My life in scrapping, photography and just living…

So, in the middle of a crazy normal week here, *skip* announces as I am putting on my shoes this morning…. there’s a turtle in the backyard.

Yeah, right.

Oh, hang on. There’s a turtle trundling earnestly across the backyard.

We have NO idea where he came from, but he was heading towards our neighbour’s place. They have a couple of annoying terrier type dogs who would have thought he was a wonderful toy, so we sidetracked him. Actually, we turtle-napped him for the day. We first wanted to find out if one of the other neighbours had lost him in the storm last night. Failing that, *skip* rang the local vet. No lost turtles.

We kept him in a basin with some water for the day, and in the evening, let him out for a walk on the lawn. He got quite tame by the end, wasn’t scared of us at all.

It turns out that these clever, long-lived creatures ocassionally just go walk-about on their own. Looking for a new pond, a new hip happening scene. Sadly many of them fall victim to cars on their journey, so we decided to turn my car into a turtle taxi and deliver him safely to the local wetland. Lots of fish and ducks and reeds for him to flollop around in.

We’re going to miss that cheeky guy though

That noise you can hear is my life whistling past my ears! Term 3 at school is over, and in the last couple of weeks we have been insanely busy with various commitments. I did another full-time week at work, the same week that Tyson and Sam had their school drama performance, the culmination of months of rehearsals! I also had an almost trip to Sydney, and I have just got home from the Murray Bridge Show. So lets take it one at a time, ok?

Alice in Wonderland.

Our school kids were amazing, all due to their marvellous teacher, Penny. What a lot of work she, and many mothers, put in. Sadly I couldn’t join in as rehearsals were on work nights, but they did just fine without me. At the last minute I did cast and performance photos, which came out really well. Here are my 2 actors. Tyson was officially stage manager, and kept Penny sane. For the first of 2 performances, he had to fill in a role, but the second night, he just worked his butt off behind the scenes. Sammy was the March Hare, who also did the work of the White Rabbit. He had a lot of lines, and did so well. We were EXTREMELY proud of them both – their hard work and commitment.

Almost Sydney.

My boss and I were scheduled for some special training in Sydney last Wednesday. After arriving at the airport at 5am, we discovered our plane was cancelled due to engineering difficulties. We were re-routed via Melbourne, but then Mother Nature had the last say, and we just didn’t get there. At about 2.30pm, our plane was about to take off from Melbourne to Sydney, we didn’t go. We had no guarantee that a flight would get OUT of Sydney to get us home, so we took our chances on the travel agent who got us on the next plane home to Adelaide. So, we spent 8 hours in Melbourne airport, and about 2 in Adelaide before that.

HERE are the best pictures I’ve found on the internet of the dust storm that blew across Sydney. Apparently it was 7 times worse than what is officially classed as a SEVERE dust storm. Now sadly, it was a tragic train of circumstances that was disappointing at best, and extremely frustrating at worst. Especially when they boarded us and then made us sit on the plane at the gate for an hour and a half. I never realised how truly exhausting sitting doing nothing really was. And I’ll never take for granted my smooth flights again. Even travel insurance looks like a good idea as hopefully we will get enough back so that we can afford to try again!

Murray Bridge Show.

I work in Murray Bridge, and was very excited/nervous to get hold of an entry form for the photographic section at the show. I have NEVER entered any photography competition in my life. I don’t even play that sort of thing in forums eg, Digital Photography School. I don’t have time sadly for a camera club, so I never get any outside opinions on my work, and it’s something that I’ve always wanted. Some people I know, I don’t even ask anymore as they just can’t see past the end of their noses, and other people would just say it was great because they really don’t know any better. So the upshot of all this rambling, is that I took a great deal of courage into 2 hands, printed off 6 8×12 photos, mounted them on black cardboard, carefully filled out the entry form and paid my 60c per photo entry fee. This was all a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t even tell anyone apart from work (where I did the photos) and *skip* who helped me pick them out.

This weekend was the show, which was unfortunate, as the weather has been foul. It hailed on and off all day yesterday, today wasn’t so bad, but the wind was off ice and sooooo cold….. We got brave, loaded up with coats, and made the 40min drive up there to collect my entries. We gave ourselves a bit of time to have a look at the show… that didn’t take long but we also wanted to see the photography section before they pulled all the entries down to be collected. To see the competition, as it were. Although the judges provide no commentary, it is still valuable to see what you are competing against.

The enlargement category wasn’t very full. I have to admit that. Out of 4 sections, I had 2 entries in each of 3 sections. There was also an Album print category, with a lot more sub-categories, and the Juniors. There were lots and lots of prints in the Album prints. So I can’t say I had MAJOR competition.  This is just a country show. But I was still blown away when I came around the corner to the exhibit, and found my first images…. 2 in People. I won First and Second. Moving down the wall, I spotted one of my “Any Other Subject” with a First, and my second with a Certificate of Merit. And finally I spotted my last 2 prints, in landscape. One didn’t have anything attached to it, but the second print won First in Landscape, with an additional First in Enlargements and then in the middle, was Grand Champion of the show.

My First in Enlargements won me a trophy and a ribbon, and a $10 voucher to a local Computer Store, Grand Champion exhibit won a $25 voucher to the same store, and I also received prize money to the value of $8.50.

To say that I was blown away is really an understatement. I started shaking when I realised what I had actually achieved. *skip* and the boys are so proud of me, and I really would love to think that Dad would have been proud of me too. Photography was his passion, he was the one that always pushed me to work on my skills and my “eye” and he is the creator of this finished product.

I had to be subtle taking this photo, as I know people might think it a bit funny taking pictures there, but I had to record what it looked like!

The funny thing is that this image is one of the only ones I have put on a canvas – it’s 20×30″ and it hangs in my lounge room. It’s always a favourite with visitors. The black and white photo you can see in the top right corner is another of mine, the People category 1st place. – and a copy of this one lives on my fridge. It’s an old one of *skip* with Miss Madi.

So, again, all I can say is WOW. Because the weather was so terrible, we weren’t even sure if we’d go. We sure are glad we did.

Now, I have to come down to earth, as it’s the school holidays, and next week I’m working 4 days out of 5. Life goes on, but I have a spectacular blue plastic trophy to come home too!!!