It seems like forever since I have sat down at my computer (or my iPad) and written on this Blog.  To my regular readers I'm sorry.  To begin with I guess things just seemed to be sailing along so nicely that I almost forgot about writing.  Or at other times I think just keeping up with everything meant that I was wasn't devoting that 30 minutes or so most days to writing.   However in August it became apparent to me that all wasn't well with me.  For someone who's always been well, and the only 2 times I've been in hospital was for the birth of my two children, this came as a bit of a shock.  But then I guess "The Spanish Dancer", or "The Big C", or pure and simply cancer, is always going to be a shock.  I think it's one of life's real cruelties that a girl had to get cancer to get loads and loads of really beautiful and cool flowers. I won't go in to too many details here, but suffice to say that I have been extremely fortunate...

What is the role, and place, of a photographer in today's society?  What is our legacy?  Does the fire ever really leave the eye of a photographer? Believe it or not the photographer who was my absolute idol had nothing to do with horses.  He was Jacques Lowe, the personal photographer to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his family.  JFK is another idol of mine (and of many).  My parents, who are both academic types and politically astute, had a photobook called "Four Days in November", detailing photographically the events of that terrible day on 22 November 1963.  I remember the book vividly and even at  young age, the  power of these photographs.  It led me to ask my parents about the assassination, and they both had the same comment, that the whole world stopped that day, and that they could remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. It's probably that book which sparked the facsination I develo...

I have quoted Les Carlyon in my title today. In Chasing a Dream, Les wrote "The racehorse is spendidly unscientific. The great ones do what they shouldn't be able to do. The racehorse is proof that two plus two can still come up nine". Caulfield Guineas Day always promises to be something special. This year's renewal was no exception. I photographed this day every year since 1995. It is one of my 'I am unavailable for consultation' days that is marked in black on the annual racing calendar. I've photographed some truly great horses here over the year, and can honestly say that in 2010, this day was TRULY special. I went thinking if just of these potentially very special horses won, then it would be a good day. Remarkably all three won. I speak of course, of the undisputed champion of Australian Racing, So You Think, the world's best sprinter Black Caviar, and that mighty mare More Joyous. The weather was glorious, the images fabulous, there ...