2kiwis

The prizes I am up for are:

For the ‘World Around Us’ Photography category:
A 9 day Egypt & the Nile tour with Contiki

For the People’s Choice Photography Award:
A 12 day Spanish tour with Contiki

So now you know.

On Thursday afternoon we attended the 2nd day of the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park. This was the first proper festival we’ve ever attended in this country, which sounds a little strange considering at the concerts we’ve been to over the years. Anyway we went and it was fun, the only pity being the weather which turned grey and a bit chilly as the evening wore on. We caught a number of good acts, the Violent Femmes singing ‘Blister in the Sun’ bringing back memories of university days. Missy Higgins and Amanda Ghost were good but the highlight for us was KT Tunstall who delivered a barnstorming and enthusiastic performance, totally capturing the attention of the growing festival audience. There were also ‘festival things’ going on, people wandering around blowing bubbles, strange characters on stilts, stalls selling a wide variety of food, drink and clothing and also a big screen showing World Cup football (seemingly just for the small crowd of Australian’s in attendance).

I smuggled my camera in and while taking shots of the Violent Femmes I was tapped on the shoulder and had a security man investigate my camera looking for signs of professionalism. Thankfully I only had a 50mm non-zoom lens attached and was able to convince him I wasn’t going to be zooming in and taking high quality photos to presumably sell on and therefore deprive the (obviously) cash-poor artists of hard earned image rights money. That’s the problem with being an enthusiast with good kit and a bit of know-how, sometimes people just think you’re up to no good (like the police thinking you’re a terrorist threat, remember that?). Anyway, he let me keep my camera and I have photos which you can see in the gallery.

The Bubble Man

Speaking of photos I entered a photo into the TNT Travel Photography awards a while back and it’s been short listed in the ‘World Around Us’ section. They announce the winner on the 2nd August but in the meantime you can vote for the People’s Choice award which is a separate category I get to enter by virtue of being a short listed candidate. If you go to the TNT Travel Award site at this address http://www.tntmagazine.com/travelawards/ you can see the other entries and vote for your favourite. You don’t have to vote for me if you like the other photos better… it’s not like I know who you’ll have voted for. So maybe I’ll win something and that’ll spur me on to enter more competitions and maybe try selling some photos. Or maybe I should be doing that anyway. Have a look and vote for the People photography award and have a read of the travel writing nominees as well. It’s all good stuff.

I’ve mentioned before that we get to see quite a few free movies through our subscription to The Times newspaper. This weekend we saw “An Unfinished Life” staring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman. I have to say this is the best movie I’ve seen this year and possibly in the last few years, it’s just a fantastic movie about people growing and learning about themselves while confronting their own past. There were many times when I thought “they’re going to do this now cause that’s what they always do in movies” and they didn’t which is something I don’t see much these days. Broadly speaking you knew that things would probably turn out alright but it was never guaranteed and it’s nice to be surprised every now and again. So if you get the chance see this movie, Keryn and I both recommend it.

On the IMDB the description is as follows: “A down on her luck woman, desperate to provide care for her daughter, moves in with her father in-law from whom she is estranged. Through time, they learn to forgive each other and heal old wounds.”