My mother insisted on taking the children for a weekend so Karl and I could spend a weekend doing things that don't happen with kids; sleeping in, drinking in bars and generally not having to keep and ear and eye out 24/7 for life threatening antics that either beckon, and are created by the children. So we went to Bali. A place where it's tempting to look around at all the things, but if you take your eyes off the footpath, you will probably trip over and die. I nearly did this whilst watching some hipster get the exact same photo on the same trendy wall that I saw one trillion times, when searching the #seminyak hashtag, in hope of finding the "model" on the beach that spent one solid hour rolling around in the sand, and frolicking in the water whilst her boyfriend documented it all. Sadly, he stopped shooting when she waded out into the water to wash the sand from her crotch. That was the shot I wanted to see. Anyway, the martyr just signed off and here is your mate in hypocrisy.... because here are all the photos I took of my coffee in trendy bars and cafes.
We were packing light, with no kids, so I challenged myself to take one camera and one prime lens for the whole weekend.... ! I would usually take more to the supermarket. I spend 95% of my time with a 35mm or 50mm, but picking just one was too hard. So…. I picked one right in the middle - the Voigtlander 40mm f/1.2 and a sony a9 to wear it. This little manual focus beauty is intoxicating to use, and makes things look at least 100 times cooler than they are in real life. Beautiful colours, amazing rendering, deep shadows. Don't get me started, I quickly turn from a seemingly normal person into a freak when discussing camera gear...
Before you go. Let me tell you a little story about Jetstar. They initially delayed our return flight by 20 hrs, which wasn't too bad, except that I was in a different country to my children and was meant to be at work. The next night we boarded and taxied out to the runway. At this point, the captain took the opportunity to introduce himself and, let us know, I quote "that we are having problems with our number one engine!" So we taxi back to the gate, and spend 2.5 hours sitting on the tarmac whilst they do some investigating, determine there is an engine problem, then fix it, and then test it. All the while, providing us incremental updates and timeframes that magically doubled before the next announcement. My favourite update arrived after about 90 minutes, when they eventually decided to disembark us. Everyone crowded into their aisles with bags and waited patiently, to be told that.... they hadn't actually communicated with the gate staff and they couldnt disembark us. Eventually, after we sat on the tarmac for longer than our entire flight was going to take, some "great news" arrived in the form of an update that not only could we leave, Jetstar really appreciated our patience, and were going to offer us FREE TEA AND COFFEE!!!!! Holy shit. I was so excited at their generosity that I promptly fell asleep and woke up with FOMO.
Anyway. Here are the photos.
