Beach blanket bingo

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another beach party down at Elwood, with the usual crowd of ITM malcontents and reprobates. It was a good day, with some excellent music, and ended up fairly early, which was good because it was also very tiring :)

combination

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday drinks, combining flickr and work friends, along with that all important 'work funded' portion of the evening. Lots of funny shenanigans ensued :)

model behaviour

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This afternoon the Victorian Finals of the Miss Universe contest were held in QV. It's an interesting process to go and watch, for a pageant that is solely judged on beauty (talent, intelligence, etc, they're not interested), they certainly didn't seem to be able to judge beauty very well. The girls they chose for the finalists were mostly very attractive, but there were a couple that were honestly not particularly attractive. Of course there were a few that were simply stunning.

multi-party

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was one of those nights that are becoming very frequent lately, where we have multiple parties on one night. The start of the evening was Leah's housewarming/birthday party out in Maribyrnong. This was an interesting party, since Leah's housemate is a police officer, we ended up with a party that had 6 people from Leah's side (Leah, her boyfriend Graeme, me, Joe, Kathryn and Diana) and then the other 10 people were pretty much young female police officers. :)
The next part we attended was at ABar in prahran, where some of our usual crew of ITMers were congregating to listen to a friend DJ and check out a new club night. That was a bit of fun for a while, and then we decided to head into the city to get some Electro fun at the Mercat Cross hotel. We arrived just in time to hear Luke McD starting his set, and spent the next few hours being forced to groove to Luke, Luko, and Pro Tool pump out some seriously good tunes. Afterwards we went back to Ryan's place (because it was very close, and we were very tired) and hung out for a bit before heading home to sleep the sleep of the dead :)

alcohol driven

pretend I'm saying something funny
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I guess sometimes it seems like my life is fuelled by alcohol. Friday was another of those times, drinking with a mixed group of ITM and Flickr friends, laughing and joking around, then Kerryn and I went on a little drunken photowalk. I know from past times that it's still a lot of fun without drinking, but it's also a lot of fun when you are drinking :) There's certainly a lot more jokes, the ones that are only funny when you're brain isn't working properly :)

Sandy

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sandy was in town for a few days so I went to meet up with her and Kate at Polly in Fitzroy. It was good to see them both again, especially Sandy as I hadn't seen her for many months, but I also hadn't seen Kate for ages either. As such, Kate actually gave me my birthday present while I was there, which was a very cool AFI yearly membership, which means cheap movie tickets, access to special screenings, and being able to vote in the AFI awards. It's pretty cool stuff :) It was great to see Sandy again and have

flickrmeet

meta meta meta
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

What is it about flickr meetups that makes them always occur after a big night out? I can't remember the last official meetup I went to that I was sober when I arrived. Maybe the first one. granted i've never been sober when I left, but that's a different story :)
The february meetup was help at The Standard hotel in Fitzroy, and was frequented by a number of new people and even a foreigner or two :)

Carl Cox

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night it was time to hit The Metro for the much awaited Carl Cox gig. Carl Cox is one of the grand masters of dance music, has been a world class DJ for decades and is still capable of creating a fantastic set of music. There had been some concern early on about my ability to take the camera into this gig and use it to shoot photos for ITM, as the promoters, Hardware, have a policy of no media access except their own house photographer, and had already denied ITM a media pass, so it was possible that I wasn't even going to get the camera in, and I definitely wasn't going to be able to blag better access to the DJs once I was in.
We hit the gig in good time, Joe, Nettsu (Michael) and myself and didn't get any hassles at the door. Once we actually showed up at the gig I started to worry less, as the security was being run by the same guys who did it for the TIGA gig, and I knew they'd recognise me and Joe from previous events. Once We were inside the gig it was a bit early and there wasn't much of a crowd gathering, so we did a quick once-around to see where the various stages were set up and then settled into the main room near the bar and started drinking :)
We were joined shortly thereafter by some other friends, Ashley from work, Trashy from ITM, and Fee (Fiona) and her friend Brina, who are old friends of DJ Mudgutz's (pictured above).
The music on the night was excellent, with a room thumping performance by Honeysmack and a huge set by the man himself Carl Cox. I was taking it fairly easy, still being on call, and spent a little bit of time wandering around taking shots, trying to at least get some decent shots of Carl Cox and also a few of Luke McD who was DJing upstairs in the Electro lounge portion of the gig. Poor Luke got the same timeslot as Carl Cox, so there was not that many people in the room while he was playing except a few dedicated Electro freaks :)
After the gig we were all a bit tired, so Joe, Brina, Fee and I headed back to Fee's place in Carlton to crash and talk crap, which was really good, we were cracking each other up consistently until my pager went off and I had to pop home to sort something out. Fee even gave me a lift as they had to go sort out some stuff in the city :)

Alive Alive-o

twice as fun, for twice as long
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, another month another episode of Alive.

