Time out over

Multiculturism in action.Marrackville,Sydney Dec 24th 2013

TRR is back.Thanks for all the feedback encouraging me to continue with the blog .I had not appreciated how widely read the blog is.

After taking the comments on board and mulling over the alternatives I have decided that the blog will continue as before.I have tried to change the template design slightly and to adopt a good suggestion to increase the font size but sadly there is a longstanding technical problem within Blogger which is stopping changes being applied to existing blog designs and in typical Google style they have no apparent interest in fixing the issue despite the many anguished users.There is a long fix from a frustrated user set out in one post but as this involves tinkering with the HTML code I do not feel confident in trying it as I fear that I could inadvertantly wipe both the template and the whole blog history.

I have decided against the temptation to buy a big camera outfit and change my photography style.My compact camera style particularly with the Leica X1 has served me very well for the past three years and now is not the time to change back to a big heavy camera outfit.I even went and handled some new cameras-more on this in another post- but came away underwhelmed.However I have decided to do more with my Hasselblad so there will be more film photography in the future.When I have used the Blad the results have been interesting but the bulk of the outfit and its lack of portability and my inertia have meant that over the past 12 months I have not used it much.
So I will now keep up the content of the blog and that means more photography and more travelling in 2014.

But before 2014 a quick reflection on 2013.For me personally it was a great year with the birth of a grandson and my daughter and family moving back to Australia after 5 years in Montreal.No more long distance hauls across the globe to visit the grandaughters.
Apart from these very significant family events the highlight of the year was the travel to Myanmar at the start of the year.I took so many great photos in Myanmar.The famous American photographer Ansel Adams once remarked that if he took 12 good photos in a year then it was a good year.He had obviously never travelled to Myanmar and in particular on a boat down the Arawaddy River.
There were disappointments in 2013.The much anticipated Australian Porsche Rennsport event in May was underwhelming.It was good but it could easily have been so much better.Too much emphasis on racing and not enough on the displays.
I also did not use my Porsches as much as I would have liked.I aim to change that in 2014.
On a more serious note local and world events were a disappointment to me and I do feel a growing sense of despair that reasonable,moderate people and views are losing out generally.You can even see that in forums and comments published on many blogs.I wrote some articles for a very well known US photography blog and was shocked by the ferocity and totally unnecessary nastiness of many of the anonymous comments on those stories.Civility is a dying art form as is debate or even respect for other people's points of view.Needless to say I will not be writing any more articles for that blog-regardless of the size of the readership.
This is obviously not a problem confined to blogs you can see it everywhere in daily life but particularly in politics and the media.Pursuing this depressing train of thought could take the blog to places I do not really want it to go so I will leave it at that and return to familiar ground.

From the photos posted on TRR in 2013 here is my pick of my favourites.After I had chosen them I realised that they were in fact a very representative cross section of my personal 2013 with the exception of the photos of Hanoi from 2005 and the Japanese factory both found in the files.