One of the best things you can do in Venice is just loose yourself in the maze of alleyways and canals. Forget the map or the GPS and just wonder aimlessly.  Surprisingly enough it’s really hard to get lost as you can always seem to find your way back to a main landmark.  Unless I have the time to spare, I prefer not to visit museums and art galleries, but instead just walk the streets and try to take in the culture that way.  I want to get out there and see things and be amongst the culture.

You’ll probably notice from my travel photography, that I hate photos full of tourists and people, hence there aren’t many.  I am quite a perfectionist when it comes to this and will always try to get those picture perfect postcard shots of locations as this is how I want to remember them.  So many locations are spoilt by the amount of people especially tourists who can sometimes quite literally ruin the experience.  So instead just enjoy these picturesque scenes of the beautiful city of water.

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Pre-wedding photography is becoming more and more popular, it’s very big within the Asian cultures and Melbourne seems to be such a popular destination for this.  These are my favourite type of sessions as they have all the beauty of a wedding including picturesque locations, beautiful outfits, props and a gorgeous couple, only without the restrictions (and sometimes stress) that can come with a wedding day.

Click HERE for more information about having your own pre-wedding or engagement photography session and get in touch for package and pricing information.

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• One of the hottest days we had experienced on our trip and sweating probably the most we have ever sweat in one day!
• Being so excited (literally like a kid on Christmas day) coming over each hill and around each corner hoping to finally see the view of the next village.
• Kicking myself for not bringing my togs (I eventually went in regardless).
• And just generally loving this day and this experience and wishing we had longer to spend here.

This was one of the places I was soooo looking forward to visiting and one where I hadn’t been before.  Having seen pictures and hearing about it from others I was so excited to get there and see it for myself.  Unfortunately due to our extremely tight schedule we had literally 1/2 a day there but with daylight savings meant we had until about 8pm.  We based ourselves in La Spezia where it’s a quick easy train ride to each town, or to either the closest or furthest town and then an extremely long walk from one town to the next.  By the time we arrived and got the train it was already midday and we were trying to fit in all 5 towns that afternoon!  Big mistake!  Take it from me, you need more than 1 day here!  We first arrived at Monterosso by train where immediately I wanted to just spend the afternoon in the water which looked so amazing! But with 4 more villages to visit, there was no time for this .

We started the walk to the next village, Vernazza, thinking this would be a nice way to really experience the area.  Well we completely underestimated how long this would take, over two hours later walking in the extreme heat with no shade we finally reached the next village.  This is where I was getting in the water fully clothed and all!  At one point along the walk we came across an old man making and selling homemade lemonade from a stand in the middle of nowhere on the side of this cliff.  At that point I would have probably paid $100 Euro for a glass, but we couldn’t even stand the heat to wait in the queue of people.  From here we decided to catch the train to the next villages, otherwise there was no way we would make it to all of them, plus we needed a break after that first walk!

Our next village Corniglia was 377 steps up the hill, again glad we didn’t walk to this one, and unlike the other villages doesn’t have access to the sea.  However because we didn’t walk there, I knew we missed that view I was anticipating throughout the whole of the first walk – coming over the rise and seeing the village.  So I had to back track a bit and try and find my view, as pictured here.

Manarola was our last stop as it got dark before we even got to Riomaggiore and the train wouldn’t be running long enough for us to make it there and back so we only made it to 4/5 villages.  Here I was literally running around trying to get my shots before I lost the light entirely.  Still an absolutely amazing day.

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Kathy and Norm were married here in December, they traveled over from Perth where they are currently based to come back to their hometown to have their wedding with family and friends.  I didn’t actually get to meet Kathy and Norm until the week prior to their wedding for their engagement session and I find this is always such a great way to get introduced.  Kathy and I had many email conversations about the planning of her wedding while Norm, who works in the Navy, was away at sea.

I am always touched when the groom finds it hard to hold back his emotions and Norm struggled to say his vows due to welling up during the ceremony.  These two are so in love and I think perfectly matched, they just adore each other and this was obvious.  They started their ceremony off with a kiss as Norm proclaims “we haven’t seen each other ALL DAY”.  With Norm being in the Navy, this means he travels a lot for his work, which makes their time together all the more special.

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Catherine has always lived in Melbourne and Tom moved here from NZ a number of years ago.  They met 6 months ago and now Tom’s work is relocating him to California, lucky guy, and of course he’s taking Catherine with him, lucky girl!  Seeing as they will be moving so far from home and this is Catherine’s first time abroad, it was important to them to capture some shots around iconic Melbourne locations so they can still stay close to home through their wedding photos.