This one had the usual mix of great music, crazy shenanigans and meeting new people. The music a these gigs just keeps getting better and better, I think every Alive I've been too has had better music than the last, usually from the same artists just pushing and pushing even more, and this was no exception. I don't think there was one moment all afternoon when I wasn't moving to the music, and some points when all conversation stops and everyone looks over to the 'dj' area in awe. (not that they are actually playing records, so not really DJing). The shenanigans were up to scratch, with Becy getting her book of stupid pick-up lines back off Ryan, Sally modelling a plaque stating "twice as fun, for twice as long" on her chest, and Ryans girlfriend Liz showing that she can actually touch underneath her chin with her tongue. The new people met this time were two of Sally's friends who were actually at Rainbow, we just didn't see them, some mates of Becy's from Sydney and Ryan's girlfriend Liz. Just a fantastic time as always.

The next alive is being held in conjunction with the Screw Crew and will be held on a boat, can't wait for that one. :)

Yak and Docklands

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday saw a return to old fashioned values by having a few drinks at Yak with Kathryn, Leah and a few of the guys from Kathryn's team. It was a fairly low key scenario, as they weren't drinking that heavily and I was On Call. The highlight of the time at Yak was teasing Kathryn about her meeting up with Anyhony whom she met at Rainbow Serpent. Friday was their second date, after a lunch date during the week. Anthony is pretty cool, so I stayed around until he'd been there a bit before saying my goodbyes, to help give Kathryn some support (as I am the only other person there he knew) and to not seem like I was leaving as soon as he showed up.
After Yak I took a bit of a trip down to docklands to see if I could get some shots and to see if any of the boats from the Volvo world race were in port. I got some great sunset shots and managed to see the boats, although it was too dark by that stage to get any decent shots of them.

Rainbow Serpent

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

We finally managed to go to the Rainbow Serpent festival, and I have to say it was one of the best, if not THE best parties I've ever been to.
The crew list was as follows: Joe, Sean, Nick, Kathryn, Kim and Vanessa (friends of Nick), and as per our usual crews, everyone was as silly as humanly possible :)
We had a good camp setup, with Joe, Sean and I having a tent each, so it was definitely Camp Comfort :)
The gig itself was awesome, some simply fantastic music, great visuals, great staging.
There were lots of silly shenanigans, brides stripping down to their underwear, guys in suits with clipboards checking the quality of the sand and tsk-tsk-ing then moving on to another spot, lots of people with wings, crazy hats, gorilla masks, everything you would want.
Friday night was fun, Saturday afternoon good, Saturday night simply awesome, mind numbingly fabulous music, Sunday morning was great, superb techno rolling into a fun Sunday afternoon.
Basically, it was good, I liked it a lot, will be going again, wish I was still there :)

Australia Day

run bec run!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This year Australia day was an absolute scorcher, so we had to make sure wherever we went, it was well air conditioned.
The location of choice was Felicite and Deans place, where they promised us a BBQ and a chilled lounge room.
It was a great day, hanging out with Joe, Felicite, Bec, Steph, Sarah, Paul and Dean. Dean 'took one for the team' and cooked the BBQ out in the 40 degree heat, which was especially arduous since their aircon also exhausts it's air straight under the BBQ. We all did a stint out there to keep him company, and it was bloody hot :)
It's always a lot of fun to hang out with these guys, as they are just plain silly.
For example, after it cooled down a little, the girls went exploring on the roof outside the apartment, running across it and going down into a sunken air conditioning vent and pretending it was a pool, popping their heads up as if swimming and diving, making us all crack up.

Mudgutz meetup

mini meet
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was slated for a meetup with DJ Mudgutz, and given the excessive heat (40+ C)we had to take some special precautions. The original meet-point was Transport at federation square, because it's easy to meet at and very well air-conditioned, although the drinks are expensive, especially on this day since the beer taps weren't functioning :)
After some discussion we decided to try E55 as we knew it was cheap, and it was bound to be relatively cold, being underground.
All was going well, we were joined by some more friends and were having a bit of a drink and a bit of a surf and so forth.
The drinking and surfing was interrupted when the lights went out.
At first everyone just laughed, we'd all heard that there had been brown-outs throughout the warm weather and just put it down to that, at least for the first 10 minutes. Most of the guys got their cameras out and were flashing away up until one of the bartenders asked s2art to stop because it was really annoying :) and I see his point, trying to fix a problem at work in the pitch dark and all you get is constant flashes :)
We ended up having to relocate and made our way to The Elephant and Wheelbarrow, which is nasty, but they had decent food and good A/C :)
By the time we finished up the cool change had come through and the wind was blowing a gale through town. Melbourne :)

Berley's Birthday

Kim's new skates
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Berley's Birthday

As Saturday was Kim's birthday, Rik had made arrangements to have a surprise visit to go roller skating with a bunch of friends. Kim had just received a new pair of Nike hockey skates for her birthday and still hadn't realised that this meant she was going skating on the day as well :)

The skating was a lot of fun to watch, and the rink was very well air-conditioned, which is a bonus on such a hot day, and I managed to get a bunch of good photos.

