… Skies, that is. With the great weather outside I have to admit I’m enjoying more than my fair share of outdoor activities. Of course Ultimate is always high on the priority list, and I’m lucky to be on two teams of great people this year, which is proving to be great fun (even when we lose). eBay provided me a new set of golf clubs, which I love, and I’m honing my swing a few times a week at the driving range. Swimming has definitely not taken a back seat, the pool is enjoying my regular visits during the week, and even a Saturday morning (before the farmers market =).

Outdoor activities are all well and good, I hear you say, but what about your brain?? Don’t leave it to die off and turn to mush!! (In fact this is exactly what’s proven to happen to school kids in western societies according to Malcolm Gladwell in his new …

And with it, so are fresh projects on the horizon.

As the snow melts, the rain falls and the environment and landscape changes around me, its a nice time to think over the previous few months and appreciate them. I’ve gone from falling over all too often on skis to being able to skate ski abrest with another skier on a trail whilst maintaining an interesting conversation. I made it to the competent stage of ice skating before deciding to focus on the snow sport this winter, and I’ve also managed to learn more, experience more and meet some great new people along the way. I’ve just produced my most recent video, this one on learning to cross country ski, and I managed to film it by the skin of my teeth - just one week before the rain set in and the …

Well its difficult to know where to begin. A fantastic Christmas and New Year’s break saw me tackling a couple of new challenges, making the most of the photo shooting opportunities that presented themselves and tackling some short video projects in amongst the travelling and visiting with people.

It had been a long time coming, however when the time came I needed to assemble the majority of my courage to tackle my first challenge of my Christmas break; ice skating. I had previously looked back on my time in Jasper, AB, with some sadness because I never learned this particular winter-only sport, and felt like I’d really missed an opportunity. With a proper Canadian winter again in full swing, I knew this time around I wouldn’t miss the chance. With some handy hints from friends to begin, I started by pushing around a hockey goal around an outdoor rink on Christmas Eve, bundled up to stave off the -20C temperature and …

Well, its been a busy month, which is why I haven’t posted for a while. Having finished working on a huge batch of photos, I started working at a local media production company, in the field of online strategy and development. Its been an enjoyably steep learning curve and I relish every morning that I head in to work, knowing there’ll be a new challenge, something to learn and a great bunch of people to hang out with. Couldn’t possibly ask for more, and I consider myself very fortunate to have fallen into such a great position.

The other day I decided to put together a little video about my life around here, its online (thanks to Viddler’s excellent hosting), and is available by clicking here for My Day in Winnipeg.

I’ve started into my planning for a huge overseas trip next year, which I’m very excited about; more on …

Well lots has been happening in the last few weeks.

I’ve released Grand Canyon galleries (Sunrise, Sunset, Hike and Day shots), which are some of my favourite shots, along with the California Desert, Spring in the Rockies and many others, in total 25 new galleries. I would like to invite you to check them out at Lucas Starbuck Photography dot com, the pics on the right each link to a gallery, and they’re sorted with the newest at the top. It is such a rewarding past time, photography, and I love hearing from people that enjoy looking through my photos. I get absolutely lost in them and time just …

Lately things have been going great, with the landscaping project I’m working on really taking shape. It has meant, however that I haven’t had a lot of spare time, but have successfully finished working on my 2006 photography, happily, and present it for all to see at Lucas Starbuck Photography dot com.

I have also updated a couple of other bits and pieces, including getting clips uploaded to YouTube, and linked through to the video section here - http://www.lucas-starbuck.com/2008/08/trails-of-the-mornington-peninsula/ - so now all three clips from the DVD are available to watch in full. I’m really happy to get these up, and look forward to getting the Phillip Island clips online soon.

So I decided the front page was a little weak. In thinking about what I really wanted to show visitors to this site, I reassembled my original scribblings, my ideas about what I wanted to present. The message was loud and clear - show a diverse range of work without overloading people. So from here, I set about looking at a way of chunking down the many categories that feature on the site.

