I’ve MOVED…

www.alronberg.com will get you to the new 33@50mm website… working on another major site update – but it’s all there folks!

#56/365 – Lazy Afternoon

More a late-afternoon/early-evening to be fair… sometimes you just gotta put your feet up at the end of a work day and go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

#55/365 – Dandelion Clock

#54/365 – I HEART Korus

I love this Koru that my sister and her family gave us for Christmas… It sits well on our brushwood fence!

#53/365 – absence makes the heart grow fonder…

Absence makes the heart grow fonder… lalalalalalalaaaaaaa…

Christine did her first 12 hr shift today and I managed to keep Emily entertained for most of the day! The reunion at the end of the day is always something special… although tonight Em was a wee bit nonchalant! I captured this beautiful and natural moment which is pretty sweet!

To add to the euphoria and lovey-doveyness – a bellbird has just landed in a tree outside our place and is serenading us something sweet… Don’t you love the way life conspires to make us cheerful sometimes?!

How’s the serenity?

#52/365 – Camotographer

We spend a fair amount of our lives trying to blend in to the world around us… sometimes we go the opposite way and try as much as possible to stand out… the internet and world we live in are filled with people striving to find their 15 minutes… I guess in some way… anyone (like myself) that has a blog or website or whatever… is trying to be seen or heard…

Let’s not be missing the point here… I myself, do what I do for the mere enjoyment of life and the world around me… I have no delusions that what I say and do won’t change the world, or get me a spot on the telly… I love taking photos, and love telling people about my faith – hopefully the 2 are merged nicely in some way or another through this blog…

#51/365 – Emily Holmes – Super Detective

I must say that Emily was rather perplexed about the whole magnifying glass thing!

My band has their gig this weekend if anyone is around – 5:45pm @ The Depot, Sir Lloyd Drive,  Lloyd Elsmore Park, Highland Park. It shall be fun!

#50/365 – Emma Daken

Today I had the fantastic privilege of a coffee with Emma Daken. Emma has just finished the HUGE task of walking the LENGTH of New Zealand to raise funds and awareness for Cystic Fibrosis… The length of New Zealand is 2240kms and Emma did this in 70 days!!! That is on average 32kms per day… when you factor into the equation that 21 of these days were rest days… the average that Emma walked on the 49 walking days is 46kms a day… Emma effectively walked 49 Marathons in 70 Days!!!!! A few weeks ago I took a photo of an L&P bottle saying that I earned a glass of it after merely mowing the lawns… If we applied this same rule of thumb to Emma, we would have to give her the freaking factory!!!

This photoblog was formed out of a desire to be more involved in the world around me… my absolute hope is that through this journey, I get to meet more people like Emma! People that see needs, and with considerable sacrifice, do what they can to meet them! Emma had a friend with CF, and as part of caring for her friend, sought to bring awareness and much-valued funds to research and support treating a horrific condition! She didn’t try to walk a mile in her friend’s shoes… she knew that she could never understand the day to day dealing with CF… but she walked a fair few miles in her own shoes (Multiple pairs!!!), all the while battling Shin Splints and fatigue. During her travels she met many people that had their own brushes with CF, through suffering themselves, or through losing loved ones. Emma’s ears were given a good workout and I am sure that people left feeling much better for having met Emma!

I hope that wherever you are, you will always be looking for opportunities to make a difference.

You might like to consider donating to Emma’s cause and you can do so by visiting http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/EmmaDaken08/. Emma also has a blog that you can check out with all the stories of the ups and downs at http://emmadaken.blogspot.com/.

Congratulations Emma… you did a marvellous job and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next… that’s the best part… Emma isn’t the type of person to leave it there… for her, the journey isn’t over… it’s just begun!

#49/365 – Paint me a sunset

Tonight I had the honour once again of hanging out with some very cool friends… they also happen to be the members of the band we have formed… it was great to play some tunes and plan out what is going down for our GIG THIS SUNDAY!

Whilst there, the sky decided to become very AWESOME indeed… and I of course, had my camera handy… It would only be made more awesome a moment had we been singing “Our God is an Awesome God” when I noticed… we weren’t… but that would have been nice.