After the skating we all went back to Rik and Kim's house to hang out, play a little XBOX Karaoke (hilarious) and soak up their extremely good air-conditioning. Dave cooked up a storm on the BBQ and the kids had a bit of a frolic in the spa but I was happy to just be in a very cold room on a very hot day :)

Friday fun and Games

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another Friday rolled around and I was up for something a bit bigger than just sitting around a bar drinking, so Kathryn, Nick and I decided to hit a club. Nick got on the phone to a friend to get a recommendation and we ended up going to a club called CBD for their 3D night. An interesting mix of music, with one floor doing Hard Trance, one floor doing Happy House and one floor doing Psy Trance. SO you get two floors of candy kid ravers with their reflective phat pants and coloured beads and one floor of dread-locked hippies and mushroom and tribal decorations. Kinda weird mix, but it seemed to work :)
We stayed until about 5ish and then went back to Kathryn's place to crash on the couch and watch a little TV. A good night overall, had a lot of fun and took some cool photos. :)

Return to Work - The Late Shift

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, I'm back at work this week, and manage to get the late shift for my first week back.

It's annoying having to work until 9pm, but at least it gives me the opportunity to wander the streets at night looking for nice shots.

Kapoomga 06

crazy silhouette time
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, after a very long hiatus, Camp Kapoomga has finally returned.
This event started out with a bunch of guys from KPMG and their friends going away for a crazy boys weekend of meat eating, beer drinking, and audio visual creativity. Kapoomgas of the past had grown to the point where we had literally vanloads of gear, multiple video editing systems, 20 channel audio mixers, professional video mixers, a five to eight piece band and a full sized PA system.

The problem with this is that you end up with so much gear that it takes a few hours to setup, and a few hours to packdown and you spend a few hundred dollars on gear every time, just to basically have a boozy weekend. All that effort means that it gets harder and harder to organise and we end up going for a couple of years without an event.

This year the decision was taken to return to the core of the event, friends, booze, meat. We went for a minimal approach, two computers, two projectors, one DVD player, one CD player, only about 60 DVDs, 4 cameras, equipment tents, outdoor projection screens, internet connectivity and the band joining us via video-conference from Darwin.

The simplified version worked very well and the costs were kept to a minimum, allowing more meat and booze to be purchased :)

Summer Holidays - Part 5

as the sun sets behind the pelaco sign
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Finally got off my ass and took some photos. I originally planned to go shoot some nightshots after going to the movies with George, but then I realised when I came out (saw Fun with Dick and Jane, pretty good) that it was still light, so I took some sunset and rooftop abstracts instead, got some nice shots in about 30 minutes and felt a lot better for having finally done something creative in my holidays :)

Summer Holidays - Part 4

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Went to see Garden State at the Moonlight Cinema with Kathryn, Leah and Leah's friend Emma, and it was a lot of fun.

If you haven't seen Garden State before, I would strongly recommend it. For some reason I didn't manage to see it at the cinemas and had to wait for it to come out on DVD and was very happy to finally get a chance to see it on a big screen. It's not really a big screen film, but it was nice to see it in large scale anyway. This is a very funny movie, and probably one of Natalie Portman's best performances, although her role in Beautiful Girls was also excellent.

Moonlight Cinema is a bit of fun, making an evening picnic out of going to see a movie, but don't get sucked into buying the 'Gold Grass' seats. We had a spot slightly better than theirs, had more room to spread out, were still able to hire the same bean bag chairs (half of which have too many beans in them and are therefore not comfortable) and we didn't have to pay $30 a seat.

Summer Holidays - Part 3 - Alive 5

Intelligent Design
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Time for another aLive gig at The Retreat Hotel in Brunswick. Lots of really good music, especially Becy's set which just blew me away.
Also a lot of craziness as is the usual situation with aLive.

One thing that set this one apart was that I didn't get so hammered as to start gibbering like an idiot, so I even managed to jump a train home at about 9pm, after only consuming a great deal of beer :)

Summer Holidays - Part 2

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I also spent some time over the holidays hanging out with Kathryn. She had Nathan staying with her from Sydney for a week so we went to the Aquarium to have a bit of a squiz at the giant squid. Diana also joined us for a tour of the fish palace, I think we're all just big kids at heart :)

It was pretty crowded being School Holidays, but for the most part it wasn't a problem, just meant it took a little longer to get through it than normal :)

I got a few shots of the giant squid they have frozen in ice, although I don't know if it's real or not, since I remember something from a museum tour while I was a little kid where the curators told us that it's almost impossible to preserve a fish via taxidermy so they usually make fiberglass moulds and paint the appropriately, and shipping a big squid around in a huge block of ice seems a bit weird, but who knows, it might be real. Anyway, I blogged a photo of a jellyfish instead of a squid because I love taking photos of jellyfishes :)

Summer Holidays - Part 1

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, ok, so I've been on holidays and was far to slack to keep up to date with the blog :)

The majority of the time has been spent at home loafing around, watching a lot of Foxtel, playing with my new Playstation that I bought myself (yeah, I know, like about 3 years too late, but what can you do) and surfing the net.

