Midway Beach Sunset

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High tide at Gisborne's Midway beach with a fire in the sky.
I couldn't get over these amazing puffy orange clouds with glowing edges from the sun going down behind them and the gorgeous reflections in the tide, pin pointed with the cute spikey sea grass buds which had rolled down in the warm breeze from the sand banks further up the beach. So beautiful and my sweeeeeeet shot for the day!
x Cat

KickPushEastCoast

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Back in Welly after an amazing, hot holiday break away in beautiful Gisborne where I've been hanging out with family and friends over the last few weeks.

Coming up for the next while I've got photo shoots for a number local businesses and government departments who are schjuzzing up their websites and overall images in their promotional and marketing material for the new year ... but to try and hang onto my fantastic summer just a wee bit longer I'm going to concentrate my sweetshots for the next wee while on my favourite pics from around the East Coast.
Gizzy's the shizzy alright!
Today's image is one of the winners at the Kick Push Skate competition .... currently the biggest and best skate competition in NZ and one which attracted talent from all around the country to compete. This guy was wicked! I was crouched on the lip of the bowl taking snaps and wetting my pants that I might fall down the ramp ... I know, I'm a wuss!! Still it was worth it, I got some cool shots and this was my fav.
Cheeribye Cat x
catbrownphotography.co.nz

The Colling crayfish remains

Happy New Year to you!
My first sweetshot of the year is an adage to the karmic neighbourly quality that is alive and well in NZ.
We took a box of peaches from our backyard tree to our neighbours the Collings last night only to find that Ollie had been diving for crayfish in Anaura Bay that morning and so our gift was promptly reciprocated with the most fabulous fresh plump crayfish, cooked and chilled all ready for eating.
We did just that and the tasty crayfish was done and dusted within half an hour with mayonnaise and salad, fresh corn and fried herbed polenta covered in fresh peach chutney.
MMmmmm Sweetshot yumminess!
Here's to a great 2010 for everyone and to great neighbours :)

Dave Dobbyn 30 years of hits...

Oh Dave, you loyal, beside me, naked flame, slice of heaven, shaky isle-singing legend. It was cool photographing you last night at the St James in Wellington...
And, almost as great as taking pics of Mr Dobbyn was ... talking to the quantity surveying phone meat salesman in the second aisle who waved me over ... (you didn't think they existed did you?!). He chatted away to me until the concert began... when I could have been taking pics, but really, talking about the ins and outs of the meat world was far more interesting...errrrrrrrm.
A few more piccies from the concert can be found here...
http://www.photoshelter.com/c/catbrownphotography ... just click on Dave and you'll be away laughing.

Sweeeeeeeet shot: Dave Dobbyn singing naked flame for his daughter ...

Queen Bee

Did you know that right, right, right in the centre of the Beehive (that's NZ's iconic parliament building that looks like a ...beehive), right at the very, very bottom there's a circle of marble floor tiles surrounded by a Stone Henge-like circle of lift shafts .... and right in the middle, middle there's one solitary circle of marble tile that is the centre, centre, centre of the building. I'm a shape person and I find things like this fascinating!
Yesterday I was visiting a buddy Moana, who's an opposition MP, and after having a coffee in the Beehive (because she wasn't allowed to leave because of imminent implosion, or some such government rule of urgency), we walked through the bottom lift shaft area and I exclaimed, 'oh my god, what is that stone?! Is it the exact centre centre centre of the building?' And she said yes. So I made her stand on it for a photo. Bless.
Occassionally I have an, 'I'm only going to use one solitary prime lens day,' and unfortunately this was it and my wee 35mm couldn't really handle the magnitude of the coolness of the solitary circle tile in the centre of an entire circle of lifts. But I got a nice picture of Moana at least.
This is definitely my sweet shot of the day: Moana and the super cool tiny circle tile that holds the entire Beehive together.

One (sweet) shot for glory

Instead of one sweet shot ... you can view a whole bunch of sweet shots from the Bahrain vs All Whites game right here... See if you can spot the Bahranian David Beckham lookalike ...

Bahrain vs All Whites = sweet shot

I'm just back from the All Whites vs Bahrain game: 1:0 to us, so yay for NZ! It's going to be super exciting going through to the world cup ... I look forward to many sleepless nights watching our lads playing the world's best!
Only 28 years in the making...!
But, back to the sweetshot of the day ... before I went in to the stadium, I spent a bit of time hanging out with the Bahrain supporters and snapped this little guy = sweet shot!

PS soon I'll put up the link so you can check out all my pics from the match.