9B Blog

My National Photographic Portrait Prize photo

This year I was fortunate enough to be a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPPP), and I thought I might let you all take a peek behind the curtains at how the photo came to be.
Now clearly I’m setting myself up to fail a bit here, if you’ve come to this blog because you’re interested in the NPPP, then you’re probably relatively au fait with photography, and so will be pulling your hair out when I’m explaining why I went with a 56mm f1.2 lens…and for people who are regular readers of my blog, you’ll probably be saying ‘I don’t even know what f1.2 means, and I care even less about why you went with f5.6 for this photo. Just tell me how I can take a similar photo!!!’
But you’re all stuck at home and looking for distractions, and I managed to get an entry into a nationwide portrait competition using a 6yo APS-C camera, so you can all shut your pie-holes and read on…then complain bitterly in the comments section.

Background

Now clearly, what I would love to say is ‘I had a clear vision for this photo. I wanted the rabbit to represent new life / innocence / modern cuisine, and I spent hours on the lighting setup at the studio I hired. Then I said to the model (who was was incredibly excited to be working with a photographer of my calibre) “Give me a look that is simultaneously; strong, vulnerable, stoic, protective and beguiling.” Then I nailed it in one shot, and my team of assistants packed away the gear while I lay on a chaise-lounge contemplating my brilliance’.
But the truth of the matter is that Katie (my wife) wanted a few headshots for a conference she was presenting at, so I set up my soft-box in the kitchen, and when I had finished I asked if the kids would pose for a few photos. Holly (my daughter) asked if she could go and get ‘Pebbles’ (her rabbit) and I thought that could be fun. So I took some photos of the two of them.

Holly and Pebbles

The tech stuff

The light – About 7 years ago I bought some second-hand flash gear. This included; an Alien B strobe, a soft-box, beauty dish, ring light and stands. I think I have probably used the beauty dish and ring light about 4 times in total since then…mainly because I just don’t seem to be able to make people look good with them.
But the soft-box I love! It always makes people look great, and I’ve found a setup that allows me to use a blank wall in our kitchen as the background.

The lens – When I made the move to Fuji four years ago, I used one of Zack Arias’ guides as to what to buy. In the end I went with; the 35mm f1.4 as my carry around lens and proxy ‘nifty-fifty’, the 50-140mm f2.8 to give me some zoom if I’m shooting weddings or anything I can’t get up and close and personal with, and the 10-24mm f4 for anything wide. These three lenses pretty much covered off every eventuality and would get me into and out of as much trouble as I could hope for as a photographer.
So the fact that I also purchased the 56mm f1.2, is very hard to justify! With enough light I’m never really going to need f1.2, and the 85mm focal distance is covered by the 50-140mm. So this really was a vanity purchase. I have always loved taking photos of people, and to have a lens that is almost exclusively designed for this purpose was too great a temptation. Plus, as a 40th birthday present to myself, it seemed a lot cheaper than the Porsche 911 I was also hankering for.
So any time I get to use this lens, there is a degree of ‘See?! I told you I needed it!’

The Fuji 56mm f1.2 on my trusty X-T1

The setup – I basically try to get the light as close to the subject as possible. Given that I’m shooting in my kitchen, and I can’t move the bench that people are sitting at, or the wall behind them, I find that getting the light as close as possible to them gives me the softest light on them, and the best fall-off of the light on the wall behind them. A better photographer would be able to quantify and explain this…but I did NOT win the yr 10 drama prize by being good at STEM!
The light is above and the left of the subject (from my perspective and is on about 60 degree angle. This is due to the hypotenuse of a triangle being relative to Gould’s Law of thermodynamics, and…nah…just kidding, I just like it being there.

In hindsight, it was probably a bit lower and a bit more front on for the actual shot.

Settings – f5.6 (because anything lower and it gets overexposed…and in this case, it also meant I got both Holly’s eyes and the rabbits eye nice and sharp!), ISO200 (because that’s as low as I can get it on X-T1 in RAW) and 1/180 because that’s as fast as I can go and still sync with the flash.

The pose

Having seen all of the finalists in this year’s NPPP I realise how lucky I was to make the cut. I get the distinct feeling that about 90% of them would have been great photos no matter what their subject had done. They have put time and effort into the story-telling part of their photo, and the subject is just completing it. Whereas my entire photo hangs off Holly’s expression. I do pride myself on being able to get people comfortable in front of the camera so that I can catch those candid little moments. But as I said earlier, this was not part of a grander plan, and I can only thank Holly for being such an amazing person to photograph.

The post-production

Any time I’m doing a workshop, or working with people who are new to photography, I see how blown away they are by what a little post-production can do. I’m also regularly dazzled by people who think that any sort of post-production is ‘cheating’.
So if you’re from the ‘post-production is cheating…in the olden days they just relied on what came out of the camera, blah, blah, blah’ school. Then rest assured that I shot this on some Agfa Scala 200x film and then spent time in my dark-room sniffing chemicals and adjusting my exposure times.
If you’re comfortable with a digital world, then I’ll tell you that I used a VSCO emulation of the Agfa scala 200x film in Lightroom and then played around with the colour temp, exposure, clarity etc

The joys of Lightroom

What’s next?

Now that I’ve supped from the NPPP cup and felt the thrill of having someone who isn’t directly related to you saying that they like one of your photos…I want more…MORE!
So I’m already planning a few more extravagant portraits shoots, and would definitely like to have a play with a camera with a bigger sensor to see what difference that really makes.
But with the current restrictions on travel and meeting people outside of my immediate household…it may be time to bust out the soft-box and demand the kids stand in front of it again!

The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020

In what was described by some people as ‘an affront to a once-great institution’ and others as ‘that’s nice dear’, I was a finalist in this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPPP).
Before you become too invested in this, I will warn you that I did not win. But it was still an amazing experience that I would love to share with you.

The lead up

A lifetime of New Year’s Eves has taught me not build events up too much. If you go in with minimal investment, and even less expectation, at worst you will get exactly what you anticipated. But I was really excited about this! I had no delusions of winning, but just getting the chance to see one of my photos in the National Portrait Gallery and getting to swan around with actual, bona fide photographers, seemed like a pretty good way to spend a night.
So Katie and I hatched a plan. I would take three days off work, and we would do a family road-trip up to Canberra. We could stop at Illabo on the way and stay with some friends there, and I could use the time to get some great photos along the way. A road-trip so often throws up photo opportunities that haste to get your destination, or a back-seat full of surly children, ensure never become actual photos. So I was really excited about having an excuse to make photography a feature of the trip…after all, it was photography that made the whole trip possible!
Then I got to thinking, if I’m going to be taking such amazing photos, I really should see if Fuji would be willing to lend me a GFX for the trip in exchange for some photos and social content. I could shoot with a camera that I could never afford, and they would get some free publicity!
Everyone wins!
This was going to be great!
A family road-trip, an epic camera I had always wanted to try shooting with, and a night where I get to extort information out of some amazing photographers!

via GIPHY

But then of course, the Gods looked down and said ‘Chris looks so happy! Look at his contented face…and look at how he has dreams and aspirations! Let’s throw a veritable shit-storm at him!’
And so we found out that Holly had her School Photos on the Friday of the event (these would be her photos from her first year of High School and so she really wanted to be there), then Xavier had an excursion for school on the Thursday and Josh had a basketball semi-final on the Saturday and his first night of Air Cadets on the Friday night, and Katie got work on the Wednesday and a gig on the Sunday arvo, and Holly got invited to a horse-riding birthday party on the Sunday, and Holly’s brass band got a slot at the Preston Market, and Fuji explained that they didn’t have a GFX I could borrow…and, well…I started to feel that perhaps this was not going to be the epic experience I had hoped for.

via GIPHY

So, to cut a long story marginally less long, I ended up driving to Canberra with Xavier on the Thursday, Katie and Holly flew up on the Friday to arrive just in time for the big event at the Portrait Gallery, and Josh stayed home. We would stay with my sister and niece at their place, and my Mum and Dad would travel up and stay in a nearby hotel.

The big event

So having spent all of Thursday driving, and listening to an audiobook that told the story of what happened on Tattooine between the time Obi Wan Kenobe landed there with a baby Luke Skywalker, and when Luke came and found him as an adult (I shit you not…this is what I listened to). It’s fair to say that my excitement for the event on Friday night had been tempered a tad. But all of this was turned around on Friday morning when the National Portrait Gallery called my mobile!
Now I have been involved in enough events to know that the winner is usually given a bit of heads up so that they can plan a speech, or at the very least, ensure they will be wearing pants at the award ceremony. And here was the Portrait Gallery calling me on the morning of the event! This could mean only one thing…I had won the National Photographic Portrait Prize!!! $50K worth of prizes and a lifetime of bragging rights! This was amazing! This was UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
Indeed it was unbelievable, because the first thing Sheridan from the Gallery told me was that the reason that she was calling me was because the event that night had been cancelled because of the Corona Virus.