Didn't really get out and take tonnes of photos like I thought I would, although this first week did include a bit of a trip to the Night Markets at The Queen Victoria Market.

Pretty interesting, lots and lots of fantastic food of all varieties from thai calamari to crocodile burgers, and heaps of handicraft stalls, similar to what you see down at St Kilda. I'd recommend it to anyone, even though it's finished now, but keep an eye out for it for next year :)

Summadayze

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Another year, another season of dance parties, starting with the traditional pilgrimage to The Sidney Myer Music Bowl for Summadayze.
Most of the parties through the year are events where you go to listen to somebody special, trying to hear the latest and coolest tracks, learning what's new and trying to ride the cutting edge without getting razor burn.
Summadayze is not like that, it's not about the latest music, it's about the biggest party, big tracks and anthems, stuff that everyone knows the words to, and just having a great big pile of fun. This year saw 20,000+ people jammed into the bowl, many of them forced to scramble for cover in the middle of the afternoon to escape the rain, while the rest of us were packed like sardines into the undercover section, dancing to our hearts content. One of the highlight acts was Fat Boy Slim, who played a fairly decent party set, and that meant that Dan, Cathy, Mick and Steph came along to the event as well as our usual crew of dance-bunnies :)
The event was pretty good in itself, but one of the highlights was meeting up with Becy, Ben, Emma and crew down at Becy's hotel room after the gig (the went to Sunshine People, a cutting edge NYD party) and spending a few hours talking crap and trying to guess what films Joe hadn't seen. Trust me, it was funny at the time :)

NYE

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Due to the fact that a bunch of us were going to Summadayze on New Years Day, we decided to have a small party at our house on New Years Eve. Well, the small party kicked on until about 4am and because it was so hot I didn't get more than 3 hours sleep, but that's the way it works out sometimes :)

Visiting Friends

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Kathryn's sister Dani has come down to visit her for the Christmas/New Years period so we all went out for dinner and a few drinks last night. We actually went to Frostbites, which I would normally consider a sleazy meat-market, and it was pretty empty, so we played pool and joked about and had a good time. She's a good kid, always smiling, and has the same silly sense of humour as her sister :)

Surprise!

Surprise!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

haven't been to a surprise party in ages. This one worked, Peta was very surprised :)

Family

Haxxorz!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Christmas day was again spent down at Mum's house for dinner, with Mum, Dad, Cam, Cindy, Courtney and Krystal. We usually have a bit of fun, laughing at Dad and his jokes (not laughing at the jokes, laughing at him for what he thinks are jokes), and opening Courtney's presents, as we don't really bother exchanging much in the way of gifts these days (Mum still buys me some clothes and I still get her something as well)
The funniest present was one of those 'password' diaries that's supposed to recognise your voice so that even if someone knows your password they can't open the diary. Took us ages to set the password in the first place, because it requires absolute silence and the word has to be said twice in completely identical ways, but then when it comes to opening the diary all of us were able to imitate Courtney's well long enough to open it, so it was pretty funny. :)

KPMG's VLCP

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

(Very Large Christmas Party)
Yet another year at KPMG has drawn to an end, with the occasion marked by a very large Christmas party, held at The Hyatt again this year. This year the themes were Kaleidoscope, Pirate, Matador and Glacier.
The Kaleidoscope room proved to be the most popular, with lots of bright colours, a hula competition earlier in the day and great dance music throughout the rest of it, so most of us spent most of the time there.
The Pirate room was decorated like the set from The Pirates of The Caribbean, but had some pretty crappy music so we mainly stayed out of there.
The Matador room had Spanish music and flamenco dancers and was pretty interesting, so we spent a little time in there.
The Glacier room was the main foyer and had an ice sculpture and a person running around in a polar bear outfit, and we mainly used that for meeting people and travelling between the other areas.
Overall it was a gigantic party as usual, and we all seemed to get smashed. Or maybe that was just me. :)

KK

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

The Annual Clitus Kris Kringle was held again this year, although funnily enough for the first time it was not held at 1 Clitus Ave as normal but at the Richmond Bowling Club. It was a good night, catching up with some of the guys I hadn't seen for ages and exchanging some funny presents. The funniest was Winston who received a number of framed photos of the English cricket team (Winston was NOT happy about The Ashes being won by England) and some Adult diapers as a comment on how pissy he was over the results :)

Bright lights, Big city

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Myself and a fellow flickrite Kerryn took the trek out to Ivanhoe to view the Christmas Lights on The Boulevard to try and get some interesting shots. I had already been earlier in the month when some of the houses were set up but the official event hadn't started yet, but it was a lot more interesting to go during the proper time. It's a bit of a surreal experience, as some people have very nice and classy displays, and some have the most bizarre and cheesy things up. Once house actually had both, where the house itself (viewed from the side gate) had a very classy set of white lights draped over the main house, simple and classic and very beautiful and stylish, and the front yard (viewed from the front gate) was super cheesy and frankly hideous. Another interesting part of the experience was the way people would pimp out their kids musical talents to promote some cause or other, because they know that hundreds of people are going to be passing by every night.

