Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Spring is here!

Well, its official. Spring has finally arrived, and what a difference it makes to just about everything! There is a bounce to everyone's step. Everyone looks just that little bit more beautiful. There are scents in the air that do strange things to you. The atmosphere is comfortingly warm, but still excitingly brisk. I had forgotten how much I passionately adore the month of September. I remember in my childhood, all my innocent fantasties about dashing otherworly adventures were inspired in September, all my youthful stirrings of feelings were sparked by September... then as an adult, it held the promise of things to come. Its funny isn't it, that the promise of things to come can be better than the realisation of those things... in this case I mean Summer. Summer is festive, but overbearing, and this year is set to be a startler. Nevertheless, the promise of Summer is enough to make loins stir and excitement swirl. Its a glorious time!

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Snap Shot City

Last weekend I entered a photo treasure hunt very last minute. It was a global competition called Snap Shot City, where entrants from all over the world downloaded at the same time a list of 24 random expressions, that had to be photographed in 6 hours.

The aim of the game was to find something clever, ironic, and quintessiantally representative of your city in your composition. The challenge was you had to upload 8 very 2 hours. Which is quite a challenge.

Now as you all know, I love a good challenge, particularly if it is a type of puzzle. Gets my juices flowing. So this was right up my alley. However, I was a teensy bit distraught when I surveyed the list of topics we had to photograph. They were totally random things like "Treasure everywhere", "One too many" and "Fighting chance". And the clock was ticking...

We split up into two teams, so I set off with Damien and Sean, on what was possibly the most beautiful day we had had in Sydney in months. Perfect weather, a black Saab convertible, two of my best friends. And a puzzle. I couldn't have been happier!

Of course, 90 minutes later when we had not found too much of inspirational, and we had 5 minutes to whizz down Oxford Street, restart Damo's computer, and upload 5 photos... we started to panic a little (well, I started to panic a little, Sean had a nap on the sofa, and Damien got himself something to eat, but that just describes us normally).

Anyway, as is normal for any tense technical situation, Damien's laptop chose that moment to decide life was too hard, and it crashed inexplicably. So daunted, we called the other team, confessed we had failed them, and when they didn't sound awfully bothered, we got back in the car, and drove to Bondi Beach. And got ice-cream. And followed cute boys. As you do.

We managed to get more great photos, and then whipped back to my flat to take what may well win the entire competition.

Because you see, despite our nonchalance (yes, I gave up my competitiveness due to the lure of sun, beach, and the fact our other team members were even more competitive than me, so I left them to it), our team did amazingly well! We got the news today that our team was one of the teams with the most photos in the shortlisted photos! We may well win the competition!!

So here now, are the best photos we took, by theme and the caption we gave them (the ones with asterixs are the ones I took - yes, shameless self-promotions):

Theme: Boys*
Caption: "Do you think those
tits are real?"


Theme: Pleasure Palace*
Caption: "If you don't buy me that,
I'll kill myself!"



Theme: Kindness of Strangers


Theme: Red shoes
Caption: In some ways I regret buying them
Theme: Shout it from the rooftops*
Caption: "I love this city!"

Theme: Girls*
Caption: "Goddamn it just help me find my
contact lenses!"



Theme: Treasure everywhere*







Theme: Getting around
Caption: Australians embracing an oil
free future, and don't forget the milk.