So that was cool.

On the bright side, I now had all of the time I would have spent writing a speech and putting on pants, to go and take some photos around Canberra. Plus there was still going to be an event where all the photographers got to see their artwork in the gallery, and where the National Portrait Gallery would announce the winner…and they had organised for the artists to have a dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where a lot of people were staying. So while there wasn’t going to be a big event and an after party, there was still going to be an event with the finalists, and a free dinner with a guest of my choice!

Take that Gods!

Channeling my inner Alex Ellinghausen
About 2 seconds after I took this shot a flock of birds flew right above me and would have made this shot epic!!
Trigonometry
Rollerblading in the echo chamber

The event itself was pretty awesome. We all were given a lanyard that had our photo on it which was great as it made it easier for me to stalk those photographers whose work I really liked.

The only lanyard I’ve ever been happy to wear!
Tough crowd…and no I didn’t realise how much smaller my photo would be than everyone else’s!!
For posterity, me in front of my own photo at the National Portrait Gallery

If nothing else, walking around looking at all of the other photos made me realise just how tough it is to be a judge in a competition like this. There were so many amazing photos, so many brilliant stories and so many totally different approaches. But if there was a correct decision…then I think that the judges made it. All three winners (the overall winner, the highly commended and the ‘Packer’s prize’) were all outstanding, and you can see them here https://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/national-photographic-portrait-prize-2020

Holly and Pebbles

A huge note of thanks to the judges and the National Portrait Gallery for selecting me as a finalist, and to the NPPP staff who did such an amazing job of still making the event a night to remember, in spite of everything else. And to the staff at the Midnight Hotel who were able to provide meals for all of us at remarkably short notice.
A big thank-you to my sister and niece for putting us up in Canberra, to my parents for travelling all the way up to Canberra, to Katie for pulling out all the stops to get from Melbourne to the gallery in time to see the portrait, to Xavier for being such a great road-trip companion, and last but by no means least, the biggest thanks to Holly (and to a lesser extent Pebbles) for giving me such an amazing portrait!

And of course if you want to vote for the portrait in the ‘People’s Choice’ category…you are more than welcome to here https://www.portrait.gov.au/npppphoto/94441/

Quitting Facebook

*A hush comes over the media scrum as Chris walks into the press conference, flanked by his publicist and life-coach, then sits down in front of a microphone*

‘Um, yeah nah, I’ve just left the locker room where I sat down with the other 17.1 million Australian Facebook users and told them that I was retiring from Facebook, effective immediately…or after the 30 days cooling off period that Facebook make you do. Whichever comes first.
This was obviously a massive decision for me, as Facebook has been part of my life since 2007, but I feel that this is the right time to step away and spend more time with my family. To be clear, I have been spending a lot of time with my family, I just want to try it without constantly looking at my phone because I’m being distracted with incessant notifications and inconsequential updates on other people’s lives.
I will now answer any questions.’

‘Is this going to become a lecture?’

No. We’ve all suffered through people who have found a new diet, exercise regime or series of small plastic containers in which to store their food…and who then bang on about it at every possible juncture.
Nobody likes that person.
So I will not be using this as a way of showing that I am better than you. If you choose to reach this conclusion by yourself, I will not be responsible. But I will understand.

‘Will you still be using social media?’

Quitting one social media channel while continuing to use others, would be a bit like someone quitting alcohol by only drinking wine and beer – but NOT spirits!
It would be sadly hypocritical.
But if using social media has told me one thing, it’s that it’s VERY important to publicly show one side of yourself, while secretly living your real life.
So while I will be quitting Facebook, I will still be using Twitter and Instagram.
WHY?!! I hear you ask. Well put simply I still have memories of when Twitter was good. Believe it or not, there was a time when Twitter was a gateway to new and exciting information. I could follow Mark Colvin and discover amazing Op Eds from renowned international publications, or hear contrary views expressed in a way that made me reconsider my current beliefs.
It was like having a cool big brother who was constantly introducing you to amazing new bands. But now it’s more like a drunk Uncle, yelling his opinions and mocking any sense of nuance. So I’m taking Twitter off my phone, and will only look at it when I’m sitting at a computer.
I’m keeping Instagram because I like pretty pictures.

So in summary:
Twitter = Drunk Uncle yelling into the void
Facebook = Older family friend who corners you at Christmas and bangs on about what their kids are doing.
Instagram = Book of photos in Dentist’s waiting room that briefly distracts you from the inevitable horror that awaits.

‘Was it a tough decision?’

Bizarrely, yes. The evil genius of Facebook is how it has become so ubiquitous in our lives. You can; message people, buy and sell things, log into other services with your Facebook account, and you can start any number of sentences with ‘Did you see on Facebook….?’
So when you make a conscious decision to step away from all that, it does feel a tad intimidating, as if you’re giving up an amazing opportunity. To the point where I actually hovered my finger over the ‘delete forever’ button for quite a while, wondering if this was the right decision.
A freaking website was causing me existential dread!!!
Thankfully, reason won out. After all, this wasn’t a big decision. This was like that time you felt bad about leaving the bank that you had been with since you were a teenager. No one was going to notice, let alone care. This wasn’t life-changing or profound. It was NOT like changing where you get coffee in the morning and having to constantly walk past the old place…with a coffee in hand.
No one was going to get hurt.

‘Why are you actually leaving?’

Hoo boy! There are myriad reasons, ranging from the ‘virtue signalling’ all the way through to the ‘tin-foil hat’. But here’s a summary:

The sanctimonious – Facebook are bloody awful corporate citizens, and the less data of mine they have, the happier I’ll be. I also don’t want to be the sort of parent who tells my kids about the evils of social media, but is still a slave to its inculcative influence.

The societal – Look, I despair of other people as much as you. But for a society to work, you actually have to interact with other people. And not just in a click ‘Like’ way…and definitely not in a ‘I’m going to send a torrent of abuse some complete stranger’s way because they disagree with my opinions on climate change’. We’re still more tolerant and accepting of people and their views in real life than we will ever be with the distance of social media, and so setting up a world where we only talk online, and we order our food to be Uber-eated to our house, and block out the world on our train ride home through head-phones and ‘our feed’, means we become more isolated, more unaware of opposing points of view and more scared. And scared people rarely make good long-term decisions.

The financial – We all know that people only present the parts of their life that they want other people to know on Facebook. But that doesn’t stop the pangs of jealousy we feel every time someone else has a holiday, or buys a new bike, or renovates their house. I mean, if 100% of everyone else is clearly buying things, why am I depriving myself?!
Then somehow we have ended up with the second highest level of personal debt in the world.

The mental – I find myself bemoaning how busy I am, how little time I have to just relax or unwind…yet still slavishly respond to every notification and message. Last weekend I realised that the queue for pastries was going to be more than a few minutes, and so I reached for my phone to distract myself. I used to think that I was actually being ruthlessly efficient in not allowing my life to have any down time, but I realise now that I’ve been depriving myself of those little moments when your mind can head off on a tangent and go where it wants to go.

The selfish – I’m pretty sure that the data and time that Facebook is getting from me, is of far greater value than what I’m getting back from them. If a company, or Govt, said that they wanted to know all about me, and my friends, and what I liked, and what I was interested in buying, and where my kids went to school, and what their names are, and what I said in my Private Messages, etc, etc. I can tell you that in return I would be asking for a fair bit more than ‘a website that keeps serving me video clips from the Graham Norton Show’.

The political – the ‘democratisation of information’ and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, hasn’t really lead to a brave new world of innovative thinking and nuanced discussion. People still believe what they read, but can’t be bothered to do the work to see if it’s actually true. Our media cycle has become so frenetic that we simply don’t have the time to follow things through, but we seem to have the time to get incensed about trivial things. To quote the great Mick Thomas “We can’t find the time for talking, but it seems we find the time to shout!”
Politicians and political parties have quite literally escaped unscathed from things that in the past would seen them thrown out of Parliament or Government.
Our systems and institutions simply haven’t adapted to the speed and level of the bullshit that is being generated. To quote a popular saying on social media ‘Life comes at you fast!’, and so long as both sides of politics feels that it can benefit from it, it’s not going to change.

