Graham Leggate

A couple of weekends ago I had a milestone birthday. I wasn’t going to blog about it, but the cake that a friend of ours made was so awesome that I decided to post some pictures of the cake and give her business a plug. If anybody is needing a custom designed cake which doesn’t just look fantastic and tastes fantastic, then contact Michelle from For Goodness Cake. Thanks Michelle for such a great cake! Also, a big thanks to all of my friends who helped celebrate the evening. I hope everybody enjoyed the pizzas from Cicciobllo Gourmt Pizza’s.

To all the other bloggers out there, Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year, I’m looking forward to having a break to get a chance to catchup on the 1000+ posts out there I haven’t seen (I think Mark of TrueNorth might be responsible for at least half of that number )

I haven’t posted much in the last coupe of months. We have been pretty busy with renovations on the house. We are currently getting an awesome Western Red Cedar alfresco area and new balcony put on the back of the house and getting the backyard re-paved. I might post some before and after pictures of the renovations at some point. This week is yet another busy week, off to Sydney tomorrow for work.

Anyway this post isn’t anything to do with photography, but I thought somebody out there in the internet world might find this a useful plug. I was listening to a photography podcast a week or two ago, and they mentioned some software called Woopra. Woopra allows you to monitor visitors to your website in real-time. Very cool software!  Basically they provide you with the ability to easily hook into the service from your existing website by adding some javascript or for specific websites they provide plugins (sites like; WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Invision Powerboard, Movable Type, TypePad, and Blogger). You install a desktop client (java based), available for OSX, Windows and Linux. Then you can sit back and monitor who, what, wherefrom, how people are getting to your site. You also have the ability to open a chat session to a visitor as well. Very cool software. We typically use Google Analytics for our main site, but one annoying feature is that the stats are always a day behind. Anyway, if you run a website or blog and are interested in getting some more detailed stats, then take a look at Woopra. Below are a couple of screen captures from the desktop client.

I thought I would post a couple of pictures of the little ones, since I don’t have any landscapes to post. Plus I’m sure the family in the UK would like to see some pics of Amelie in the pool and James at bath time

We had a short break down south last week. Unfortunately the location where we stayed, wasn’t where I thought I had booked us into. I was wanting to stay in Dunsborough, however the accommodation was in Capel. Capel isn’t the best place to use as a base for touring around the cape, especially with 2 young children. Next time I will really pay attention to the location of the accommodation!

HDR, take 2:

A holiday wouldn’t be complete without some family pictures

Headed into the city on Saturday to take a look at some of the historic airplanes… not really my scene, however it was a good reason to go out and take my 3 year old out on a mini adventure. I didn’t come away with too many shots of the airplanes, however there was a reasonable display of MG’s and some corvettes. I managed to get some shots, whilst keeping one eye on Amelie and one through the viewfinder.

Here’s a snap I took a while ago, which I have reprocessed to get it closer to how things looked that night. I’m slowly starting getting the hang of masking and blending in Photoshop.

I was going through my photo library, doing some more tidying up, and I came across the image below of the Great Wall, which I think is worth posting.

What a lovely day in Perth! This morning the family and I headed to Star Swamp… doesn’t sound too attractive, which is probably why it has taken us 5 years to get around to going there, even though I drive past it twice a day! But what a pleasant surprise it was. It’s like a little National Park in the suburbs! I took the camera along and took some snaps. I had my father in-laws macro with me (thanks Brian), and decided to have a go at shooting some flowers… but the bees kept getting in the way

With so much going on; the arrival of James 6 weeks ago, Amelie being unwell, the in-laws over from London, renovations on the house (hooray! All the rendering is complete, well nearly, except for 1 pillar, new gutters fitted, new fascia covers, new wardrobes, most of the bits which bolt to the outside of the house are on, new gates are on order, cedar ceiling installed in the portico and the plans for the new balcony and patio are in progress); there hasn’t been any time to get out and do any landscape photography. However I have still had the D90 out, but mainly focussing the kids. I have to give my wife a pat on her back… she has had to put up with the renovations and other stresses whilst also giving birth!

Anyway, here’s a couple of pictures, the first is of Amelie taken in the garden today… yes she is rugged up as if it is snowing… it was bloody cold out side today. The second picture is of James, taken a couple of weekends ago, when he was 4 weeks old.