It's Vegas Baby! Vegas!

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

The Lectro crew held their Las Vegas party on Saturday and it was definitely one of the best club nights I've been to. The music was fantastic, filled with some phenomenal local Techno DJs and that by itself would have been enough to make it a great night, but the crew added a couple of special extras that seriously upped the ante.
The first special event was a hilarious bout of jelly wrestling. We knew it was going to be a special event when the initial participants didn't just start wrestling each other but grabbed their friends form the audience and threw them in the pool :)
The second major highlight of the evening was a sterling performance by Elvis, complete with sequined jumpsuit.
We laughed so much it started to hurt, and then we dances a bit more and the pain went away. Overall a fantastic evening of fun and frolics.

The Silly Season Begins

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

You know that the silly season has begun when the regular friday night down at Yak turns into a madcap time filled with craziness and new friends.

the party leaves in 10 minutes

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

What do you get when you cross a Bus with a Party? A Party Bus! :)
It was Clare's birthday last week and her party was to be held on the Party Bus (one of a few actually).
I was a bit sceptical at first, as I had always heaped scorn and abuse on the party buses whenever I saw them, but figured that Clare and her friends know how to have a bit of fun, so I was willing to be dragged along kicking and screaming :)
I was wrong, it was a lot of fun :)
It's a bit cheesy, and the bars we went to (Flanagans, Frostbites, Icon, de Biers) are also all a bit cheesy, but being with a bunch of people happily getting into the cheesiness really helps. And it's quite amusing to be driving down the city streets inside a small nightclub, having people dancing away while stuck in traffic really helps the time pass by :)
Overall it was a pretty good party, and if you're into cheesy then I'd probably recommend it. :)
Clare seemed to be having a very good time, and winding up at de Biers (their usual hangout) meant that instead of staying there for an hour and then getting the bus home, we just stayed there until the place closed :) They even managed to play some decent tech by the end of the night, and the security guards were the same guys that worked the inthemix.05 gig that Joe and I shot photos for, so we had a bit of a joke around with them and didn't have to worry about being hassled for having cameras :)

A Very IT Christmas

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, last Friday was our ITS Christmas party at work and a very good party it was. Although full disclosure requires me to state that I was on the committee, so when I say it was a great party, I'm partly blowing my own trumpet. :)
The theme of the party was The Commonwealth Games, and it was held at Olympic Park, a world class athletics track that will actually host some of the official Commonwealth Games activities. Our games were not quite as official, as they consisted of an egg and spoon race, volleyball, and tug-of-war :)
Everyone seemed to have a good time and a large number of people kicked on afterwards, turning into a very messy evening.
Highlights of the day include seeing our friend Julia riding the back of her new boss like a rodeo star, trying to earn a few bonus points, or catching one of the senior managers cheating at the Egg and Spoon race by the use of double-sided tape :)

Last weekend of freedom

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, another very busy weekend to put a bit of a cap on a rather leisurely week. Friday saw a return to Yak for a few quick beverages and to catch up with the regular crew. Had some drinks with Joe, Kathryn, Bec and Pommie John especially before retiring relatively early due to drunkenness. Kathryn had already invited me around to her new flat to check it out and to see her new widescreen LCD TV, which was very nice, so nice in fact that I ended up crashing there as we stayed up too late watching TV. Saturday morning was spent sleeping in and coming up with excuses not to get up and go home, excuses such as watching DVDs and more TV. :)

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday afternoon it was off to the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick for another episode of aLive. This is fast becoming a traditional day getting very drunk in the ber garden and laughing ourselves silly at the antics of ourselves and our comrades, there's a core group of people from inthemix who go there and they are a very funny bunch of people. The best thing about the aLive gig is that it's all live tech/electro/minimal, so it's local djs/engineers/musicians creating stuff on the spot to a very appreciative audience. It's good to see local guys and girls just creating good music on the spot, using all sorts of crazy gear like old analog synths, laptops, musical instruments like trumpets and clarinets, and lots of hammering on the keyboards :)


After aLive we headed into Honkytonks to listen to some more tech laid down by some very good Melbourne DJs, Mark Callendar and Mathew Jonson. Not that I managed to stay awake long enough to see Mathew Jonson, I was pretty tired and ended up going home at about 3am :)

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was another long day, where I headed over to The Flying Duck in Prahran for Lee and Matt's engagement party. I expected to only be there for a little while, but ended up staying until the end and having quite a good time catching up with some mutual friends I hadn't seen in a while. It was quite a nice afternoon, and the beer garden at The Flying Duck was excellent, although there was a group of hairdressers nearby having a "truth session" where they basically bitched and fought with each other all afternoon. A couple of the guys from our group mingled with theirs and apparently they have this session regularly to avoid all these issues festering in the background, so anyone can get said what they want to say without it being held against them outside of the session. It all sounded very civilized once it had been explained, but I don't know if it actually works out that way in reality. It was pretty funny to watch, especially when our friends were clearly starting to go crazy with having to put up with it :)

Monday, the last day of my holiday, was also a nice clear sunny day, so I met Katrina in the city for a few drinks after her exam to help her celebrate the end of her studying for the year, then wandered around to try and take some photos, but nothing really took my fancy, and then Mick, Steph, Katrina and I had dinner at The Elgin and consumed a few more beers. Altogether it was a very beery day, and a good end to my holidays :)

Journey to the core of the earth

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Earthcore!

