Phil Hawley Photography » Life

Holiday Family Portraits

Phil — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:35:26 +0000

After the nightmare scenario over the Christmas holidays in getting from Moscow to Spain via UK the long way it was great to see family and family friends. I took my camera around with me a lot of the time, first to Noche Buena, the night before the traditional Christmas day with family and friends, I really like this shot of my Mum, Brother, and Lou enjoying themselves and semi-posing at the last second:-

I also took a few that were candid as the night went on including this one of Family friends Gunter and Anna-Maria trying to squeeze a last bit of gin from the bottle:-

I haven’t spent Christmas morning with my Nephew and Niece before so I took the camera with me whist they unwrapped some of their presents, and although my nephew was still a little shy it was great to be there with them. Here is my Nephew distracted whilst playing on the Wii:-

My niece is less self conscious and was happy to have her photo taken even when her Daddy was playing with her:-

On Boxing day we went up to see my brother’s new family house and land partway into the renovation and managed to get a great shot of the four of them at the top of the hill that their olive and almond groves sit on:-

Finally on one of the last few days in Spain my brother was playing with my nephew and I got this cute shot of the two of them:-

You can see the rest of my informal family shots in the gallery below, as always click the thumbnail to see the full shot.

48hrs in Geneva

Phil — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:00:34 +0000

After a day in Lausanne for Lou’s job we arrived in Geneva by train into glorious sunshine, jumped into a taxi and headed to the Hotel Rotary despite him insisting it was only a short walk away. He was right in the end, but we didn’t have a map due to printer malfunction and he made himself a bit of cash. The hotel appeared nice enough from the reception, but Geneva is expensive at the best of times, and at short notice you get even less for your money so when we got to the room we were not surprised to find it was a little old fashioned, but who cares we were only sleeping there.

We went for a walk to enjoy the early evening sun, the hotel was located conveniently close to the southern point of lake Geneva where the River Rhone flows out of the lake where there were lots of Swans swimming around. We then walked along the promenade and around Le Jardin Anglais and after a walk down past the shops on Rue de Marché we returned tot he hotel to change for dinner.

I had previously received a number of recommendations for dinner and we ended up walk over to the Old Town of Geneva to Soupçon where we enjoyed a fantastic dinner, if pretty expensive for what is essentially a cafe.

On Saturday we went for breakfast in a small cafe and went shopping for our forthcoming trip to Kamchatka, we followed this up with a wonder around the old town for the afternoon, past the Hotel de Ville and even the 12th Century St Peter’s Cathedral where there was a wedding party leaving. Bizarrely the wedding party seemed to be made up a mixture of British and French accents, and the groom rode away on a bicycle – those crazy Swiss!!

The next day we went for a ride on Lake Geneva on the boat taxis that were included in our free transport card we were given at the hotel and ended up getting off the boat on the north bank of the lake and walked back along the bank. There was some kind of wake-boarding festival going on, and right next to it an eerie outdoor photo exhibition about the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. These photos were disturbing and you have to wonder who would volunteer to take these photos of the remains of Chernobyl, showing things like abandoned hospital rooms, or the fact that the seal plug over the reactor is close the leaking again, scary stuff.

Click images for full sized images.

April Drinking in Russia

Phil — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:52:47 +0000

So over the last few weeks since being back in Moscow we have been out a fair bit, either out in bars/restaurants or at our place, with friends, and also with family when they visited. Now I have the Canon G11 I can take an ok photo when out with friends without taking the big SLR. So the main socialising you will see here are -

Easter Sunday Egg decorating – Not as quaint as it sounds, it involved a lot of champagne, vodka, and Kahlua (for the Kiwis)
Brunch at Turandot and the evening afterwards – So this started with the Turandot restaurant where you can get a lovely lunchtime buffet brunch, like most buffets except gourmet type food, especially the dessert. All this and as much Champagne, Wine, beer, Spirits as you drink. So I started taking pictures of the most drunk people, but as the day and night wore on this was mostly Dave, see if you can pick him out, you do get him dancing with one of the other guys at one point!
Kiwis’ last night/Caro’s Birthday – Caro and Christy were here for three months and their ‘last’ night out obviously got a bit much for Christy if you see a few of those photos, well it was close to 4am by that point. As it turns out the Volcanic Ash meant they couldn’t leave until a few days later, bu this was the main celebration.
Dinner with the in-laws for John’s birthday – Fairly quiet night but lot of beers, John was impressed with being able to smoke his cigars in the restarant as you can see.
St Peterburg – We found an odd theme bar based on a Spy theme, and found the odd faces in the wall, Lou’s mum thought one of them looked like Lou’s Uncle Alan. We found the only 50 Ruble (£1/$1.70) per pint pint beer we have found since being here and it was pretty nice, and the lovely meal with had at Stroganoff which saw me demolish a 2 litre bottle of their own beer, tasted lovely.

Santomera Reservoir

Phil — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:53:38 +0000

Whilst I have visited my parents many times over the last 9 years in Spain and I have visited one or two of the nearby towns, one thing I have always seen and been intrigued by, is a nearby reservoir that I have passed by from a distance many times.

This time when I was over there I was determined to actually visit the reservoir and the area around it. The area near to the Santomera Reservoir is a huge Pine forest that is bisected by the main road from Fortuna to the Autoroute that can take you to Alicante airport and to Murcia. It was formed by the building of the Santomera Dam in the 1950′s as a defence against flooding of the Segura area by the Santomera and Abanilla rivers and has a surface area of 263.4 hectares. The area around the reservoir is beautiful and has some amazing landscape views, so much so that a ‘Cass Del Agua’ (Water house) was built for Franco here as a retreat, but he never visited, probably due to the area’s strong royalist sympathies.

We went to visit the reservoir and Dam on a warm Palm Sunday and we decided to drive out there to explore the area, Lou and my Mum came with me and we followed the signs from the main road that bisects the forest towards the Casa Del Agua. We went past this area and as it was such a nice day there were hundreds of families in a nearby picnic area, we carried on past this area and up the hill to the side of the Dam. When we got up to the same level of the Dam we found you could drive along the top of the Dam to a parking area in the middle of the two sections of Dam, we had a wander around the top and saw you could walk around one side of the Dam and decided to come back another day with the dogs. A few days later Lou and I took the dogs for their first real ‘walk’ that didn’t involve them just running around the land my Mum’s house is on, or when had got out of the garden and took themselves for a walk in the local area. We had bought them extending leads and after a little hesitation they seem to like this arrangement, and I got to take a load of photos of the area, take a look and see what you think, feel free to leave comments.

Portraits of my Niece

Phil — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:25:05 +0000

I am back in Moscow now, after a few pretty traumatic weeks, watching my Dad decline in hospital, but one of the bright lights amongst all this was that for the last week or so my brother came to Spain bringing my niece with him.

I hadn’t seen her since I visited them in Kuwait in a few months before, in October. In some ways she has changed, but in others she is very similar, still very independent, still happy to take the rough and tumble of being a child, playing with my Mum’s dogs, falling over, getting back up and dusting herself off and getting on with things again. All of this whilst still only being 16 months old.

Anyway on a couple of occasions I managed to get a few portrait shots of her whilst she was playing for my brother, have a look and see what you think, feel free to make comments.