The egotistical – As one of the generation who has seen the transition from traditional media to social media, I still get a kick from the idea that what I say and write, can appear on the same platform as celebrities and people I admire. But that has somehow been commandeered into a situation where any muppet with an opinion and a keyboard thinks that what they have to say is equally as important as what someone who has years of experience has to say about the same thing.

The honest – To have a social media account that I would want to follow, people would need either; a life so interesting that that I want regular updates, or a willingness to disclose personal information that appeals to my inner voyeur. I don’t have the first, and I’m not willing to disclose the second. So why put time and effort into something that, ultimately I wouldn’t even want to read?

‘So where to now? Are you tempted by the shorter versions of the game?’

Ah, no. No, I think that the likes of ‘Snapchat’ and ‘Tik Tok’ can safely assume I will not be stumbling into their party, making a fool of myself, and then politely being asked to leave.
It’s a young person’s game.
But there is every chance, that like so many other retiring athletes, I will make an ill-judged come-back, humiliate myself, and then remember all the reasons that I retired in the first place.
But hopefully not.
Instead I hope this is the start of a new chapter in my life, a chapter in which I get to see you all in real life, down the street or at a party, and remember how good it was when I had Facebook, and could simply interact with you on my terms and at a time of my choosing.

Being a finalist in the NPPP

About a month ago, I was working with one of my videographers on the pre-production of a tricky video we were shooting the next day, when my mobile rang. The number came up as ‘Unknown’ and the location was Canberra, and so I assumed it was a telemarketer. This impression was in no way diminished when my videographer looked at my phone and said ‘Oooh, someone’s about to save some money on their electricity bill!’
So I think it’s fair to say that my tone when answering the phone was dripping with ‘You’re wasting my very important and valuable time…please sod off!’ But then the person at the other end of the line said ‘Hi this is Tara from the National Portrait Gallery, and I just wanted to say congratulations, you’re a finalist in this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize!’

If you’ve ever seen a Hollywood car chase where the driver is flying along in reverse and then does an epic skid while spinning the car around and changing into a forward gear, then speeding off in one fluid move.

via Gfycat

I was now attempting to do the conversational equivalent of this, as I tried to desperately go from ‘Go away telemarketer!’ to ‘Oh my God this amazing, thank you so much!!!’ with the additional degree of difficulty offered by trying to do this while walking swiftly through an open-plan office trying to find an empty meeting room.
I think my response of ‘Oh…that is good’, really nailed it in terms of conveying how excited I was to have been selected as a finalist, and in no way sounded like I was an underwhelmed jerk who was learning English through an iPhone app.
Thankfully, responding to good news like a human being wasn’t one of the pre-requisites for the NPPP, and so I’m still a finalist. Seeing as this isn’t a position I ever expected to be in, I thought I’d take you through how I got here.
BUT SPOILER ALERT – I can’t post the photo that made it to the final 48. So it isn’t in this post!!!

4 generations have worked this farm, and I got to meet three of them.

In it to win it

I never buy a Tattslotto ticket on the basis that I have basically the same chance of winning whether I buy one or not. My approach to entering photo competitions has been pretty similar. That’s not to say that I haven’t had friends and family say things like ‘Oh you should enter that in a competition!’ or just send me links to photo competitions via Messenger saying ‘That photo you took of *insert thing here* would be perfect for this!’.
But these same people say things like ‘No of course the haircut looks great!’ and ‘This is delicious…you can hardly taste that it’s burnt’…so their opinion only carries so much weight.
Plus, have you seen the photos that are being submitted? They’re really freaking good! Who the hell am I to enter a competition and nominate myself as being in their league?
Not to mention you have to spend more money on an entry fee than a lotto ticket…and you have to spend a LOT more time filling in the entry form on a photo competition than you do on a lotto ticket.

My Uncle John, on his brother’s 80th birthday

But this year I made a commitment to actually enter a few more photo competitions, because ‘Oh but everyone else is so good!’ is just another way of saying ‘I’m too scared to enter, but I want to sound magnanimous about it!’ If there’s one thing I wish I’d learnt earlier, it’s that opportunities don’t fall into the laps of the lazy and introspective…they go to the people who actually take a risk and put themselves out there.
It’s also actually a pretty good reality check. In Lightroom I normally rate my photos from 1-5 stars. Any 1-2 stars are deleted, 3 stars are given another look, and if they don’t get bumped up to a four they’re deleted. I think it’s fair to say that my social media feed is pretty much all my four star photos, and I get about a dozen 5 star photos per year. But for a photo competition you need to go through those 5 stars and hope that someone else sees the same things that you see in it.

My first attempt at a long-exposure portrait

The cull

I managed to cull my favourite portraits for 2018-19 down to 20 photos, and this was quite a fun process. You get to sit down and go through all of your photos for the year and pick out ones you really like. The next step is not so much fun, you have to start eliminating photos that you really like, and this is even less fun when you have to start getting rid of photos of family members, or choosing between photos of your kids, or getting rid of photos that you know took a lot of effort to take.
I managed to get the list down to 12, and then took it to my family for feedback. They were of course politely brutal and got it down to 7. I then sent this list of 7 to my Graphic Design, Social Media and Video teams at work and asked them for their top three. Herein lies the challenge inherent in asking people to judge artistic endeavour…people like different things. So seven different people came back with 6 different top threes, which was not super helpful. But all 7 had the same photo in their top 3, which was VERY helpful.
A smart person would have just entered that photo, but because I like to make more work for myself, so I entered three photos (but for the record, the one that everyone chose, is also the one that the judges chose!)

Double exposure portait

The photo

I know most of you are probably just reading this and saying ‘stop talking about your bloody culling process and talk about the photo!’ Well the simple truth of the matter is that the photo that was chosen as a finalist is actually embargoed until the winner is announced in March (so I will be adding it to this blog then…but not before), but I think that I can safely say it was a photo of one of my kids (about 80% of my photos are of the kids, so I don’t think that’s giving too much away).
It was taken on my Fuji Xt1 with the 56mm f1.2 lens, and as much as I would love to claim otherwise, it was not pre-conceived or meticulously planned. I had set up my soft-box to take a different photo, and when this opportunity presented itself, I took it.
I would never claim to have the technical skill to manufacture a great portrait, but I do feel I have the personality required to create an environment where a great portrait can happen.

Man in a hat.

Consent

As part of the submission you have to have the consent of the person in the photo (one of the reasons I never entered this photo of Uncle Jack Charles is because even though he was happy for me to take his photo, I’ve never been able to get onto him to explicitly say he was happy for me to enter it into a competition!)

Uncle Jack Charles

It can be really easy to just say, well they’re my child, so I’m sure they’re happy for me to use the photo. But just as I always ask my kids before I post an image of them on social media, I’d asked my kids if they were happy for me to enter the photos.
I won’t lie, it does feel weird asking your kids for permission to do something. But I think it’s really important for kids to have control over how they are portrayed to the world, I would have hated to have had numerous moments of my life documented and sent out into the world to live on forever without my permission. It’s also a good opportunity to show how a single photo can suddenly take on another life outside of your control once it’s in other people’s hands.
So parents, get your kids consent before you post that next photo of them on Instagram, they’re the ones who are going to have to live with it.

I would love to claim I can both do a tie and take a photo…but in truth this photo was taken by Luke Vesty

So now what?

Well now I have to get the photo printed and mounted ready for exhibition. And book a trip with the family to Canberra for the big event at the National Portrait Gallery. And spend a LOT of time working out how I can weave the terms ‘serendipity’ and ‘lyricism’ into my descriptions of my own photo. And retrospectively charging friends and family for any photos I may have taken of them (it’s only fair, and I’m sure they’ll understand).
But most of all I’m going to celebrate the fact that one of my photos is going to be hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, and then going on tour around Australia.
And that’s pretty amazing!!!

Swimming self-portrait


The Surf Coast Century…50kms of it anyway

Trying to explain why you’re running a 50km trail race is a bit like to trying to explain a dream you had last night; it all made sense in your own head, but now that you’re saying it out loud it sounds illogical and bizarre…and people are asking you to stop talking. But let me take you through the experience anyway.

So fresh and so clean.

After running the Melbourne Marathon last year, I knew that I trained a lot better if I was working towards something, but I had no desire to do Melbourne again, and I had really enjoyed doing the Rapid Ascent Trail Running Series in training, and so I started to think about doing the 50km version of the Surf Coast Century (the full race is 100kms).
It’s here that the logic starts to get a bit sketchy. I thought that seeing as I finished the marathon well, then adding an extra 8kms shouldn’t be too hard. *wrong* Plus I like running up hills, so the 1,136m of elevation gain could work in my favour *wronger* And I’ll be running in beautiful, natural environments that will distract me and keep my mind off how hard the running is *wrongest*.

