weekend in review....

What a truly huge weekend its been.

Saturday was the engagement party for Dion and Paige. For the very few who knew, it was a wedding. And what a perfect day for it. Warm, no wind, and overcast. A photographer's dream. It simply doesn't get better than that. Paige asked if I'd like to take their photos, knowing that I don't 'do' weddings. This is probably the one exception I can think of. So to make it perfectly clear, "I don't do weddings" so don't ask me if I'll do one. I won't.

She glowed and he was pretty damn handsome. I felt very very privileged to be part of their day and to help in the best way I could. So with Laura shooting as well, we covered the engagement  wedding day. I had a bit of a sob behind the camera during the ceremony, but managed to choke most of it down.

We stayed the night in a caravan lent to us from my very dear friend, Sandra. Quite a few stayed on for the eggs and bacon breakfast.

But not me. I had a 5am alarm set to get to Lincoln very early to head out on the shark dive boat. Kym's nephew and his girlfriend came over especially for the dive and asked me to go with them. How could a girl say no to that ;)

We had  3 hours of steaming south to reach Neptune Islands in relative easy swell. Mind you, that still had quite a few being unwell outside the cabin. We felt fine.

We were the 4th group to head down. Until then I was on the flybridge shooting sharks as they breach the water.

Group 1 and group 3 had the best of the viewing of the sharks. With the 3rd group down in the water, a 5.5 metre monster came into view and circled the boat so very lazily. According to the ships crew, this is the very first sighting of this one. It was just damn huge. You step out 5.5 metres and think think how big that mouth is on it.  The crew were very very excited to see this one.

So finally down we went. I had a leaky mask which didn't help my claustrophobia anxiety. So I was up and down to the water's surface until I asked for a replacement mask.  It took me a short time to get used to the hooker rig but then I was fine.

The big one cruised around for a bit and then took off. That's when the others came back. S/he must be the top dog in the area, and quite frankly, I'm not the least bit surprised.

I had updated my GoPro camera to the Hero3 which is much better for underwater photography, particularly in low light especially for this trip. Pretty damn pleased with the stills and video I captured. Its a cinch to use, especially while underwater.

We had a late afternoon hot lunch on our way back to Lincoln, before heading off home. Dom and Denise stayed here overnight and we all slept very deeply on Sunday night.

Monday saw me in Sean's class so I can support their literacy subject on Monday mornings, then off to Gym, before returning after recess to Annie's class for their literacy block. This particular Monday I was also invited to come in to the Year 12 Art class to help support the students studying photography. Basically I was there to have questions asked on how do you shoot different scenarios but it ended up being mostly a post processing workshop to get the best of their images by working with Photoshop.

After tea on Monday night I started into Paige and Dion's pics. I'm very very excited to see what the camera caught on Saturday. And tonight I have Laura's images as well. Man, she's so bloody good. So very very glad she came on board to help me. She's bloody brilliant. And the most amazing friend.

I'm a bit puffed at the moment. I wonder why lol??