How do I describe the feeling where you’ve wanted to experience or see something for years and you finally get the chance to do it?
Well, this was me when we arrived at La Push for the first time. But first, I need to start at the beginning.
Our day starts in Mt Rainier National Park. My sister and I wake up in our wooden cabin to the sound of rain trickling in the forest surrounding us. By the time we were on the road, it was pouring and we couldn’t believe our luck that during our week in notoriously rainy Washington it only rained once during our transit day and not on any day that we headed off to explore a National Park.
On our 5 hour drive, we zoomed down highways lined with beautiful pine trees, stopped off at cute country towns, visited the tallest Spruce tree in the world, took photos by placid blue lakes surrounded by fog and made it to our accommodation in Forks where we had to run from the car in the pouring rain to get out all of our things.
I was prepared to visit La Push in the rain - it doesn’t phase me too much - but the one thing I really wanted to see was a sunset over the water behind the mini mountains in the ocean. That afternoon we headed off to the beach (where my sister felt very weird testing out what it felt like driving on the opposite side of the road for the first time!) and with our luck during the rest of our trip in Washington, the clouds parted just as we arrived.
We spent the rest of our day walking up and down the beach, taking photos with the mountains in the background, exploring the giant driftwood washed up on the shore and we even managed to spot a seal swimming and having fun in the waves.
The day comes to an end and we get to experience that magical, red, glowing sunset I’ve always wanted to see in La Push. We took hundreds of photos and made our way back to Forks.
The adventure continues.
all photos edited with my NEW Washington Lightroom Preset
This blog post includes some of my favourite photos I took during my time in Japan with the S5II. If you want to hear my complete thoughts and review of the S5II capabilities for photo and video, you can watch my review video here.
In November, I was invited to Japan by LUMIX to attend the LUMIX Global Summit for the announcement of the new LUMIX S5II. Paired with the new camera body and an array of lenses, Dan and I took to the streets of Tokyo, Japan to film our review video of the camera body.
In November, I was invited to Tokyo, Japan by LUMIX to attend the LUMIX Global Summit. They didn't tell me what was going to be announced, but I was very excited to find out because it sounded like it was going to be something big. On the morning of the event, I met Pav and we went for a little photo walk around the streets of our hotel. For this trip, I decided to bring the LUMIX S5 with me to test it out for photo and video.
In November, I was invited to Japan by LUMIX to attend the LUMIX Global Summit for the announcement of something new. I left Sydney with Dan, Aaron and Simon in the evening and we landed in Toyko, Japan the next morning. We were all a little tired from the overnight flight, but we decided to head out and explore Tokyo since we had a free day before the event.
We set off the loop walk around the lake and it was such a stunning stroll. I loved every minute of it and kept stopping to take photos. I was contemplating coming here for sunrise but I'm happy we visited in the afternoon. The second half of the lake was all backlit and I captured some of my favourite photos where you can see the moon plus the jagged peaks of the mountains. Austria is SO incredible!
It's been a long day starting at 4am for sunrise landscape photography, then a trip to Lake Gousau and finally a stop in the town of Hallstatt. I have visited Hallstatt a few years ago during the spring. It's strange on that trip I was wearing a thick turtle neck jumper and on this trip just a light dress!
As I was getting ready to go to bed for a sunrise start the next day, I noticed the moon outside our bathroom window. It was in a crescent shape during blue hour and headed towards the jagged mountain peak. Dan quickly set up the tripod for a timelapse while I snapped a few photos. I started with a closeup shot of the moon with my 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 OSS lens.
I set my alarm for 4am, Dan and I hopped in the car while it was still dark and drove to our first location. We had scouted a couple of sunrise spots the day before. This spot was a nothing place - not a landmark or a viewpoint. It was by a little carpark for an army base just off the side of the road.
This is the last part of my mammoth blog series from my time in Prague, Czech Republic. I have recently been loving shooting on 35mm film again, specifically with point and shoot cameras. I brought the Contax T2 and Olympus Mju-ii with me on this trip and I used both those cameras to take the photos in this blog post. I used 2 film stocks including Fujifilm C200 in the Mju-ii and Portra 160 in the Contax.

I spent a morning doing landscape photography around Lake Bled in Slovenia using the Sony A7IV with the GM 35mm f1.4 lens.