I notice that very important piece of information before??
Of course if I lived in Perth I could have just driven over and dropped the prints off at Fitzgerald Photo Imaging in North Perth...

And the moral of the story?
Be organised, read the instructions, and live in Perth.

I received a nice email this week notifying me that three of my images had been nominated for the Photography Masters Cup International Color Awards. They didn't receive any honours, but being nominated is still an achievement for a small photography studio in Darkan.
Have a look at the winners gallery and see some of the best photography around... LINK HERE but be warned, you could browse for hours looking at the photos!

I even get a medal to show on my website :-)

I try to enter as many online photography competitions as I can, because it is good to challenge myself to create the best photos that I can. Of course I am not very well organised and often miss deadlines. When I do enter it is always an honour to be nominated as a finalist, or on the rare occasion to win an award. I'm still trying to win a big prize, but how can I when I missed the deadlines for both the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award? Maybe next year I'll enter the big ones!!

Last year I had the pleasure of photographing the Ipsen family for Meat and Livestock Australia's Feedback magazine. The January/February 2013 edition is arriving in farmers' mailboxes around the country this week. And what a surprise for young Evie - she is a cover girl!! The story was about her Dad and his kelso sheep, but he is relegated to somewhere deep in the magazine!
I love photographing farm families and when I saw the lamb I knew I had to have a photo of the kids feeding it. The farm near Manjimup is very picturesque, with tall trees and lakes with rolling hills. I'm going back next week to photograph the broccoli harvest.

The local primary school athletics carnival was held on Friday, and I had the pleasure of photographing the children competing. It was impossible to photograph every child in every event, but I worked hard to get as much coverage as possible. I love the long jump events when i can get down low and show the jumpers up in the air. The team games are also great for action and interaction between the kids. The little ones have great tongue action when they are really concentrating on their performance!

The children have had two weeks of school holiday, so I haven't been in to work too many days over the last two weeks. We spent five days at Busselton, where we are lucky enough to have access to a beach-front house on Geographe Bay Road. The family went on several bike rides and walks along the beach. We also visited the maze at Yallingup which was a whole lot of fun. After exhausting ourselves trying to find our way through the maze in pairs (trying to beat the other pairs) we then spent a considerable amount of time playing puzzles.
Five days isn't very long for a holiday but it was nice to have a change of scenery! I went for a walk with my 100mm macro lens, and I am still finding it difficult to come to terms with a fixed focal length lens as I am a big zoom lens fan.

These are the sorts of photographs I want to capture for the farm albums I am promoting. They will be more than just photos of the farm. They will be real treasured memories for future generations, whether they are still on the farm, or whether the farm has been sold and the future generations have moved on.