Newcastle & Lake Macquarie 2024 Calendar

My 2024 calendar is now available!

This year’s calendar includes 12 landscape images taken around Newcastle and Lake Macquarie during the past year and is available in two sizes, A4 (medium) and A3 (large).

It’s a mix of drone and camera shots and I’m really pleased with how the calendar turned out.

If you would like to purchase one they’re available through my store or on Etsy. Australian postage is free or it’s $10AU to post overseas.

2022 Favourites

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

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

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