Earthcore Earthcore Earthcore! :)

This weekend saw the arrival of another Earthcore, held in the nap of country Victoria, at Undera just outside of Sheparton.

This was my fifth Earthcore and the third one at Undera, and it just gets better every year.

We drove up at about lunchtime Saturday, and were delayed due to an accident on the hume but got to the site about 5pm, had a bit of a wander around to check out where the various stages were, hit the bar for a few drinks and then started to tour the floors picking up various sets and running into old and new friends along the way.

From a music point of view we heard Morph, Simon Posford (Shpongled Dj set), Beka, Shangri-La, Siaqua, Dark Soho, Hallucinogen (more Simon Posford), Scott Alert, Lab 4, Tsuyoshi Suzuki and Mike Callander. We heard bits and pieces of a few others, but those were the ones we spent some time with. It's a bit hard at a festival like this, you can't be too locked in to seeing 'everyone' because it's just about impossible to spend more than 15 minutes with each performer, which doesn't give you a real chance to be taken up on the highs and brought down on the lows like a good set can do, besides, some of these people are so good that you get drawn into it and it becomes a part of you, and that's not something you voluntarily choose to end. In fact while we were listening to Mike Callander on the Market Stage on Sunday morning, I actually watched people try to pass by and just get drawn across into the dance floor, the tek was too good to let go :)

As usual I spent most of the time on the Hydra stage, the music was absolutely top notch, which is to be expected on the Psy Trance stage of a festival started out in with Psy roots. Highlights of the evening would include Dark Solo, psy trance created live by two guys each playing electric guitar and also messing with keyboards and synths, ripping up the stage big time, especially funny when an inflatable electric guitar materialised in the crowd and a few of us had a grind on the axe until one girl took it up on stage and jammed with the guys, so funny, I can't remember laughing and dancing so hard at the same time, except maybe when Simon Posford played a track with a sample from South Park of Cartman talking about hippies being an infestation. Joe and I nearly lost it as we'd seen these new episodes playing now but nobody else seemed to fully get it :) Another highlight was definitely the tek stage on Sunday morning. Not only did we run into Becy, but the music was fantastic and her crew were so much fun to dance with, really put it all out there and therefore allowed us to do the same.

Techno is a very interesting style of music, and Joe and I had a big discussion about it on the way home, it's not as hard or as freaky as some of the other styles, and in some ways it's kind of older and not as 'hip' or 'cool', but there's something about it that draws you in, forces you to dance and lets you really express yourself. The layered sounds and beats in good tek let you choose what level of commitment you want to give to the music and let you do a simple set of movements taking a main thread, as well as letting you push out and explore the sub-threads running through it, it's also very good for bonding with the people near you (as is Psy) because no matter how you're dancing to it, you're running along the same beat lines as someone else on the floor, whereas other styles like NRG or house only let you take the main beat, or half it or double it, and if you're not on the best then you're not in sync with everyone, so there's no space for you to be a little tired, or a little hyped up, no room for mellow on the same floor as charged up, no room for foot tapping and whole body dancing on the same floor. Tek has space for all of these in the same track, and it's pretty special to watch and be a part of. I know that sounds a little weird, but that's the way I see it, so too bad :) Another funny thing about tek is that I often start to hear things in the music, little words of phrases attach themselves, or parts of other songs make a pattern on my brain with a specific sound repetition in a tek track, so I'm often running nonsensical lyrics through my head, while my feet dance to one beat and my body and arms each dance to something slightly different. I dunno. It's just a lot of fun, especially with a good bunch of people on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning :)

By the time the stages had started to wind down, around 11 - 12 on Sunday, we were starting to get a bit tired and had done the traditional trick of moving our chairs to the edge of the dance floors so you can sit down for a bit in between dances and still listen to the music. Then once the whole thing was all said and done we hit the campsite to try and get some sleep before driving home. The original plan was to stay as long as we needed to, possibly overnight until Monday, but by about 6pm it was time to go, so we struck camp and headed down the road, getting slightly lost on the way out, but managing to find the main road again fairly easily, we then had a fairly uneventful drive home except for the complete morons on the Hume. Sheparton also played host to the Spring Nats that weekend, so there were a lot of hotted up cars on the road and a few people who were probably a bit too tired or drunk to be driving yet. Like when we came across a clump of six cars, three in each lane, each about two meters behind the car in front and all going the same speed, with one or two of them occasionally weaving across the lane a little bit then harshly correcting themselves. It was an accident waiting to happen but they were all too scared to speed up over the speed limit and too pig headed to slow down the space out or to allow one lane or another to get in front. We ended up just hanging back in the left lane until someone eventually decided to change the situation. There were a few other examples of sheer stupidity, but just suffice it to say, we're happy to have gotten home alive :) I still need to finish unpacking the car :)

