After my recent purchase of a Canon EOS400D, I’ve become reluctant to spend time writing, and over eager to spend time taking photographs instead.

Here’s my 3 year old daughter, Leia, after an hour of painting pictures on her easel in our backyard. The hands tell the story.

Image: Leia’s hands after painting.

So, I got a new toy on Friday, a long awaited Canon EOS 400D. A serious digital SLR, instead of the compact Sony DSC-V1 that has been my trusty friend for the last three years.

A crazy increase from 5.0 megapixels to 10.1 megapixels goes to show where technology has headed over the last three years. Now I just hope that my storage keeps up with my requirements. At 3mb per image in JPG format, the EOS400D can certainly chew up hard drive space, especially when I shoot 509 pictures in the first three days.

It’s about time I stepped out of my comfort zone with my photography, and started learning more about exposure, speeds, ISO, etc.

The pic above shows you what I was shooting on Sunday – the Red Bull Air Race came to Perth, Western Australia for the final stage of the 2006 World Series. An estimated 300,000 turned up on the banks of the Swan River to watch it, and a further 11 million watched it around the globe. An amazing new sport, completely created by a company looking for a sport to sponsor and promote – those marketing propeller heads at Red Bull are onto a winner.

Image: Michael Goulian in 2006 Red Bull Air Race, Perth WA.