I’m very jealous that these two get to go and live in San Fran, I visited San Fran, albeit very briefly, on my overseas trip and it is such a great city.  I wish we had been able to spend more time there.  I wish both Catherine and Tom the best for their new adventure and new life together.

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Awhile back I was contacted by Ann who’s passion is to be a stylist.  While her friends were over visiting Melbourne from Singapore she wanted to put together a styled pre-wedding photography session for them to celebrate their recent engagement.

Since moving to Melbourne it’s been a desire of mine to photograph a professionally styled shoot and while Ann is not yet a professional stylist, she sure knows what she’s doing!  Her props and styling really set the scene for Michelle and Alex’s romantic summer picnic styled engagement shoot.

Michelle and Alex met and studied together at Melbourne University so as this is such a meaningful place for them, this became the location for their shoot.

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Tarryn and Chris are high school sweethearts but it wasn’t until year 11 that they got together after being long time friends.  Their marriage will also celebrate their 11th year together.

I love shooting in the long grass and Melbourne has so many great spots like this with long grass and trees, only I’m always a bit paranoid about the possibility of snakes.  Something I haven’t ever had to consider in NZ!

These two are also big dog lovers so we incorporated their two favourite girls in the session as well, Maggie Mae and Daisy Boo.  Two of the most excitable Staffy’s I think I’ve met.

Their wedding is less than a month away now in December at The Willow’s in St Kilda, a venue I’ve passed many times and always wanted to shoot at.

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It’s been a whirlwind 169 days traveling around the world, and unlike my last and first short visit to Europe, this time I’m ready to come home. Traveling is not an easy feat, in fact it is quite hard work and very very tiring. If I was to do it all again I would stay in less places for longer amounts of time, I’d include days off or rest days and additional days just for getting from A to B. We definitely tried to fit too much into this trip and about half way through, we started to change our plans as we just knew it was getting too hard on us. This was one benefit to not booking everything before we left, however the downside of that was also that I had to spend a lot of time researching our next stop, where to stay and what to do etc. This meant there wasn’t much relaxation time for me as I was always thinking about our next move and what I needed to book still and how we were going to make the most of our time in each place, especially when we only had a couple of days in certain places. If you follow my blog or FB page you may have also noticed that this impacted on my blogging as there just wasn’t the time to process my photos (to my standard) and write about it all as we went along.

In Florence, thats the Ponte Vecchio Bridge in the background

Seeing as we were traveling for such a long time as well, we were on a pretty strict budget, so I also got to play accountant, not a fun game either, but necessary. We spent about what we had anticipated we would and thankfully have some left over to set up our living situation again. I think I did a good job at planning our trip, I’d now make a pretty good travel agent apart from the fact that I’m completely indecisive and would cringe every time I had to press the “book now” button.  We booked a lot of our accommodation through airbnb which we had a really great experience with and booking.com for the rest.  If anyone is organising their own travel, I’m more than happy to offer recommendations or advice so please feel free to get in contact and we can have a chat.  I’m always happy to talk travel!

At Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, LA

At Miami Ink where I got to meet Yoji and got tattooed by Darren. I’ve wanted to get tattooed here for such a long time!

We visited 18 Countries: America, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Czech Republic, Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore.  Some we’re new to me and some I’ve been to before.

If I had to pick my favourite place out of it all, it would still be Santorini in the Greek Islands.
If I was to pick the place I would most like to live it would be Amsterdam, but I also think anywhere in Switzerland and Canada would be great options too.
Japan I loved and of course Italy and France, or just all of Europe in general is always so special.

Watching the Santorini Sunset

We flew on 17 different airlines: AirNZ, United, Air Canada, Swiss Air, FlyBE, Iberia Airlines, Lufthansa, Aegean, Ryan Air, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Nok Air, Air Asia, Thai Airways, Bangkok Airways, Singapore Airlines and the only problem we encountered was with Ryanair’s check in process, which is a pretty good run.  I’ve never been a good flyer, in fact I pretty much hate flying, but after traveling it’s something you just get used to and I’m loving the experience on the A380.

In front of the Flat Iron building in NYC & The San Fermin Festival in Pamplona

It’s been great to see some amazing new places, experience different cultures and capture it all in photos.  Some days carrying the camera around all day, every day would become too much and would take its toll on my body and my back. Believe it or not there were times when it would just stay in my bag back at home.  I find that when I have my camera I become too focused on getting the shots rather than just being in that moment and experiencing it.

