photos and other things…
Time again for Aucklands annual Round the Bay’s fun run/race, our biggest annual run the country holds. A nice calm morning made for a scenic walk to the start (and warm weather for the run)
A bit of a montage for todays shot at Auckland Round the Bays fun run. All shot on the Samsung Galaxy s2 using the Vignette app, I combined in Gimp to show the beginning, middle and end of the 8.4km run that goes from Auckland’s CBD to St Heliers park.
As it has been most days, the weather was hot this morning! With a relatively late 9.30am start time, the sun was right up and beating down on the waiting crowd. with ~70,000 total runners, if one is not near the start line (as I was) when the race begins, you can take an additional quarter of an hour to just make it there. Weaving in and out of runners and walkers, it takes over half the race (unless you are fast) to feel like you have enough room to keep at a constant pace. Whilst some of these points potentially make it sound less than ‘fun’, Round the Bays is a great run, and all money goes to some great charities. All said and done, I’ll be back again next year, as I have been for several years running.
As mentioned yesterday, today I took part in another half marathon – the Mission Bay ADRA Charity Run. With a mostly beach-side track, the run would be great…if one was walking. Running wise, its a real challenge with the sun coming up, bouncing off the sea and also warming the tarmac to a dry hot temperature. Unlike other years I have run it, at least today some of the run was overcast.
Into the first 2-3km of the 21km it became fairly clear that my lack of any training since the last half marathon was going to make today a little harder. Overall I only lost about 4 minutes on last months run, but I was unable to keep a constant pace. Still, I finished and cant complain about that.
Image wise, after finishing I slowly made my way back to the car, got changed and went out again with the Olympus E-500 which I had borrowed again for the day. Shooting on my Nex and Ricoh digital cameras most the time, I had some pleasure shooting the Olympus with its optical viewfinder. I have the plug in electronic viewfinder on my Nex, and its one of the best of the electronic ones on the market, but it just does not compare to the optical – then again, the electronic gives you live view, the optical does not.
Today’s shot was taken over the shoulder of the emcee, congratulating people as they passed the line.
In post processing I simply added the white boarder and resized for the net. Looking at other shots I took, although a few years old, the Olympus really does render nice colours in bright day shots.
Frustration is something that hits all of us at some time or another. Perhaps its dealing with an awkward customer, job or family member. It might also be self directed due to ones inability to do something they feel they should be able to, or because they didn’t perform as well as they expected.
Often when you practice a bit of mindfulness and look at the reasons for the frustration – break them down, it can alleviate, or at worst give one a learning point for next time. I was recently discussing this at work, where a colleague talked about the frustration they had with something their partner did. when they stopped to think about it they worked out the frustration was because the said partner was not behaving the way they wanted them to. They then went a step further and look at why the partner might be doing what they are doing – and also spoke to them about it. That new perspective put a whole new twist on the event, and the deeper understanding no longer caused them to get frustrated each time.
Today’s image ‘Frustration’ came more from one of the learning for next time events. The image was one of my possible finals for part of a series of images for a competition…only I misread the final submission time and missed out by 2 hours. After a quick run to ‘steam’ it off, I was content with the fact there was nothing that could be done, and hoped I would not make the same mistake next time.
Image wise, snapped on the GRD IV, I converted to B&W and resized in Gimp.
At least I got to put it up somewhere!
MikeHawkey.com 