Two photos

With a little more than half my prize money from the Commonwealth Writers Prize , I purchased a Canon SLR camera (a 550D if that means anything to you).

It arrived yesterday and it's loooooove.

I don't know a lot about photography but my brother is a trained photographer (he took my author photo, don't ya know) and sells camera for a living, so I should pick a few things up.

Here's a photo of a seagull taken from my deck (reduced quality for internet posting):

And here's the pile of books I'm currently reading*:

* You can see a number of bookmarks** in these books to prove I'm mid-stream. I normally read 2-3 books at once (not pictured, The Sea Wolf by Jack London, because it's an audiobook I'm listening to on my iPod), but things have gotten a bit crazy lately. The slim volumes are all poetry (I picked up several at the launch of Siobhan Harvey's Lost Relatives, also pictured, last week) which I am reading, re-reading in fits and starts.

** I don't think any are actual bookmarks. There's a library check-out slip, a supermarket receipt, a half a post-it and a $2 scratchie that's won $4 but I can't cash it in until I finish the book.