Newcastle

2022 Favourites

| cjlevinson

My 5 favourite photos from 2022 and a mix of my other favourites below.

Looking back on 2022, overall it was a good year for my photography. We had some absolutely stunning sunrises and sunsets throughout 2022 and they’re some of my very favourite landscape shots ever.

My food photography work continued to grow as well throughout 2022 and I branched out into a few new areas as well, including doing a wedding which was a good experience.

I found the year itself very challenging though, particularly around learning to live with Covid and the impact that would have on my photography. So far I’ve managed to avoid getting Covid, which I think is mostly a mix of luck, caution and having a fairly small social circle, but I have to be very careful and that’s led to me turning down opportunities I otherwise would have accepted. Luckily some of my other work has helped to offset that but it has been frustrating, particularly when a lot of people seem to be ”over” Covid and think everyone else should be too.

The abuse one gets for taking simple precautions like wearing a mask doesn’t help either.

The big event for me in 2022 was getting a cat! Tira was a cat I photographed for animal rescue and both I and my partner fell in love with her immediately. She’s a Siamese-mix and was badly treated before coming in to care so it took a long time for her to warm up to us. During the first couple of weeks she hid in our wardrobe and would barely eat and I was worried she might never settle. But now she’s turned in to a lap cat and loves playing and has helped to make our little flat feel more like a home. It’s amazing what a little patience and love can do. 

I also got a few new photography toys in 2022, the big one being a new camera system. I got a Fujifilm X-T3 as I wanted a smaller, lighter camera system for travelling and for non-professional work. I’ve really enjoyed it so far; the film-style dials and buttons are a lot of fun.

I also bought a drone which I’m just starting to learn to fly and I’m looking forward to the different kind of photos it will allow me to capture.

Thank you to everyone for continuing to support my photography throughout the past year and Happy New Year. May 2023 be a happy and healthy one for us all.

Photos © CJ Levinson 2022

Full Moon Over Nobbys

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The full moon rising over Nobbys a couple of weeks ago. I shot this from Stockton Beach; it ended up being a bit of a mad dash as I was running late and thought I was going to miss the moonrise entirely for a while, luckily I had just enough time to make it over to near the breakwall to take the shot. Really happy with how it turned out in the end.

Photo © CJ Levinson 2022

Newcastle 7/05/2022

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My photography group met again last Sunday in Newcastle. Originally we were going to make our way out to the breakwall at Nobbys but we decided to go for a walk along the foreshore instead as we thought we might run out of time.

It was good we did too as the sunset was spectacular over the foreshore. The colours were amazing and kept changing constantly. It was a great end to a fun day.

Photos © CJ Levinson 2022

The Night Tram

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I had a little time to kill in Newcastle the other evening so I thought I’d do a little night photography and try to get a shot of one of the light rail trams.

I was lucky enough that this tram was due to arrive at the Queen’s Wharf platform not long after I arrived so I was able to set up and get this shot before it departed again. I like how the colours pop against the night.

I got this one of the empty platform with car headlights streaking past which I like as well.

Photos © CJ Levinson 2022

2021 Favourites

| cjlevinson

My 5 favourite photos from 2021 and a mix of my other favourites below.

2021 was a year of two halves for my photography. Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world and success in suppressing Covid led to the first half of the year feeling somewhat normal and I felt more comfortable doing some animal and portrait shoots again.

Then the Delta outbreak hit in the second half of the year and we went back in to lockdown. All my work dried up, including my food shoots (my main source of income), and I couldn’t leave my local area for months.

I also moved just before the lockdown but that worked out well in the end as it meant I had a new area to explore for my photography during lockdown.

The lockdown was difficult; I found it much harder than what we’d been through previously and going for a walk along the foreshore with my camera each day was one of the things that helped get me through it. We had some beautiful sunsets during that period and focusing on the natural beauty of the lake really helped to keep me sane.

Once the lockdown lifted things picked up a little; I was able to resume some food shoots but a lot of the restaurants I had shot for before didn’t survive this lockdown unfortunately. It took a big toll.

Towards the end of the year my photograhy group was able to start meeting again which was fun and it’s continuing to grow. And despite work drying up, I still managed to sell a number of my calendars and prints throughout the year which was good as well.

Here’s hoping 2022 will be a better year all round as we start to move in to a new stage of the pandemic.