With common-sense dispatched, I engaged Amanda as my coach again and got back into training. I ran the Rapid Ascent Trail series again, with some results better than last year, and some not as good. I gave myself one of the worst Father’s Day presents ever, a 38km training run, and I managed to get down to Anglesea for one of the training runs where they let you do a recce of the legs of the run (there are 4 legs for the 100km race, and the 50km race is the 3rd and 4th legs). So I arrived at the race feeling as prepared as I could be.

Lining up before the start…a picture of composure and focus.

One of the weird things about doing the 50km version of this race instead of the 100km version is that while normally anyone running more than 40kms is treated like royalty and feted as a hero…at this event there are people quite literally running twice as far as you. So it can be a bit demoralising to know that you’re about to run the furthest you’ve ever run…but that you’re only really at best half as impressive as the people who are running the 100kms. On the bright side, at least you’re not doing it as a team…they’re only running 25kms, and really, who gets out of bed to run less than 30kms?!!!
The upside to doing the 50km version is that while the 100km runners start at about 7.30am, you don’t start until 11.50am. Which means you don’t have the same nerves about getting to sleep the night before, and you can wake up, have breakfast, have a coffee, go to the toilet, have another breakfast, and have another coffee before you even start the race!

The first leg is 28kms from Anglesea to Moggs Creek. It features the biggest hills of the day, and if it’s wet, some of the trails turn to a red mud that attaches itself to your shoes. But it also has a lot of beautiful tracks through the bush, and having done one training day on this section, I was really happy with how I paced myself through it. At about the 25km mark I got passed by a woman doing the 100km race. I told her that she was ‘smashing the 100’ and she said I was ‘smashing the 50!’ She went on to win the women’s race in just over 10hrs, and I would do half that distance in nearly 6.5 hours.
So one of us was lying.

I don’t care if it is 50kms, when you see the photographer, you jump!

Going into the race my goals were:
1. Finish
2. Finish without walking up any of the hills
3. Finish within 6hrs.

By the 28km checkpoint at Moggs Creek, I was feeling very strong about finishing. I had resorted to walking up the final hill before the checkpoint, but was bang on target to make it under 6hrs. So I celebrated by having a cup of Coke, banana, sandwich and some electrolytes (I know how to party). Then pulled out of the checkpoint and on to Airey’s Inlet where I was going to meet Katie and the kids. It’s only about 10kms, and I had given myself 1hr to get there, but this where the wheels started to fall off the cart. I started playing a game called yo-yo tiggy, which is a game where I pass people going up the hills and they pass me going down them. It’s a fun game, that absolutely no one wins. Then I started to have to walk up more of the hills. Then I started to feel really average. My legs felt hollow, and I just didn’t feel like I had any power. People I had passed previously started to come past me, and I was not in a happy place when I pulled into the aid station at Airey’s Inlet.

The aid station at Airey’s Inlet


So it was awesome to see Katie and the kids, and even better to get them to refill my drink bottles and get me my food. I had 14kms to do in just over 90 minutes to break 6hrs, and I hoped that my improved mindset and fuel in my system would get me there.
But within 1km I knew something was wrong. My heart rate was over 180bpms and not dropping in the easier sections. I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m training and a recent one had featured an interview with a triathlete who had raced all his life, and then in one race just felt terrible. He pushed on through, and then had a heart-attack afterwards. I had visions of one my kids delivering my eulogy saying ‘We really miss Dad, and wish he was still with us. But we totally understand and respect his decision to chase his arbitrary goal of 6hrs…a goal that no one else knew, let alone cared about.’ So I went back to my training I did 6 years ago when I started training for the Ironman, and ran until my heart-rate got beyond where I wanted it, then walked until it go back under control, and ran again, and then walked when it go too high. At one stage a guy in his 60’s jogged past me, and I remembered passing him just out of Mogg’s Creek, and that hurt. But I stuck to it, and eventually the periods of running got longer, and the walking shorter until I found a pace I could sustain without getting my heart-rate too high. My dreams of finishing in 6hrs were gone, but I was back on track and moving.

Admittedly I saw the photographer, and swapped from a walk to a run.

Then we hit Urquhart Bluff, which is about 5kms of running on the beach. For anyone hoping for a little respite from the tired legs and heavy feet of a long run, 5kms of running on soft sand is a real kick in the nads. But my decision to run in a way that would allow me to see my family again paid immediate dividends, when I saw my family again! They had been driving along the Great Ocean Road towards the finish line when they decided to stop at the beach. Then they started recognising other runners that they had seen at the Airey’s Inlet aid station when they were waitng for me and knew I mustn’t be too far away. So they ran with me for about 500ms and kept me company. I always say that the thought that people may come out to say hello at marathon or long-distance event is always a great distraction and motivation…but to have them actually turn up is even better!!!

Please note my running pace is the same as everyone else’s walking pace.
In search of hard sand.

As I neared the end of the beach and could see the stairs leading up and away, I thought back to the race profile and how there was a climb just before the finish. The guy I was running with had done the race before and so I asked if this was the final climb and he said ‘yes’. So I excitedly jogged up them and then ran along a long road that I knew would lead me to the beach at Anglesea and the finish line! I was suddenly full of relief. The hard yards had been done, and while I wasn’t going to get my goal time, at least I would finish strong.
The further along the road I went, the more I started to wonder how the beach we were going to run along, wound around the cliff face I could see rising to my left. Then with a sinking feeling I realised that the set of stairs wasn’t the last climb…getting over that sodding cliff was the last climb! And so it was. I got over the last hill and ran down the other side. I hit the beach and trudged through the sand and then finally onto the boardwalk. I cursed whoever designed the boardwalk for the two sections where I thought I was going to turn a corner to reveal the finish line, only to discover more boardwalk, then I turned off the boardwalk onto a section of trail that was probably on 100m long, but may as well as have been 5kms for how long it looked to someone who may have started their sprint for home a little too early, and then suddenly there was Katie and the kids and then there was the finish chute, and then there was the finish line…and then it was done. My first ever ultra-marathon done and dusted.

Nearly there…
There.
Sweet relief and a distant stare.

A massive thanks to my support crew (Katie, Josh, Holly and Xavier) for all their help on the day and for tolerating my absences during training, to Amanda for getting me to the line injury free and in a great mental space, and to Rapid Ascent and all of the volunteers for making it such an incredible day.

Best support crew in the business…especially Katie taking photos!

I would love to leave you with an inspirational quote about how I’m going to use the 50km run as springboard towards doing the 100km run next year, but as we were driving back through the dark of evening to our accomodation in Lorne, we could see light flickering in the hills behind Airey’s Inlet and I realised that these were the head-torches of people who were still at least 5kms from reaching the aid station and about 20kms away from finishing and I thought ‘Thank God I didn’t do the 100km!’

50 kms run and done!

Jury duty

Like ovulation and Mahjong, jury duty was one of those things that I kind of thought I knew about, but was also hoping no-one would ask me any specific questions. But then I got picked for jury duty and suddenly I had a lot of questions…and now I have some answers. So I’m no expert but…here’s what I know about jury duty.

Disclaimer

Much like fight club, the first rule of jury duty is that you don’t talk about jury duty. It’s illegal to talk about your time as a juror…but…*spoiler alert* I didn’t get to actually sit on a jury. So clearly I won’t be talking about anything to do with any actual cases. This will purely be about the process of what happens when you’re summoned to be juror.

In the beginning

This journey began late last year when I got a letter in the mail telling me that I had been selected for jury duty. This letter set a tone for all future correspondence from Juries Victoria, in which, much like a teenage Chris Riordan, 90% of the correspondence was based on an assumption of rejection.
Basically the letter said ‘You have been chosen for jury duty. Would you like to do jury duty? I mean I totally understand if you don’t want to…it’s cool. Just you know, let us know, there’s no pressure or anything…I really like you as a friend, and maybe we should just leave it at that, in fact, forget I ever asked you, ha ha “Would you like to do jury duty?” I can’t believe I even asked, I mean, you’re so popular, and you’ve got so much going on, you’d never have time for jury duty. Oh God! What was I thinking? Look just forget about it, maybe I’ll get in contact again later on, I mean, if that’s Ok with you, I’ve made a mix-tape with some jury duty related songs, maybe I’ll send that, and call when you’ve had a chance to listen to it.’
I realised that Juries Victoria was pretty much my spirit organisation and so I agreed to take part.

