A lot has happened since my lost blog. Let's run through it all in a non-chronological order.
The biggest news, although it's already six months old, is that
Countessa and I were married in November.
We had exactly the ceremony we wanted, a blend of Greek and Anglo-Celtic ritual, presided over by a Druid. There are a million awesome stories about the day, from the storm that destroyed the venue of the garden right before the ceremony to the stone that came "from the internet." Some of my favourite people in the world were there, and a hell of a lot of those were from SG. We danced to Gangnam Style and we danced to Du Hast. We ate paleo cakes and the finest food (pretty sure there was blue cheese and pear salad of some kind). There were speeches and Vivaldi. There was a sunny sky on the greatest harbour in the world. What a day....married to the coolest, most beautiful, sexiest, most awesome girl in the world, amongst a bunch of SG folk (and you know, other friends and family). What could be better? But ultimately the wedding is just a beautiful party. The truly beautiful thing is the thought of every future plan and adventure involving Countessa. She has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and is not just the girl I'm in love with, she's my best friend, who I'm almost never apart from, never not thinking of, never unhappy with.
Some photos:
The assembled masses. You can see the SG folk...they are the colourful ones in the middle.
Love this photo.
My groomsmen looking groomsmenly.
Some of the SG folk who came along:
Jovankat,
Hanhan,
Puffin,
Terome and
Quarie_glitter as well as Em who is from a different part of the internet.
Countessa also had three SuicideGirls photosets go to the frontpage, two of which were shot by yours truly and one of which was shot by the ceaselessly awesome
Puffin.
Kissing Harry, which went up Anzac Day 2012 (shot by me)
(That last image is going in every blog ever. It's one of...
A lot has happened since my lost blog. Let's run through it all in a non-chronological order.
The biggest news, although it's already six months old, is that
Countessa and I were married in November.
We had exactly the ceremony we wanted, a blend of Greek and Anglo-Celtic ritual, presided over by a Druid. There are a million awesome stories about the day, from the storm that destroyed the venue of the garden right before the ceremony to the stone that came "from the internet." Some of my favourite people in the world were there, and a hell of a lot of those were from SG. We danced to Gangnam Style and we danced to Du Hast. We ate paleo cakes and the finest food (pretty sure there was blue cheese and pear salad of some kind). There were speeches and Vivaldi. There was a sunny sky on the greatest harbour in the world. What a day....married to the coolest, most beautiful, sexiest, most awesome girl in the world, amongst a bunch of SG folk (and you know, other friends and family). What could be better? But ultimately the wedding is just a beautiful party. The truly beautiful thing is the thought of every future plan and adventure involving Countessa. She has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and is not just the girl I'm in love with, she's my best friend, who I'm almost never apart from, never not thinking of, never unhappy with.
Some photos:
The assembled masses. You can see the SG folk...they are the colourful ones in the middle.
Love this photo.
My groomsmen looking groomsmenly.
Some of the SG folk who came along:
Jovankat,
Hanhan,
Puffin,
Terome and
Quarie_glitter as well as Em who is from a different part of the internet.
Countessa also had three SuicideGirls photosets go to the frontpage, two of which were shot by yours truly and one of which was shot by the ceaselessly awesome
Puffin.
Kissing Harry, which went up Anzac Day 2012 (shot by me)
(That last image is going in every blog ever. It's one of my favourite pictures that I've ever taken, even now).
Lights, shot by
Puffin, which went up in October:
And finally
One Ring, which we shot in New Zealand on our honeymoon, which is scheduled to go up next week. We shot it just down the road from the Mount Cook resort village, right under Mount Cook itself. I've never seen anything quite so spectacular as Mount Cook. And then
Countessa braved the 5 degree temperatures to shoot a set she's wanted to shoot forever.
We also have a set in Member Review:
Country Avenue
On top of that, we shot a set for
Puffin the other day, which has been submitted to Member Review and will appear soon. Not only is she an awesome photographer, she is a gorgeous and talented model, and the set is deadset beautiful. Here are a few teasers:
In other news, I've also joined Zivity which is an interesting parallel universe full of SG people. We submitted a set of
Countessa called
Ugg. Absolutely love that set. No doubt we'll shoot some more stuff for Zivity at some stage, though SG will always be my first love haha. Here are some of my favourites from that set:
I also set up a profile on
500px....so far I've had an unreal response to my photos. 3000 views in the past 24 hours!
And the beauty of 500px is that most of the people liking your photos are other photographers...i.e. they're not in it just for the pretty girls. Great to find a forum like that. And the other bonus is that you can sell prints of your photos there. So....once I have my store set up, you folks can buy my photos if any of you like them enough....either as digital hi-res downloads or as a framed printed canvas.
