My new baby :)

Today I decided to go for it and to buy myself a little present. My very own Sony a6000 mirrorless camera. While my beautiful Nikon D7000 will continue to hold a dear place in my heart, my new little baby is about to become my companion on a long anticipated journey.

For those of you who aren't updated, my big news is that I'm heading off soon on my very own trip of a lifetime. As a photographer, one of the things I love the most is heading out into nature, to exciting new places or even to old, familiar ones, and soaking in the atmosphere of the place; the people, the surroundings, the smells, and of course trying to capture those experiences through my camera.

Unfortunately I haven't had much time for travel in the past. Earlier on in my life, while I was still living in Australia, I didn't travel much. Family holidays, which make up some of the happiest memories of my chldhood, were mainly spent in rural Victoria. We didn't venture overseas much, travel from Australia isn't the cheapest, especially from the place known to some as the "arse end of the world", or the politically more correct "down under".Once I was finished school, after my gap year in Israel, university became my life, and my priorities for travel rested in one place and one place only - back in Israel. WIth a demanding university schedule, I spent the entire year saving enough money to head over to the Holy Land for my summer holidays, and once I returned home and back to my grueling study schedule, I started saving all over again, for the next trip back to that special place.

Moving to Israel after I finished my university degree, life started getting serious. Job after job, rent payments followed by an eventual mortgage, and more and more responsibility at work, meant that my traveling, no longer limited to the Australia-Israel line, was limited to a few days here and there, to locations that were close by and easily accessible. At times, when I found myself in between jobs, I considered the option of heading out to see the world, but I was always limited, either by finanical concens, or by my own personal limitations - my fear of the unknown, of instability, of the lack of confidence in my ability to survive out in the big wide world.

At the beginning of September I suddenly found myself out of a job.Unfortunately in the current economy, cutbacks can happen when least expected, and this round of cutbacks took us all by surprise. Was I upset? A little. To be perfectly honest, not as much as I expected I would be. A few months ago, knowing I wasn't always happy with my work, I was told my someone close to me that maybe I should consider "finding something that would make me happy". The advice sent me into a state of panic. Happy? What would make me happy? Happy at work or happy in general? And how on earth would I figure that out? Luckily at that time I could bury my head in the sand and keep plodding along, without really having to think too much about it.

When all of a sudden unemployment reared its ugly head, the question came back to haunt me. At the same time the idea of taking a break started to sound more and more appealing. But what to do, where to go? The old uncertainties and fears started to crowd my head again. And then one day, as I ummed and ahhed, a friend said something that resonated. "Think about looking back at your life in twently, thirty years, and think about what you'll regret not doing. WIll you regret not seeng the world? Probably. If so, then what are you waiting for?"

And so my trip was born. Where am I going? Current plans are five months in India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, with potential jumps to Nepal and Sri Lanka, followed by an additional six weeks in Australia before I head back home. Wh am I going with? No one, it will be me, my (hopefully) trusty backpack and my a6000. Am I scared? Petrified. Will I have a great experience? Absolutely.