But here’s the thing

I LOVE the idea of jury duty. There was invariably a moment on set when filming a TV commercial, when everyone was getting hysterical because the light wasn’t quite right, or we’d just discovered that the talent was left-handed and this shot was going to have to be reset unless they could learn to cut a tomato with their non-preferred hand, or the client just ‘wasn’t happy’ with how the carpet looked and some wise soul would say ‘Guys, we’re not saving children’s lives here’…and it was true. The reality was that no-one really cared about the lighting of a scene in a commercial. The decisions we were making, while seemingly VERY important at the time, really didn’t have any gravity. No one’s life was going to change as a result of what we did.
So to suddenly be thrust into a situation where what I did really could impact another person’s life…and to be told, we trust you to do this, was really quite amazing. To think that every week people were suddenly scooped out of their normal lives, and asked to partake in a process that dates back over a thousands of years, is actually quite mind blowing.
Plus I have an odd penchant for old men in wigs.

Let’s do this

After a few more letters asking whether I was really sure that I was available, and that they would totally understand if I wasn’t. I finally got my letter telling me when my jury duty was…which was then postponed by a day. But I finally got to head to the Court district of Melbourne and sit in a room with about 50 other people who were there to do their duty. We watched a few videos that told us what to expect: How long the trials usually last (usually two weeks), the hours we would need to be there (roughly 10am to 4.30pm), whether we can talk about the trial on social media (no), really, not even a status update? (no) Come on, what if I put a snapchat filter on so that it makes the defendant look like a rabbit? (still no). But best of all we then got to ask any questions, and someone said that their boss wanted to know if they could work up until 10am, and then again after 4.30pm. To which the reply was ‘No. While you are on jury duty, this is your only work. You should focus all of your attention on your duty as a juror.’ Now I must admit, that even as a public servant my thought had been ‘Well, if I just do a few hours work before I head in to do jury duty, and a few hours when I get home…I should be able to stay on top of my emails!’ I mean in a world where we’re all mortgaged to the hilt and only ever a few missed pay cycles away from defaulting, who in their right mind would think that it was OK to tell an employer that for at least the next two weeks I’ll only be working 10am – 4.30pm?! Well now I had my answer, the Judicial system…that’s who! For a brief second I was given an insight to a far away time when what you did for the betterment of society was given a greater value than the benefit you could give to your employer.
But there was no time to dream of what might have been, soon we were whisked away to the Supreme Court for our first empanelment.

Empanelment?

Yes, empanelment. This is the process whereby a jury is chosen, and it meant actually walking into the Supreme Court. Many moons ago I was lucky enough to do a video for the new Mercy Hospital in Heidelberg, and as part of this we filmed at both the old hospital and the new hospital. It was amazing to see how different the two were, and how the new one was so clearly designed to make people feel welcome. There was a lot of natural light, a lot of pleasant colours, soft furnishings and rounded edges. The people designing the Supreme Court were clearly NOT given the same brief. Everything is designed to make you feel that ‘this is serious’. If that feeling you got when you someone says ‘Can I have a quiet word…in private?’ was a building, then the Supreme Court would be it. There is a lot of wood, dark colours and sombre tones. The Barristers, Lawyers and Clerks of the Court are dressed as they are in the movies, and their sense of confidence and purpose, mixed with sense of history and procedure that seemed to emanate from the room itself, left me with a sense of reverence…and a strong sense of gratitude that I was not walking into this place as a defendant.
As we walked into the Court where we were handed a sheet of paper that listed all of the people who were involved in the case (defendants, family members, witnesses, etc). As I waited for everyone to file in and be seated, I read through the names, but none of them were even vaguely familiar. In a town of 4.5 million people, it still felt weird to not know anyone on the list. Then each juror’s number was pulled out of a box and read out and we had to say whether we felt we could be part of the trial. Then the Judge was introduced and he went through the general details of the case (just in case anyone was wondering who was in charge, the Judge literally sits high above everyone else in the Court), and then read through every name on the list and explained each person’s relevance to the case. Again, we were asked if there was any reason why we couldn’t be part of the trial. Then all of us who had indicated that we didn’t feel we could be part of the trial were called before the Judge to explain why, which gave me the chance to say ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ and thus check that item off my bucket list. If the Judge accepted your reason your number was removed from the box containing all of the juror numbers…if they didn’t, then your number was returned to box. Then the 13 numbers were drawn out of the box (13 in case one juror became sick there would still be 12), and as number was called the person would walk past the defendant (who had been in the courtroom the whole time) and if the defendant called ‘Challenge’, then those people were rejected from the jury (the first three challenges could be made without giving a reason, but after three a reason had to be given). Then once the 13 had been chosen and approved, they were sworn in…and suddenly 13 people who’s biggest decision of the day had been what to have for breakfast were being led away to a room to prepare to be part of a process that would see them changing the life of at least one person. I think they handled it pretty well.
For the rest of us, that was round one. We would move back to the room where we had started the day, and wait for the next case to be called that required a jury, so that we could start the process over again…albeit with 13 fewer people.
But then about 15 minutes later, we were told that we had all been discharged from duty…our work here was done. I wasn’t going to sit on a jury after all.

Nuance

I won’t lie, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t selected. While the career progression with Jury Duty did seem a tad limited, I did really want to see how the whole system worked. In a world where we blithely take 2 seconds to agree to 64 pages of ‘Terms and Conditions’ just so we can get some software working on our computers, and where any interaction that takes longer than 3 minutes had better result in a coffee. It was strangely re-assuring to see the Court at work.
I actually watched the verdict in the George Pell case live on Facebook, and as Judge Kidd laid out all of his reasoning and all of the considerations, it was apparent that Facebook did not have an emoji for ‘I’m appreciating the exploration of nuance’. It was a bit like when Rob Oakeshott took 17 minutes to tell us if he was going to support Gillard or Abbott in 2010. Nobody wants nuance or balance, they just want an answer that they can either yell about to support or oppose. There is not subtlety, there is no grey, and there sure as hell isn’t the place for reasoned opinions.
So it was somehow reassuring to see the Court in action, albeit briefly. To see the time that was taken to ensure that things were understood, to see the humanity of the people working in the Court, and of course the imposing physicality of the room itself. There was process and there was gravitas, and it was uplifting to know that every day Victorians were an integral part of making it all work.

Running your second marathon

After finishing the Melbourne Marathon last year, a surprising number of people told me that they secretly harboured dreams of running a marathon, and did I have any tips? Now clearly, having only run two marathons, ‘tips’ are about as much as I can offer…but having only done two marathons, I’m probably better placed to remember what it’s like to think about tackling your first marathon than someone who has done a lot of them. And anyway, this blog is free, so at worst, you’ll get what you paid for!
So here are my tips for training for your first marathon:

This is the look of a man who beat his goal time, got a negative split, AND found his family after finishing!

Train for it like it’s your second marathon

Roughly 80% of your first marathon will be spent worrying that you won’t be able to make the distance. Whereas, with your second marathon you can actually spend a little more time taking in the experience of the run (apart from the final 7kms…that’s a real shit-show!) So, as much as possible, know that if you do the training, you can make the distance…and start from there.

Start early

As I furiously touch every piece of wood around me, I can say that I’ve trained for both of my marathons without suffering a serious injury, and I’m pretty sure that’s because I gave myself a lot of time to get my body ready. I did my first marathon as part of my training for an Ironman, and so I had done 10 months of training for it by the time I got there. For my second marathon I trained for just under 4  months, but I had been running at least once a week prior to this.
If you’ve only been running occasionally, or only running shorter distances (5 – 10 kms), then your body is going to have to do a lot of adapting to the increased workload, so make sure you give it plenty of time.

Get a coach

A coach will layout a training program that will get you ready. A coach will adapt training to your circumstances, but will also be that voice in your ear that gets you out of of bed on those cold, early mornings (although I did pay extra to get my coach to break into my house and whisper ‘Get out of bed’ each morning…you may simply use will-power), and a coach is there to answer all those questions that pop up along the way. One of my clearest memories of my first marathon is chatting to my coach on the day before and asking ‘So, do I need to put band-aids on my nipples to stop chaffing?’ and him saying ‘Oh mate, YES!’ (ladies, you’ll be fine…but fellas, it’s not until you see a guy with patches of red soaking through their t-shirt where their nipples are that you realise just how much you can chaff over 42kms!)
I’ve had two coaches (one for the Ironman and one for the marathon last year), and they have both been fantastic in different ways. The most important thing is that they know what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. For the marathon last year I worked with Amanda Meggison (who I HIGHLY recommend) and I explained that I wanted to run a sub 4hr marathon, that I wanted to include other sports in my training (ie swimming, cycling and gym) and that I wanted to involve my family wherever possible. Amanda developed a program that did exactly that!