Oh, I chose the above photo as I've had a running theme here of attractive girls in my blog entries. This girl wanted a photo with me and then wanted to take a photo of me, and once more, I was not interested in denying a cute girl her request. I guess I'm just a soft touch :)

catch up

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I Just spent three days up in Sydney for work, and managed to make the most of the time by catching up with a couple of friends. On Monday I met up with Tash, aka quirks from flickr and inthemix, and we had fun chatting away and filling a few gaps that hadn't been covered online. It was good to meet her in person and i'm sure it will make it easier to speak online.
The highlight of the trip though was getting a chance to catch up with Beata. We have been friends for many years now, well over a decade, and while she still lived down in Melbourne it was a very strong friendship indeed.
The last time we saw each other was almost two years ago, and the previous time was many years before, so there was quite a bit of catching up to do, even still, the time seemed to go very quickly and it seemed that we had only managed to share a few stories before I had to head off. Beata is such a clever and kind person, it's quite refreshing to talk to her, and she has quite a silly streak that appeals to my sense of humour :)
Of course she is also incredibly beautiful, and has become more lovely over the years, as her self confidence and strength of character has grown. Anyway, she's a very good friend and I was very happy to have been able to spend some time with her :)

how to win friends and influence people

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night was my first ever gig as an 'official' photographer for In The Mix (ITM) at their Inthemix.05 party featuring Canadian DJ Tiga and a bunch of big name locals such as Ajax, Dave Pham and Mike Callander. The ITM website runs on contributions, so I signed up as a photo contributor, because in theory I might get into some gigs for free. and here we are :) The Tiga gig was kind of on our list as a 'maybe' anyway, but it wasn't looking likely until I get the regular weekly contributor email stating that their selected photog pulled out, so I replied that I was interested, and asked if a fellow photog (Joe) could join me.
Sara and Jay from inthemix were happy for us to do the gig, and arrangements were made. The only tricky part is that you have to be there for the whole gig, from 10pm onwards, and you have to make sure you get the stuff they want.
So we get there a few minutes before 10 to meet up with Jay, get our AAA passes and our instructions: Ajax, Tiga, whatever other DJs you happen to get, the staff, and punters punters punters, lots of punters. Later modified to: lots of hotties too :)
So we oblige him, getting what I think is a whole lot of really good shots. Joey's working the 10d and his A510, and I've got the 5d going strong, using the new 50mm for the DJ and arty work, and running the flashgun hot, thanks to the new diffuser.
I have to say, it was kind of a drag sometimes, but having full backstage access is really nice, having the security guards and bar staff smile and nod hello when they see you, and being able to push your way through the crowd a lot easier because of the camera on your shoulder more than makes up for it.
One thing that really makes up for it is the amount of times I was stopped by incredibly beautiful girls and asked to take their photo. Some were very keen to know who I was taking photos for and when they would go up on the site, but some were just interested in getting their photo taken regardless of what it was for, and one pair was actually keen to pose in 'whatever way I wanted' but I was too dumbstruck to push the envelope too much :)
Overall it was a pretty good night, although after walking out of the gig into the rain at 6:30am I was knackered :)

Suspect Behaviour

"You can't stand next to the tree with a camera"
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

There I was, in Federation Square, camera perched on the crook of my arm, waiting for my SMS to come up on the Optus display boards, when I hear the finest piece of security work I've ever been witness to:

"excuse me sir, but you can't stand next to the christmas tree with a camera"
"what?" I ask, not sure I heard correctly
"You can't stand next to the tree with a camera"

awesome. just awesome. I'm stupefied by a mix of confusion and disbelief.

"how far away I need to be?"
"about ten feet"
"can I take a photo of the tree?"
"yes, that is fine"
"why?"
"orders"
"does it seem strange to you? we're standing in a large tourist area, next to a giant tourist attraction, but I'm not allowed to have a camera"
"are you going to move sir?"

So I kowtow to the greater authority and move to the designated distance, and stand there with my camera, satisfying the needs of the security guard, and all is now safe and happy in the world.

Of course, fed square is private property, so they have a right to expect me to follow any legal directions or leave the premises if I don't like it, but I didn't feel like getting kicked out of fed square, and that's how it was looking.

So I emailed them and this is the response I got:

From: "Peter Middenway"
Subject: Policy re photography at Federation Square

Scott, Thank you for your e-mail in relation to your contact with
Security at Federation Square last night. It has and always be the
policy of Federation Square to encourage photography within our
precinct. I am afraid that on this occasion, a guard new to the site,
made an incorrect decision based on newly acquired training in relation
to suspect behaviour.

I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and will ensure
that in future all security guards are aware photography is encouraged
on this site.

