Despite of many troubles successfully organised by Finnair, I’m finally back in Sydney. It was a great trip with almost full winter holiday experience – low temperatures, lots of snow, snowmobiles, skies, snowshoes, reindeers, dog sleds and northern lights. I’m not really happy with results from photography prospective, but, I promise, there will be a few images.

P.S. From logistics prospective this trip wasn’t perfect – in addition to disrupted plans caused Finnair cabin crew strike, I’ve lost a bunch of LiIon batteries (including spares for Canon 5DMkII and 20D) – confiscated by Helsinki airport security. I didn’t know that LiIon batteries should not be in the checked-in baggage. So, keep it in mind and bring it with you on board.

If everything goes well, by the end of tomorrow, me and my wife will be enjoying Glögi and Northern Lights somewhere close to the Arctic circle in Lapland. We will have a 2 hour day, 5 hours of combined dusk and dawn (photographer’s dream???), and many many dark hours to hunt Aurora Borealis.

This freezing-cold wallpaper has nothing to do with where I’m going now and features image from a completely different part of our little planet – New Zealand. I hope it will help my Australian readers to survive summer.

As always, this and older wallpapers with updated December calendar are available for download here: Free Desktop Wallpaper Calendars.

I’ve been doing lots of testing of my time-lapse gear all week and Sydney Harbour Bridge became a subject of the first real field test. I should say that it was an interesting experience to stand there with two large tripods, two cameras and with stack of filters attached to both cameras. The whole set up was looking very serious. Unfortunately, I’ve identified a few issues with mechanical part of my DIY motorised panning tripod head, so I have nothing worth demonstrating at the moment, hopefully it will be fixed this week. On the positive side, it was a long process, so I had plenty of time to take pictures as well.

P.S. Just realised that I haven’t been shooting Sydney attractions for ages, almost forgot how good they are. Need to go out more often …

As before, this and older wallpapers with November calendar are available for download here: Free Desktop Wallpaper Calendars.

I’m very sorry for this extremely quiet week – no posts, no new images, no tweets or facebook updates. But don’t panic! I’ll get back to my usual schedule of 2-3 new images and 0-2 posts per week very soon. I’ve been extremely busy with one of my photography related DIY projects, which is almost complete now, but I’ll post about that later – today we have our usual monthly free desktop wallpaper calendar. This time it is from Sydney – Long Reef Point, one of my favorite seascape locations in Sydney’s north.

As always, this and older wallpapers with September calendar are available for download here: Free Desktop Wallpaper Calendars.

August has almost gone and it is time to think about the new look for your computer desktop. September 2010 free desktop wallpaper features The Pinnacles Desert from the Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Read more about this great location in one of my older place descriptions here: The Pinnacles Desert, Nambung National Park.

This and older wallpapers with September calendar are available for download here: Free Desktop Wallpaper Calendars.