A good coach should appear at about the 24km mark of the marathon, have a chat while you run…then take a selfie!

By the numbers

This really depends on your personality, but I found that having a record of my runs really helped. I’ve got a Garmin watch, so I could see my pace, heart-rate, time and distance for each run. A LOT of the changes you will see are incremental, and often so small that you don’t actually notice them…but if you have an actual record of each run, then you can see them over time.
Hitting daily and weekly goals is also a remarkably good motivator.

Have testicles

If you’re combining your training with a full-time job, or a family, or indeed – both. Then you’re going to find it really hard to get big sessions done during the 9-5 day. So you will have to look at running early in the morning, or once the kids are in bed. This is actually incredibly therapeutic! You get to see sunrises as you run along empty bike paths, and see how cities change after dark. I’ve had the pleasure of running for hours in National Parks and on country roads where I might only see 1 or 2 other people, and do you know how many times I’ve feared for my safety…not once! In fact it wasn’t until I was chatting to a few female runners about an evening run and they simply said ‘Oh, I don’t feel safe running by myself at night’ that I realised how much I had simply taken this for granted.
Now I’m not saying that women can’t or shouldn’t run by themselves, I’m just saying that as a man, it didn’t even factor into my calculations. In fact, soon after having this realisation, I was running early one morning in Northcote when I saw a young woman on the path in front of me, and I was suddenly left wondering ‘Do I keep my distance, or is that going to be creepy? Do I run closer to her and act as a Guardian Angel (knowing full well that from her perspective, some creepy guy is now running REALLY close to her and looking smug)? Do I run past her and give her as wide a berth as possible, or yell something as I approach so as not to give her a fright?’ It was really fraught…for about 8 seconds, then I realised that she was actually a LOT faster than me and she disappeared into the distance.
But seeing as I don’t really have any advice to pass on here, I would love to hear from female runners about how they deal with this.

Headphones

You’re already 1,000 words into this blog and I’ll bet you’re pretty sick of me already…well just imagine having to listen to this as an internal monologue 24 hours a day! Believe me, it’s not pleasant. So I am a massive advocate for listening to something as you run, whether it’s music, or podcasts or audiobooks…just make sure you can also hear the world around you.

Consistency is key

The biggest difference between preparing for my first marathon and my second, was my willingness to listen to my body, and take a break if I had to. With my first marathon, if I could feel a cold coming on, I would often ignore it and hope that by training I could fight it off. Invariably this meant that I would get a day or two more training in, and then crash hard with whatever illness I had hoped to avoid and miss multiple days of training…then try desperately to make this up as soon as I felt better, and fatigue myself so that I was vulnerable to getting sick, and then repeat the process.
For this marathon prep, if I felt like I had a cold coming on, I was willing to take a day or two off and let my body fight it. While this meant I did miss a day or two of training, I was able to bounce back quickly and not have to panic about making up for multiple days of training. The result was I had much better consistency, and my fitness and pace improved in line with that.

Race when you can

I remember doing a group training session for the Ironman where we did some sprints, and one the guys next to me said ‘I signed up for an Ironman so I didn’t have to do this fast stuff anymore!’ If you’ve signed up for a marathon, you probably feel the same…and if you’ve never been much of a runner, you’re probably not all that keen on racing against anyone. But the other big difference between my first and second marathons was the number of races I did as part of the training. I signed up for the Rapid Ascent Trail Running series and it was amazing, but any of the Sri Chinmoy runs, or a Park Run or just a local fun run, is a really good way to push yourself and see what you’re capable of. I guarantee that you will get something out of every race you do, even if it’s just the experience of having a complete stranger cheer you on!

Best support team in the biz!

So there you go, all the information you could ever want on running your first marathon…you are now morally obliged to go and run one!

 

 

 

My top photos of 2018

If there’s one thing that 2018 taught me, it’s that starting a new job REALLY diminishes your photography! I took about 75% fewer photos this year, but I’m not willing to let this stop my annual list of favourite photos. So here in no particular order are my top 18 of 2018, and as a special bonus I’ve included a music reference in every title…anyone who can guess them all wins a prize!

Sunset studies

Lake Pertobe sunset

I know that a good photographer can manufacture almost any scene…but for the rest of us, we have to just celebrate those moments that you’re in the right place at the right time, and you’ve got your camera…and you get the shot!

You’ve gotta fight, for ya right…to PARTY!

Party boy

There’s a lot to worry about when your kid’s having a party. Will the other kids come? Will they care that there are just basic party games, rather than a unicorn petting zoo or jumping castle filled with Lemurs, or whatever it is that people are paying for now? Katie and I spent the days leading up to this party wondering how we would deal with no-one turning up. This photo let me know that it was all going to be OK.

Dogs are the best people

The Regal Beagle

The big addition to our family this year was this fine looking hound, our rescue Beagle ‘Marnie’. You can read about our journey to get her here but given the Beagle propensity to escape, I wanted to get a good photo we could use for the ‘Missing Dog’ posters.

Uncle John’s lament

Uncle John

My Mum comes from a family of 10 kids and at her Brother’s recent 80th birthday party she asked me to shoot some portraits of the siblings…I love this one because it’s somewhere between Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles and ‘The Thinker’. I also know how hard it was to get a serious pose from him when all of his siblings were looking on and mocking from the sidelines.

The last splash

Last splash in the waves before heading home

We had told the kids they could have one last splash in the waves at Sandy Point before we headed back for Melbourne. I was trying to get some photos of the Pacific Gulls flying low over the shallows when I saw Xavier running towards the waves. No time to compose the shot, just swing the camera, shoot and hope…and this was the result!

Binalong time

Binalong Bay, Tasmania

I had gone exploring during a stop at Binalong Bay in Tassie, and decided I would only take my 35mm, as I didn’t want to lug my whole camera bag around. When I saw this I cursed myself for not bringing a wider lens. But I did have my GoPro, and so I took the photo on that. The best camera is the one you have in your hands…not the one sitting in the boot of the car!

Treat your Mother right

Mum

I have photos of my Mum blowing out the candles on a birthday cake with my kids, and photos of Mum at family events, and even a photo of Mum dressed as Ace Frehley from KISS. But I’ve never had a shot that I think actually did her justice…and now I do.

Tasmanian still life

Still life

Metaphors for life people…metaphors for life. Don’t just be part of the dull background! You can stand strong, be vibrant and shine a light in the darkness. But just be aware, that as you do, your mate is vomiting up a gooey yellow mess in the background.
I was really proud of this photo when I took it…but now I can’t help but feel like it’s two daffodils re-enacting drunk people at the Melbourne Cup.

Put the kids upfront

Cradle Mountain part 1

Cradle Mountain part 2

There are thousands of photos of this view, so how do you make yours different? Put a kid in the foreground and let them do whatever they want. Kids don’t take direction well, but they do ‘whatever they want’ remarkably well…and you can’t fake authenticity.

Architecture in Tasmania

Taking in MONA part 1

Taking in MONA part 2

Sooo, that thing about putting a kid in the foreground of a shot that you really like…that works really well for architectural shots as well, especially if you’re at MONA.
Of course putting a child in MONA does come with its own consequences. One of the first things you see as you walk into MONA is a wall of plaster-cast vulvas. Our 7yo who was listening to the audio tour looked up at me and innocently said ‘This one’s called ‘C*nts and conversations‘ Dad…what’s a conversation?’
Yet another parenting highlight.

It’s a soft-box life

Holly & Pebbles

The enigmatic X-man

It’s always a bit of an effort to drag the soft-box and strobe out of the shed, but it does mean that the kids are 23% more willing to let me take their photo. It’s always worth it, plus I get to pretend I’m Zack Arias or David Hobby.

There are angels, in your angles

Evandale in Tasmania

On the final night of our Tassie trip we went out for dinner at a pub in Evandale. There was an enormous sculpture of the word ‘RELAX’. This is Josh with his head in the A-hole…and no, I do not intend to reword that.

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment…

‘All the way home’ playing a gig in the living room

I always love getting a shot that captures an experience. Here ‘All the way home’ were playing a gig in their living room, to an appreciative audience and having a great time.

If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

Deloraine sunset through the blossom

As we pulled into Deloraine, the sun was setting through the blossom and a large family all dressed in some sort of religious clothes were walking together next to the lake. I had dreams of taking a photo of them as it was an amazing scene, but by the time we had done an elaborate U-turn and retrieved the camera from where it was packed, the moment had passed. So I settled for this.