One of the things that I LOVE about New Zealand is how easy it is to get in to the great outdoors and naturey type places… I love tramping and being in secluded places… Being able to merge this love with my passion for Photography is truly something that I am appreciative of! The times when I feel closest to my creator, is when I am out amongst the world that he created.

I had the FORTUNE of going down to the Central Plateau one Auckland Anniversary weekend and doing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing… it was a truly spiritual and refreshing experience… I am SOOOO glad I didn’t go to the Parachute Meat Market/Music Festival instead! I remember Easter Camps at Foxton Beach as a teenager… the stars there were quite amazing and definitely gave you a sense of your place in the world… Stars are something that really blow my mind… the best are found in Central Otago in a little dot on the landscape called Bendigo, although the ones I saw in Waipara last year were also pretty sweet… and let’s not forget the Marlborough Sounds too… I have a bit of a fascination with space… stars, comets, planets, satellites… I am unbearable when we are camping and it is late at night… my cousins still speak of when I taught them to spot satellites…

The vastness of space helps me to remember that the God whom I follow is HUGE! Bigger than anything else I could even conceive of… yet despite this HUGENESS, He is personal and chooses to offer me a relationship… this blows my mind and fuels my thoughts as I get out and appreciate what was created for me to appreciate. The world decaying saddens me… whether it be through Global Warming, War, Famine or deforestation and over-population, it saddens me to think that we have somehow become more focused on consuming all that we can in the world, and not on protecting what is given to us to look after and ENJOY… What can I do about it? The problem is immense, and seemingly insurmountable… but I CAN look after what I have around me… I can do lots of things in the world around me, and just hope that we will still have a beautiful sunset to appreciate when Chris and I are sitting on the porch of some ‘one-day-our-dreams-may-come-true’ beach house overlooking a beautiful ocean. And just maybe, as we set to retire for the evening, a beautiful dolphin will jump out of the water just as we turn to head inside and have a tickle-fight with the grandkids…

#48/365 – I think its time I did the lawns…

There are consequences in life… bottom line! We just got back from a fantastic holiday in the South Island yesterday and there are plenty of consequences… the one that will effect me the most in the next few days is THE LAWNS! Three weeks of what seemed to be moisture-laden weather in Auckland has seen a bumper crop of Dandelions and other lawny type plants take over the back yard… so it seems that if you want the luxury of a good lengthy holiday, then you have to bear the consequences of lawn clippings when you get home!

It is funny that many people I know in churchy circles seem to think that God waves some crazy consequence wand and we are all protected from the big bad world… They think that if they do something they know is wrong, but then ask for forgiveness, all will work out well… there are plenty of teen-pregnancies, divorces, fraud, abuse and all sorts of horrible nasty things out there in terms of consequences, and people that lose their faith when they still have to go through the pain of consequences after actively doing naughty things…

I have done some stupid things in my days… one of them was to create a whole (un)reality when I moved to a new school at the age of 12… I made up a story about how cool I was back home, and how I was in the Soccer and Cricket REP teams and all that… My hope (I can only guess) was that people might like me if I was this cool guy and great sports star… It only took about 20 seconds on the sports field for me to be proved a liar and braggart (old school lingo… I liketh…). What was intended to be something that set me up for friends, the good life and popularity… actually made me worse off than if I had just sat back and been part of the furniture…

When I became a follower of Jesus… I somehow managed to work out that what I had brought into, with this whole life of faith thing, meant I never had to be someone I am not, ever again… The people around me accepted me for who I was… and kept me honest. I must have had great spiritual mentors (they know who they are) for me to work out that I could just chill and let God work in me to grow and stretch me through the good, the bad and the ugly… (and since I made the decision to follow Jesus, I have had more than my fair share of the good, the bad and the ugly). Through all the situations I have faced in my time of being a disciple of Jesus, I have never EVER made it about getting what I want from the galactic wish dispenser… it has been living a life of faith and hope and trust that has brought more than sufficient reward in my character, in my outlook on life, and in my relationships with the people around me. There have been consequences to my decisions, good and bad – but they are mere droplets in an ocean in which every ripple is sustained by the one with the power to calm the storms.