Doing what I do best at the Senso-ji Temple in Japan & at the Preah Khan Temple in Cambodia

Well now that I’m home, I’m straight back into my work, but I will be blogging my travels (in my down time) as I figure that’s now a good way to remember my trip and reminisce on the good times we had seeing the world.  It will also make sure I do edit and process my thousands (yes thousands!!!) of photos and some might even get to go up on the wall.

It literally has been just a huge blur and it’s really gone by so fast.  I have mixed emotions about being back, but have to hit the ground running as there’s a lot of work to catch up on.

At the top of the Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler & feeding a cheeky Squirrel in Montreal

I am seriously anyone’s worst nightmare to photograph and I hate having my photo taken so I really have to say thanks to Chris for taking all these shots of me.  As painful as it was to photograph me, it’s great to have these memories of me in these places.

The best birthday day ever! Spending the day looking after this baby Elephant, Chompoo in Chiang Mai

The best birthday day ever! Spending the day looking after this baby Elephant, Chompoo in Chiang Mai

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Chris and I seem to have quite different ideas about this trip. He sees it as a holiday where we can sleep in, have rest days and just generally take it easy. Whereas I’m like are you crazy, this isn’t a holiday, we’re traveling, so much to see and do! Only now I’m seeing it a bit more from Chris’ perspective as it didn’t take long for me to realize we really should have factored in some rest days into our schedule. This traveling around is tiring stuff.

We picked up a rental car and drove the south of France from Barcelona to Rome. Unbeknown to us the fastest and most direct route was not free and during our 5 hour drive to Marsielle we encountered 5 toll roads, totaling €50. This was definitely not in our budget, so for our next journey we set our GPS to avoid tolls and were pleasantly surprised when we drove through the quaintest little French villages and countryside. Now this is why we rented a car! Although it made the journeys significantly longer by at least a couple of hours, the scenery sure made up for it! I’ll include some of the images taken along our drives at the start of each post.

Entrevaux – A French Village on our drive from Annecy to Nice

One thing that’s been a great way to explore has been through Geocaching. If you don’t know what it is, it’s basically like a worldwide treasure hunt using gps coordinates, it’s pretty geeky. We’ve had some great experiences doing this as it often takes us to places we wouldn’t normally have thought to go and often away from all the hoards of tourists. GPS has been our savior as well, it kind of feels like cheating, but sure beats trying to work out where to go on a tourist map. Thats modern day traveling for you, GPS and the internet, I don’t know how people got around without it haha.

A little French Alpine village on our drive from Alpe D’Huez to Annecy.

So my next few posts are going to have to be more of a brief rundown of some of the places we’ve been, in no particular order, focusing on the ones which have been my favorites so far. We’ve been to America, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland & Greece, and still have about a month of Europe left before we head to Asia.

After being slightly underwhelmed with the States, as it didn’t quite live up to expectations, arriving into Europe, Paris bought this feeling of emotion over me. I guess this is what I was hoping for in the US. The history within Europe astounds me especially being brought up in NZ which is so new in comparison, I’m always amazed at what was built hundreds and even thousands of years ago, still exist today. The tiny little cobblestone streets and alleys, the monumental architecture, the number of churches, museums, cathedrals and even castles. Religion plays such an important role over there and is integrated into how they live their lives. Every little village we passed throughout the South of France was built around a central building, a church. And while there are so many churches, museums and art gallery’s to see, I prefer to use my time traveling soaking up the culture and atmosphere, the street life. I like to do a lot of walking around, seeing how people live and just generally looking around to get a feel for the place.

I think this is a good reason to start with some images of Europe. We have today just left the Greek Island of Santorini, which would have to be my favourite place so far, followed closely by Venice.

Santorini is one of Greece’s most beautiful islands set on the rim of a volcano caldera whose crater is filled with the Aegean Sea. A most picturesque island where we got to watch a perfect sunset every evening either over dinner, or poolside, from our hotel balcony or just while walking from town to town along the caldera. In the town of Fira, you can hear the constant chiming of bells from the donkeys traveling up and down the hill, tirelessly carrying lazy tourists up.  Quite the novelty really, but not something I can do as I don’t agree with using animals for the benefit of tourists. It seems cruel, plus I needed the exercise, so would much rather walk it! It’s completely set up for tourist’s with some of the most luxurious hotels you can only dream of, set amongst little white and blue cave style houses built into the rocky cliff. I can’t quite put my feelings about Santorini into words, what I can say is that I never wanted to leave! It really is just awe inspiring. Sometimes I think my images speak better for me, I wanted so badly to get that typical ‘postcard’ image, how do you think I did?

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