This one goes out to the one I love

Composed, classy and confident.

The stress of shooting a wedding is nothing compared with taking a photo of the person you love. They’ve heard all your jokes, they know all your tricks, and they will make life VERY difficult if you mess this up. There is also the challenge of breaking through 16 years of marriage, 3 kids, numerous ups and downs, and then capturing the person as you see them. So I love this shot.

Melbourne Marathon 2018

They say that ‘life is a marathon, not a sprint’…and this is because it takes a lot consistent effort to do it well, it costs more than you think it should, and there is always the risk that if things don’t go well, you will shit yourself in public. Nevertheless, I’ve signed up to do this year’s Melbourne Marathon. This will be my third marathon, although the second one doesn’t really count as it was at the end of an Ironman, and was more of a glorified stroll from Frankston to St Kilda as I tried valiantly to keep my food down, and ideally, stop vomiting blood. So I’m not a newbie…but I still don’t consider myself a ‘runner’. In fact if I think about running, there are three memories that jump to mind immediately.
The first is being at school athletics carnival when I was in about Grade 2 and running in a relay, I was running next to a kid who I thought was the slowest in our grade (shout out to Daniel Grover) and he started to pass me, and I remember having the choice of putting in all of my effort and trying to get back past him (and of course running the risk of still not beating him), or just ease off and let him go past, but not have to put my pride on the line by trying and failing. I heroically chose the second option, and I’ve never really forgiven myself.
The second memory is going for morning runs on school camp at Buxton when I must have been 12 or 13 and always being in the last couple of kids who would make it to wherever the faster kids had had to wait while we caught up. I was usually the lone skinny kid amongst the chubby kids…and I always felt the guy that ran the camp (shout out to Johnny ‘Bloody’ Malcolm) had a special look of ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’ that he saved just for me.
Man I hated running.
But then my third memory was from when I was training for the Ironman and saw that I had a 21km run to do on the weekend, and my first thought was ‘so that’s 2 hours I’ll have to set aside’. Not ‘Oh dear God! How the hell am I going to run 21kms?!!!’ or ‘How can I get out of this?’ There is an incredible feeling that comes with doing sufficient training to see 21kms as an allocation of time, rather than a major challenge. So a big motivator for attempting the marathon this year was trying to get back to being that fit…plus I’m 42 and the marathon is 42kms…so there was that too. I’m now less than a week out, and now seems as good a time as any to go through what I’ve learnt this time around.
So I’m no expert but here are a few things I’ve learnt about training for a marathon.

Be like Kim Novell

Ask yourself ‘Who is actually going to come out on the day of the marathon and watch me run?’ This is the exact number of people who are sufficiently interested in the fact that you’re running a marathon that you should post about it on Facebook or Instagram each time you train…and you’re going to be sitting around the dinner table with them tonight…so keep the #crazyrunner #marathontraining #longrun stuff to an absolute minimum.
Unless of course you’re writing a blog about it…in which case…shine on you crazy diamond!

‘Yeah, a marathon is tough, but have you heard of…’

For some people the thought of running 5kms seems impossible, for some people the thought of doing 10kms or a half marathon seems impossible, and for a lot of people the thought of running a full marathon seems impossible. If you’re running a marathon, then you have probably already proved to yourself that the first three aren’t impossible, and so you should have a sense of achievement…and once you’ve done a marathon, my God…you’ll never have to listen to someone else talk about their achievements again! But sadly, no. There are ultra-marathons, 100km runs, 100 mile runs, 100 mile runs up hills, multi day events, the 79km hop* and people will talk to you about these, and it will feel like they’re trying to diminish your achievement. But don’t let it. Just remember, you set yourself a challenge, you worked hard, and you achieved it. That’s awesome. If other people want to set themselves other challenges, then so be it, but you can only control what you do…and you’ve done something amazing.

*This may not actually be a thing.

Fingers and toes

When you think about training for a marathon you probably think about how sore your legs are going to be…and believe me they do get pretty sore…but the true victims for this campaign have been my fingers and toes.
For any run over 15kms I am now having to tape up most of my toes to stop them inflicting damage on each other. My little toe on my left foot now has a callous so sharp that it actually cuts the toe next to it…and the little toe on my right foot has decided that having a toe-nail is optional and so has done away with it altogether. Meanwhile, my big toes have conspired to poke their toenails through the tops of my shoes and the remaining toes appear to decided to use their toenails to attack the toes next to them.
But at least my toes have the decency to be hidden by socks and shoes at all times. On the other hand (*zing!*) my fingers have decided to react to the regime of early morning winter runs by developing chilblains. Yes, chilblains. You know those things that along with scurvy and ‘the vapours’ you thought were eradicated in 1800s.  Well they weren’t and I’m living proof. When I started to get lumps on my fingers I made the logical assumption, ‘I have hand cancer!’, but it turns out that, much like the 79km hop, that’s not actually a thing. Then I remembered a TV jingle for socks in the 80s that mentioned chilblains, did some online research…voila! Chilblains! I also realise that basing my medical advice on a TV jingle and Google is the sort of approach that has health professionals across the country smacking their heads into desks and saying ‘Why do we bother?…Why do we bother?’ But to them I say ‘We don’t need expertise anymore, we have the internet! Facts are boring and uniformed opinions are FUN! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a rather important ‘Mr. Squiggle was a flat-Earther conspiracy’ rabbit-hole to fall down.’

The bare necessities

One of the great thing about running (as opposed to cycling for example) is that you pretty much just need a pair of runners and you’re good to go (as opposed to just needing a bike, shoes, helmet, cycling kit, socks that are the correct height, a power meter, a second bike [for Cyclocross/commuting/whatever excuse you can come up with], new set of carbon wheels, etc). However, if you are training for a marathon, there are a few other things things that I think you should invest in:

A coach – a coach will design a program that suits your situation (level of fitness, time commitments, goals) and will keep you motivated. There were a few times when people would ask what I had planned for the weekend, and I would say ‘I have to do a 32km run on Sunday’ and they would reply ‘Well, you don’t HAVE to do a 32km run!’ and I would laugh and say ‘Yeah, I guess.’ But deep down I was thinking ‘But what would Amanda say if I didn’t?! She would be both angry AND disappointed!’
I’ve had two coaches (one for the Ironman and one for this marathon) and they have both been excellent. So find someone you click with and get a program done…and if you’re looking for a personal recommendation, Amanda Meggison at Planted Life is fantastic!

A device – A Garmin, a Fitbit, an Apple watch, whatever…just make sure it can give you your heart rate, pace and distance. This will help you track how your fitness is progressing, let you know what your pace is while you’re running…and most importantly provide you with the stats you will need to gloat on social media / justify eating that second serve of French Toast.
For me on this campaign I have been amazed that the running hasn’t gotten any easier…but the times have gotten faster. If I was going on ‘gut-feel’ I think I would have given up a while ago.

Headphones –  You are going to be spending a LOT of time by yourself, and unless you want to hear hours of your internal monologue saying ‘This sucks, this sucks, this sucks’, then headphones + podcasts are the way to go.
However, this will leave you with the quandary of whether to wear them when you do the actual marathon. This is a bit of tricky one for me. On the one hand, changing a key thing that you’ve done in every training session when you do the actual race is stupidity 101, and Lord knows it make life a lot easier if you’ve got a banging 4hr playlist to get you through the tough times. But on the other hand, I think that part of the challenge with any endurance event is that extended conversation you have with yourself through the really tough times…the mental toughness required for a marathon is just as important as the physical conditioning…so if you wear headphones, are you actually diminishing the challenge? I don’t know…but I have decided not to wear headphones when I run the marathon…and I expect to spend close to 4 hours regretting that decision.

Timing’s everything

Much like having a child or doing your tax return, there’s never really a ‘right time’ to do a marathon. You just kinda have to commit to it, and then start training. Having said that, having a two week holiday in Tasmania three weeks out from the marathon is either the smartest thing I could have done…or the dumbest. It’s surprisingly hard to find the time to sneak in a few long runs while on the road. But by the same token, it’s pretty hard to find 8 hours of sleep every night during my normal routine. So I’m feeling rested…I just hope I’m not TOO rested.

Also, having your heaviest training load coincide with work hitting bat-shit crazy levels of busy is really not fun…especially if you’re having to work long days knowing that you still have to get home and get a run in. At the same time, having a physical outlet for all of the frustration is pretty damned therapeutic.

