Well I have just finished performing in Strathfield Musical Society’s production of Phantom of the Opera.  The show went very well and it was a fantastic cast.  I would even say they were better that the Les Mis and the Fiddler on the Roof cast which to date have been the best that I have worked with (along with Rockdale Jekyll and Hyde).

In addition to playing the role of Andre in Phantom of the Opera I also shot a fair bit of footage towards making a documentary on Amateur Musical Theatre.  I have got some great material and should be able to pull out a nice 30-60min documentary out of it.  I still need a few more principal interviews on which to pin the story line, but I will see if I can get them in the next couple of weeks.  I am also putting together the photo DVDs for the cast.  The society gets a professional photographer Ray, to come in and take the photos during our two dress rehearsals, and the society then sells the photo discs to the cast.  This year there were 40 orders as the cast became really fond of each other and the show and so it seems ended up wanting the photographic memento of the show.

Speaking of photography another project I am working on is putting together my Photographic portfolio.  I have owned my Canon 1Dx for almost two years now and have taken in the order of 25000 photos with it.  I have gone out and photographed several events such as the City to Surf and the Colour Run specifically to get some experience photographing events.  I have also taken some photos from side of stage on a couple of theatre productions such as Strathfield Musical Society’s the Wizard of Oz and Music Man.  I also did all the cast headshots for the program for the Phantom of the Opera.  For some portraiture I did a photo shoot with my sister and her kids at Cataract Gorge in Launceston, Tasmania, and have taken some pictures of members of my lab.  I have also taken a number of wildlife shots.

My aim is to now pick out the best of those photos and put together my Photographic portfolio.  I would like to get my camera earning me some money so I need a portfolio for that, but also I am keen to take on various photographic projects as they challenge me to learn new techniques and improve as a photographer.  Plus if I can earn some money as a photographer the camera can pay for new photographic gear like new lenses and off camera flash triggers etc.

I got a cake gig a couple of weeks ago.  One of the Professors here at worked liked the Brain cake that I made and won  the Great Australian Microscopy Bake Off with she got me to make a cake for her Brother who is a professor of dental prosthetics.  She left the design up to me so I made a lower jaw with a tongue and a full set of teeth (minus the wisdom teeth).  I removed three of the teeth and put titanium posts (made out of icing) into their place and the three prosthetic teeth to be inserted sitting beside the jaw on the board.  It worked out quite well.  I would have liked it to be a bit more realistic and I had a couple of icing disasters, where the icing sheet tore.  But not too bad.  I will put up photos in a separate post at some stage.

With the major point being that I will set up a cake portfolio too I think.

Now that I have finished the Phantom and my documentary the projects I have coming up between now and next March are:

• Start up my Empire of Thirst You tube Channel
• Start up my Confectionology You Tube Channel
• Learn Digital Painting with a view to doing better Medical Illustrations
• Pull together all my alpha-synuclein experimental results from the last two years and see what we have
• Perform any remaining experiments
• Put together a nature paper
• Apply for a Michael J Fox grant to get our own Plate Reader
• Make a 3D animated video on the setting up of the counter current flow for water absorption in the Kidney
• Make up some Printed Lab coats to try out and sell

Before I can get to them though I have to finish my marking so back to it and I will talk to you again soon!