I came up with the idea of creating one ‘feed’ column for the writing - blogging, journalism and writing, and then another column for photos, showing thumbs of the latest galleries over at www.lucasstarbuckphotography.com.

The central column now features design, web development, multimedia and video updates, which I think works out really well. Overall, I’m really pleased with the results, and it was only a couple of hours of tweaking.

Its the first chance I’ve had to run multiple wordpress loops, which was a nice …

Because life is beautifully busy. I have a number of projects currently on the go, which means I’m not sitting around twiddling my brain very much.

I’m script writing for a new comedy, mockumentary-style news broadcast.. We’re shooting 2 eps to start with, and the team is an incredible mix of new talent and experienced hands. Very happy to be in on the project; look out for me as the “Foreign Correspondent” in front of the camera.

Also in the works is some landscape design and construction; I’ve worked on a design for a local backyard recently, and construction is due to commence shortly. Its a nice mixture of liveable spaces in a compact urban environment. The new deck will feature space for a barbecue and ample seating for entertaining, whilst lending itself to being starting point for exploration of the yard. This area will be divided into two sections, though not with fences or hard divisions, but suggested zones through clever …

Ok so I’ve been hard at work, focussed on getting a lot more photography edited and uploaded to http://www.lucasstarbuckphotography.com. Its a rewarding experience; I get to revisit my previous holidays, experiences and places that I haven’t been to in a while. There’s Australian Landscapes, Birds, Dogs and more!

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”400” caption=”Australian Landscapes”][/caption] [caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”400” caption=”Mountain Biking, Valentine's Day Shoot”][/caption] [caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”400” caption=”Animals Gallery - Birds, Dogs!”][/caption]

Very cool news: The world’s largest atom smasher’s first experiment went off today without a hitch, paving the way toward the recreation of post-big bang conditions.

Read about it on National Geographic

With the site up and running nicely, I now have time to work on getting my photography online and organised.

My new website, http://www.lucasstarbuckphotography.com will feature galleries upon galleries of photography from the past years of snapping away. A big thanks to Smugmug and the guys that run that site for their dedication to providing photographers with the invaluable tool that is their hosting and serving product!

Ok so I was editing some pages today and realised that all my advanced tabs weren’t rolling out. A view source told me that the info was there, I just couldn’t get to it!

Frustrating for sure. I tried all my browsers, and even some different admin theme plugins, but no dice. Finally, I came across a post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/189717 which solved the problem, thank goodness.

Its the Feedwordpress plugin that seems to be creating the problem, so disabling it then lets everything work normally again! Hopefully the issue can be solved and the plugin reinstated!

So I’ve been working on the new site for a couple of weeks now, and its really coming together now. I’m very pleased with the result, and really appreciate the feedback and suggestions. At the moment I’m working on populating the various sections with plenty of samples; quite a long process in itself, and once I’m satisfied with that, work on the photography will begin, with an assault on SmugMug’s servers to take place over the next few weeks.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you find something interesting while you’re clicking through!

So I was scouting around the search engines recently, and noticed that there’s a reference to a picture of mine, that I took in Lake Louise, cited for someone looking for Canada photos. Also cited was my gallery (which has since been moved on)

Bizarre.

http://de.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080302070359AASf46x

http://www.imoverseas.com/gallery/LucasStarbuckCanadaWallpaper1.jpg

With much work undertaken over the last couple of weeks, my site is nearing completion. Having researched, from the ground up, Web 2.0 technologies, trends and design, and not to mention the WordPress engine and how to really use it as a powerful and flexible content management system, I sit, with square eyes and tired fingers, happy to say that I am confident in my site’s architecture. Future-bound, this site will allow me to maintain catalogues of pieces of work across the board of my expertise, as well as showcase my more recent photos, and link on to my SmugMug galleries, which will be the backbone of my photography on the web. Additionally, with my site dynamically created, I am able to maintain and update it as much as I need, with as little hassle as possible. RSS feeds have proven to be a valuable learning experience, with my uploads from Lightroom into SmugMug automatically feeding this website, and subsequently …