Pregled posta

Marketing

Early in the morning on this day, I actually had the opportunity to go snorkeling at 'Thousand Islands' , some touristy nice place to visit outside Jakarta. But Kesia could not go on the snorkel outing. It would have only been a few guys. So I chose to spend the last day at home with Kesia, relaxing and hanging around at home.

As much as I love snorkeling, I knew this was my last day to spend time with Kesia. Although we are 'supposed' to be like friends, not BF / GF, we have known each other so long from flickr, and we have been so friendly online, that I wanted to make the most of the opportunity to spend time in person. So I chose NOT to go on the snorkel outing to spend the last day with my fllickr friend Kesia.

Since we were in the house all day, we really needed to get out in the evening. I was almost too lazy to leave the house. But I knew it would be worth it if we just got going.

So anyway, we went to this mall. And I couldn't believe it but they had an ice skating rink there! I started complaining about why we didn't come here earlier, why we didn't go ice skating before. I was moaning that now it was too late to go because it was 9 pm.

Well, Kesia just didn't pay attention to my moaning and complaining. She brought us downstairs and got us going ice skating right away. I was so glad!! It only cost about $7 for the entrance fee and skate rental for the 2 of us and that included 2 pair of socks that you purchase to own. (everyone wears sandals in Indonesia, no one wears socks, so you have to buy the socks as part of the skate rental.) If we brought our own socks, it would only cost $5 for the two of us! Very cheap.

So there you have it. We went ice skating, the others with us, Ari, Rahel and Ketty, just watched. I'm such an expert ice skater (if I may say so myself, hehehe, I played ice hockey when I was a kid) that I was thrilled for the opportunity to get some exercise doing something I love to do, and doing it together with Kesia.

She was a great sport to do the ice skating. She fell a few times. . .well, . . . many times, but she just kept getting up and going, I was so proud of her for giving it her full effort. she was not wimpy like some people who hold on the the edge the entire time. She was not afraid to push herself and fall, and I REALLY appreciated / admired that. I really appreciated Kesia's enthusiasm for going ice skating, she really enjoyed it and she was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Marisol, in part, deserves credit for the existence of this video. She encouraged me to get lots of video, And I realized I better get going with the video. I had a few thousand photos but almost no video. So thank you Marisol for encouraging me to 'get off my butt' so to speak with the video and to start shooting some video. Thank you Marisol!! I'm so glad I got more video after you encouraged me.

In the very cold winter of 2009/10, our local Castle Semple loch was hard frozen. A mass of activities sprung up on the loch including skating, curling, ice hockey, bike riding, walking, sliding and I even saw mothers with prams out on the loch! I spent a bit of time documenting the activities.

One one Sunday, a whole lot of figure skaters arrived that were clearly a cut above the rest. They were mostly teenagers and I approached the mothers and asked if I could take some photos. The mothers told me that the girls loved being photographed! I sent a disc of images to one of the mothers and a whole load of my photos graced their local paper one day. The mothers also invited me to come and photograph the skaters at their club at any time. So started an association with the Auchenharvie Ice Dancing and Figure Skating Club. I must have been there on at least 15 occasions by now and am their official photographer for competitions.

There was quite a steep learning curve and I quickly learnt the limitations of the lighting there and my cameras (Canon 20D & 400D). A kind friend lent me her Canon 5DMk2 (Thanks Liz) to try out a couple of times and I was hooked on the camera. I bought one not long after. From then on, I could take shots I was happy with.

The High ISO capabilities of this camera are amazing. This particular photo was taken at ISO 5000!