Regards,

Peter Middenway
Manager - Security & Services

accidental evenings

reclined
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Ever noticed how sometimes the unplanned evenings are the best?

on Saturday Mick and Steph sold their house at auction and so we all popped out for a quick drink to celebrate. As is often the case, our quick drink turned into a long night out, mainly due to the search for somewhere to dance. We started drinking at The Bridge, popped down to Hubcap for a boogie, didn't like to music so headed in to Stellar Bar to see if mikey or luke were there, they weren't and the music was dreary, so we sifted over to loop where the music was fantastic. Lovely stompy psy and some great window-box seats on a sultry night led to the perfect end of the evening.

meetup

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday saw another Flickr meetup roll around, starting at The Mitre Tavern then heading off to E55.

The Mitre was pretty crappy, although we did meet a very cool spanish couple, Bruno and Arantxa, and they followed us along to E55. They were very cool people, in town for a little while in the middle of their 3 month honeymoon, a very nice couple indeed. We were also joined by our usual friday night drinkin crew, so it was quite a funny night, especially having started at such a crappy place like The Mitre ;)

The Rollcall:
barbfi
s2art
pappalicious
Donina
F o u t u g r a p h e
The Cardinal (aka Joe)
byte
Dj MuDGuTz

madcap saturday

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, a whole afternoon/evening at the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick for aLive, a live music/dj gig run by some inthemix.com.au guys. The whole day in the sun, enjoying some great tunes and some great beer, kicking back with some very cool people, taking shitloads of photos and getting very drunk. Later heading to Bridie O'Reilley's for Nikki's birthday and then heading into the city for some more tunes at Stellar bar, then down to Chapel street to hear some more at Playpen, basically a very large evening, drunk as a skunk. It was great :)

gear fetish :)

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, I managed to succumb to the great mammon and bought myself a new camera, the Canon EOS 5D, a serious upgrade form my 10D (which is now on loan to Joe).
The 5D and the extra accessories I've bought are to help me create some of the images I see in my head but couldn't quite get into my camera. So hopefully we can expect a lot more night work, long exposures thanks to a timer remote, cleaner bar shots due to a faster lens, truer colours due to better white balance, and better flash work due to a decent diffuser.
Hopefully. :)

Monkey!

Monkey!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This would have to be one of the best DVD purchases I have ever made, the complete boxed set of Monkey!

Monkey is based on the story of the origins of Buddhism, but the main part is that it's the story of cheesy costumes, bad dubbing, and fighting demons for Buddha :)

friendship 8

Amber brings some laughter down from Sydney
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This weekend was a large scale catchup involving six distinct circles of friends :) There was the Friday night dinner with Lee/Clare/Kylie/Matt, followed by some drinks and dancing with Kathryn/Amber/Jarrod/Matt, Saturday started with some Flickr related fun with Joe/Colin/Mitch which then segued into some Joe/Steph/Mick/Usha/David fun, then some Joe/Dean/Felicite shenanigans, then Sunday saw a little Joe/Mick/Steph/Katrina/Dan/Cath BBQ at Mick & Steph's place, then Monday night was some Joe/Trudy/Helen/Rose related drinking for Trudy's Hens night followed later by aJoe/Kathryn/Mudgutz/Usha/David dancing spectacular at the John Digweed gig. No wonder I was too tired for a Colin/Gavin/Stuart catchup on Tuesday night :)

Everyday Interesting

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

one of the things that Photography has done for me is to open my eyes. Every day we walk down the same streets, pass the same things, often pass the same people and we don't really notice them. Something about the way the human brain works and it's method of hiding the details that you don't really care about, means that you pass by these places and don't really see them. You might 'know' what they look like, and you definitely recognise them when you see them, but you probably haven't looked at them for years. One trick that all this photography has given me is the occasional ability to reset those details back to 'default' (or 'tourist') level, so you start to notice them all over again and start to see things that you hadn't realised were in there. You have to be in the right frame of mind of course, you have to have your 'mojo' flowing, otherwise you can't turn your eyes on properly, but when you do it's really quite amazing how many interesting things you can come up with.

Going for a roll

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

There's something very relaxing about playing bowls. It's quite an interesting game in itself, fairly easy to learn, quite simple to feel like you're progressing in skill, and yet hard enough to master that you know it'll take a while to get there.

So spending a sunny afternoon down at the bowls club, drinking good beer at low prices, walking on the green in bare feet and having a roll and a laugh with your friends is a pretty good way to pass the time.

Mick is now old

The Statesman speaks
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Mick is now old, well, not really old, not like, as old as me, but he's past the mythical 35 year boundary, that we used to think about like they used to talk about the sound barrier, as an impenetrable wall, with kids on one side and old people on the other side. ok. to be honest, 35 was only the 'magical barrier' when you're already past 30, and you have convinced yourself that 30 is still young, but that 35 is old.
Well now Mick is over here with me and we're looking at 40 like it's some kind of 'magical barrier' (you know, like the sound barrier)
I'm sure Mum is looking around thinking about 65 as this 'magical barrier' :)