So there you go, a few of the things I’ve learnt this time around. I’m confident that I will be able to get a sub 4-hour time, but from memory, I was equally confident of running sub 4-hour time last time as well, and that didn’t pan out as I had hoped (4hrs 11mins for those keeping score). But rest assured, I will do a brief race report afterwards to work out what actually worked and what didn’t…but in the meantime, I’m going to eat everything in sight and secretly pray for rain on race day.

A very muddy day on the trails at Westerfolds Park

If you would like to donate to the JMB Foundation please head here: https://melbournemarathon2018.everydayhero.com/au/chris-riordan and if the link doesn’t work, just send them some money anyway, they do great work!

Beagle Tinder

As we clearly established in the great ‘Josh buys a snake‘ debacle of 2017, our family really is a dog family. But much like a tree-falling in a forest with no one around, is a ‘dog family’ without a dog really a family? Of course, the short answer is ‘yes’, but that’s not going to sustain an entire blog entry, so let’s go with ‘no’. So we decided that we would get a dog, after we returned from our trip to France and the UK. After all it would be very unfair to get a dog and then promptly abandon it for 6 weeks (also, I’m of the parenting style that strongly favours the ‘Why do today, what you can put off for an indefinite period?’ approach). While we were in France the kids got to interact with an aged Bernese Mountain Dog named Bacchus at our first accomodation, and they got to spend 3 weeks looking after the indefatigable Trevor and Darren in Arromanche-les-Bains. The kids passed the international canine test with flying colours, and so when we returned we set about looking for a dog to call our own.

OK, sure, there was that one time that Xavier lost the shirt off his back to a pair of streetwise King Charles Cavaliers

That was then, this is now

When Katie and I got our Beagle/Labradors (more on that later) Jasper and Ceilidh, we read through ‘The Trading Post’ (a weekly newspaper that listed things for sale) and called the pet store (what we would now call a ‘Puppy farm distribution point’) on our land line (like an iPhone…but with the 99.8% less functionality) to arrange a time to come and pick them up (this was a time before ‘Uberpets’ [the drone based pet-delivery system that I’m sure is only weeks away]existed).
This time we decided to get a rescue dog (as in a dog that had been rescued…not a dog that was capable of rescuing people) because we wanted to show people that we were better than them…but veganism just seemed like too much hard work.  Instead of waiting for Thursday to roll around so that we could go to the newsagent to buy the Trading Post, we simply logged into the interwebs and started searching for our new dog. The number and variety of dogs was almost overwhelming. There were Staffies, Greyhounds, Staffordshire Terriers, Irish wolfhounds, Staffies, Staffordshire Terriers, and some more Staffies. Plus, there was a dazzling array of terms to describe the dogs that didn’t sound too bad…but could also double as a defence in a court of law (eg ‘Energetic’, ‘enthusiastic’, ‘Full of beans’, ‘prefers to be an only dog’, ‘great singing voice’ ‘ate last owner’ etc,etc). I also discovered that there were a lot of different organisations offering rescue dogs, and so something like Pet Rescue that fed all of these different organisations into one website was remarkably helpful. But even then, there were a HELL of a lot of dogs out there. It was time to start focussing our attention. We knew we didn’t want a large dog (Great Dane, Wolfhound etc), we knew we didn’t want a working dog (Collie, Heeler, Husky etc) and we knew we didn’t want anything that would scare little kids (Bull Terrier, Rottweiler, Doberman, etc).
Both Katie and I had really loved our Beagle/Labradors, and so we settled on a Beagle and began a daily routine of checking in to ‘Beagle Rescue Victoria‘ to see what dogs were available.

The adoption process

After about a month we found a dog that we thought might be a good match for us, and so I decided to ‘apply’ for him. But first I had to fill in an application form. Now up until this moment, I had very much been under the impression that I simply had to put my hand up and say ‘We’ll take a dog’…and a dog would be sent our way

‘You get a Beagle! And you get a Beagle!’ via GIPHY

So when I downloaded the application form, I had assumed the questionaire would be just one question:

Are you an amazingly wonderful person?
A. Yes
B. Yes, but I’m too modest to say
C. All of the above.

But it wasn’t…it was multiple pages, with questions about how many hours the dog would be left alone, and how high the fences were, and had we ever owned a hound before, and what was my favourite season of ‘The Wire’ (actually they didn’t ask that, but that gives you an idea of just how probing the questions were). To make matters even worse, after filling in the application form and sending it off…we were rejected! Rejected from adopting a rescue-dog! I hadn’t felt this ashamed of my family since the first time I had to tell my boss that I couldn’t come to work because we had ‘Hand, foot and mouth’ disease. How could we go out in public now? People would be whispering behind our backs ‘There go the Riordans…not even rescue dogs want them.’ Oh the indignity.

Right on the Marnie

But we didn’t give up. If a series of letters could convince Katie to go out with me 20 years ago…a series of emails could get us a Beagle now! So I started sending regular emails asking about the availability of various dogs. Like a pimply teenager, I heard all of the reasons why I wasn’t the best choice; ‘we wouldn’t be home enough’, ‘the dog needs another dog for company’, ‘it’s not them…it’s you’, etc. But then one day Tam from Beagle Rescue Victoria said ‘I think we actually have just the right dog for you!’ ‘Really?’ I said, a bit perplexed, as I knew all of the dogs on their website, and couldn’t for the life of me think of the one that was ‘perfect’ for us. ‘She’s actually not on our website, as she’s so good looking that people would want to adopt her just for her looks, not because they’re the best match for her’. I explained that was the exact same reason I have so few photos of myself on the internet.
Tam asked for a few more photos of our fences and gates, and once they had the tick of approval, she sent through some photos of a dog named Marnie and we arranged a time for her to come and visit.

Marnie: The Regal Beagle

First date

There is nothing normal about cleaning a house to make a good impression on a dog. There is also nothing rational about screaming at your kids ‘Act normal…no, I didn’t say ‘do what you normally do’, I said ‘act normal’. Oh God, the dog’s going to hate us…quick, one of you cover yourself in dog treats!’ But then in a whirlwind of black, brown and white, Marnie (the Beagle), Tam (from Beagle Rescue Victoria) and Amanda (the lady whose family was currently looking after Marnie) arrived. Marnie was indeed too beautiful for the internet. She gave us a cursory sniff, and then spent the next hour furiously smelling the entire backyard.
Meanwhile the ‘parents’ talked, and one of the things we kept saying about Marnie is that she was so small compared to our Beagle/Labradors. Tam and Amanda asked to see some photos of our dogs (Jasper and Ceilidh) and so we showed them some. ‘Oh’ said Tam ‘Did you get these from *and then named the pet store where we got them*?’ ‘Yes’ I replied. ‘They’re Foxhound/Beagles. That’s why they’re bigger’. Now, when Katie and I were looking for dogs back in the Trading Post days, we wanted Beagles, but thought they would be too hard to train, so we thought that Beagle/Labradors would be perfect as Labs are a bit easier to train, and so when we saw them advertised at a shop in Croydon we headed out there. We then spent the next 13 years sanctimoniously telling people that ‘No, they’re not Foxhounds, they’re Beagle/Labradors…we call them Legals’.
So to every one of those people, especially that one lady at the Zwar Park who kept saying ‘I just can’t believe how much they look like Foxhounds!’, you were right, they were Foxhounds!!

But back to Marnie, just like any reality dating TV show, we proceeded to the next round…and on the next weekend Marnie arrived at our house for a 4 week trial.

Getting to know you

One of the big concerns about taking in a rescue dog is the the fear about what they have already gone through, and how that is going to manifest itself. I would hate to have a dog that snaps at other dogs, or worse, other people. So for the first couple of weeks we did everything we could to get her in situations where we could see her reaction. Katie walked her to school with the kids every day, we took her to the park as a family in the evening where she could mingle with other dogs, and she handled all of this really well.
But she is a VERY different dog to Jasper and Ceilidh. Where they were outside dogs who sometimes came inside, Marnie is definitely an inside dog. She barks at any man who comes to the door, but she will also wait until she’s told she can eat her food (with Jasper and Ceileidh you always had to do a quick count of how many fingers you had left after you’d put their food-bowls down). She REALLY doesn’t like being left at home alone, even if it’s just to go the market for 40 mins, and then goes absolutely berserk when you return (Jasper and Ceilidh just kinda figured it was cool that you were back).
But the thing that probably stands out the most, is just how seamlessly she has managed to fit in with our family. She’s the happy little face that greets us in the morning, the constant companion throughout our day, and the relaxed weight at the end of the bed when it’s time to sleep. It’s as if she’s always been here, and as we near the end of our trial period, hopefully that’s how she’ll remain.