Another big change that happened this year has been the loss of my family farm. After a bitter and protracted divorce in which nobody won but the lawyers, my mother was forced into bankruptcy and lost the last part of the 10,000 acre property that has been in my family for 160 years now. It's been a long time coming, which has softened the blow for me quite a lot, but I always imagined I would be able to, at the very least, buy the land from her. Unfortunately it didn't end up that way. It's impossible to even get across how much this changes me. My identity has always been so firmly tied to that land. I grew up there while it was a busy sheep farm with 4000 sheep, surrounded by family working day and night to make a living. It was like living in a factory in some ways. Every day I was surrounded by animals and machinery, by workers and work, but most of all by history and tradition. In many ways it was just continuing on as it had done for over one hundred years. I feel like I've witnessed the end of an era. I'm blessed by the sheer amount of history to which I'm heir, but it's also in many ways a burden. After 160 years living in the same spot, six generations can amass a huge amount of junk, both treasures and trash. Our house is now mostly furnished with the furniture my great-great-grandparents originally furnished their big new house which they built in 1886. I've had the family history drummed into me to the point that I know my ancestors birthdays and middle names better than my friends. I can relate anecdotes about people who died 100 years before I was born, and in many cases have odds and ends from their life that relate to the story (I mean I have glass slides of prize winning rams from country Shows 100 years ago). I always thought of the family farm as the repository for all of that, but now in many ways I am the repository for all of that. At some point I'm going to have to put it all down on paper in a way that makes sense to other people. You can't put antique furniture or clothes or portraits into a book though. And then there is the question of how to write it. My grandma wrote a family history in the seventies that reads like the history of a minor noble family. That's the history that was drummed into me from a young age. But when I look back over it all with a critical eye I don't see everything in such a rosy light. Life on that land has been a brutal struggle against nature, (rarely with nature), that has swung through periods of great wealth and great poverty. There were impressive feats of engineering, of entrepreneurialism, of culture. But there was also stupidity, narrow-mindedness, short-sightedness, and sheery bloody mindedness. Five out of the six generations to live there had life-long feuds in which siblings didn't acknowledge each other in the street and sabotaged each others lives and livelihoods. So which history do I write? The white-washed version of an illustrious family and their empire? Or the mad buggers who lived in the bush while slowly going crazy? I absolutely cherish the history but it's a sad, sorry story and the best thing I can do now is learn the lessons from it all while embracing the city boy that I became while I lived in Sydney.
Some pictures of the farm:
Ramshackle, rambling old homestead where I lived as a teenager.
Welcome to the wasteland.
The house I grew up in.
Pet Finewool Merino Ram. His name was Shang Tsung, but everyone called him Nads.
My great-great-grandmother sitting on the steps of the house I grew up in, sometime around 1910, with some of her children.
This is a cupboard that came from the house in the black and white photo above and belonged to my great-great-grandmother. This is the first time the top and bottom have been reunited in at least sixty years. The top half lived in the woolshed housing various sheepfarming chemicals, while the bottom was covered in linoleum to tart it up sixties style. My ma restored the bottom half and the top half is yet to be done. On the shelves you can see some of our wedding presents, as well as a silver teapot (top right) that belonged to my great-great-great-great grandfather. The skull in the middle is Nads, the ram in the photo above. He was torn apart by wild dogs and became an ornament.
There's so much more to say about all of that and so many more pictures, but it'll have to wait for another blog. The landscape in the background of Countessa's first set
Australia was just out the back of the homestead, the road in
Country Avenue was the road leading to one part of the property, and the shed in the Zivity set up there was built by my grandfather in the early 1960s from bush timber harvested on the farm. It's hard to believe it's gone when it's been a part of almost everything I've ever done.
Meanwhile, in what is a huge honour, the leadership of
SGAustralia passed to me a few months ago. I have big footsteps to follow in after
TheFuckOffKid and
Helly's long and prosperous sessions in the role. So far things have been excellent. We've had a small onslaught of new members (is that SG's Facebook campaign bringing dividends? SG hasn't seemed very well known in Australia until recently), and quite a few of them are becoming very active and are utterly awesome people. Special mentions are
Calebomb, who is an absolute champion and rapidly becoming a Chat institution;
Rachelmariee, who organised a Metal night in Sydney where
Countessa presented her with a free membership during an incredibly hot stage show;
nekophilliac, a new Sydney photographer whose status updates are hilarious every time, and
Sirius69, a beautiful friendly lady who already has more friends on the site than I do. And there are many more to meet yet. We're still waiting on Puffin's video of Countessa's stage show too.
We had a Sydney meetup on Saturday night which I'm fairly sure was the biggest for a couple of years. It was awesome to see a crowd of oldskool members that make me look like a n00b as well as people who only joined in the last month. I think it's going to be an exciting year in SGAustralia, particularly with the Ball coming up.
Christina,
Puffin,
Countessa
Beaeffeff,
CobraLucha
Sirius69, her fella, and
Platypuz
Platypuz,
Lillie_ and
coldie
Apologies for the terrible photos, but they were taken on Countessa's iphone in a dark corner.
Speaking of which, the 2013 SGAustralia Ball will be held in Sydney this year, details are in SGAustralia. If you're a member, make sure you get your ticket and come along. It is, deadset, the highlight of my year. I've been to the last three Balls and all of them have been absolutely fucking excellent. And there are only about twenty tickets remaining, so GET IN QUICK.
I honestly feel like I haven't said enough, but this has taken me a whole evening to write and I've started putting on Cajun blues music and singing in bad French, so it'll have to do.
Puffin