Still alive and kicking!

Hi there everybody,

I'm back from the frozen wilds of Japan! Actually I think my kids were the wildest things there but that's another story. :)

I photographed the amazing snow festival and will roll out some pictures over the next week or so to show you how it turned out. The weather nearly ruined everything as we had snow storms and blizzards every day the festival was on. I finally managed to get a clear night the final night of the festival.

Another major hiccup was batteries. My battery charger wouldn't work on Japanese power! It came complete with a transformer which I was assured would work on anything from 100V to 240V but alas that was just wishful thinking.

So I managed to survive on just two batteries - which don't last very long in freezing cold temperatures. So I would take a shot and then put the battery in my jacket pocket to warm it up and hope it kept on going. Of course being Japan meant that I could always drop into a mega-super camera store and pick up an extra couple of batteries but the way the Aussie peso is diving free fall against the Japanese yen I wanted to avoid it if I could.

Anyway this trip pretty much turned into an actual holiday. One thing you don't tend to appreciate as a travel photographer is a real holiday. You always tend to end up spending heaps of time photographing and fretting about getting the right light that you sometimes forget about the ones who love you the most.

So this 3 weeks was a chance to spend a lot of time with the wife and kids and not so much time working. So don't expect a glut of Sapporo photos (I've been too lazy to process any yet!) but there are certainly a few gems in there.