My wife and I used to like taking jumping shots wherever we go but since the birth of our little Thien-San we've been too exhausted to even think about it. Until today when we went for a trip in the country side of Canberra. We went to the observatory in Mount Stromlo, we started to take few shots in the derelict buildings around and Minh-Sa did some jumps with Hien, the cousin. Then I got in as well, our son seeing us jumping like mad started to giggle so I had the idea to include him in the photographs too, why should he be left aside?

I went to see my cousin Tony (Everlasting Portraits) in Canberra and stayed with some other members of the family for a week. We went for a relaxing afternoon visiting the Floriade, a flower festival.

After 16 years in Europe (10 years in Montpellier, France and 6 years in London, UK), I'm heading back to the Pacific Ocean that I left in 1996 from New Caledonia.

Montpellier was my student life, one of the most unforgettable time of your life, where you build strong friendships. Montpellier is also where I acquired all my IT skills.

London was my love life and career booster. I started with a job in Lidl store and I am now working as a CMS Developer for the Financial Times. I wouldn't have jumped that high would I have stayed in London. But the price to pay for was leaving a bunch of great friends and 300 days of sunshine a year behind.

Now I'm going to do it again. Leave a lot behind me and head towards new lands, but nearer to my starting point. I've spent such a great time and met such wonderful people here that it will be difficult, I don't realise it yet but I know it is. I will miss a lot but this move is the right decision for my family:

• better weather, more outdoors activity
• better education for the little one
• closer to my parents and the rest of the family. Also a bit closer for my wife to go back to Vietnam.
• back with some other friends

So on the 16th of July 2012, I will be heading down south to Kangarooland, in Casula, NSW not too far from Sydney.

I'm looking forward to meeting up with some Sydney Strobists and Ukulele players! So if you know something cool happening near Casula, NSW, please let me know!

Tonight, the full moon is coinciding with the fact that the Moon is at its closest distance to Earth, it's the Supermoon. The moon is 14% bigger and 30% brighter. Yesterday a friend of mine said it would be difficult to observe this as London was covered by "more clouds than cloud computing" :-D But we are very lucky because, today, we had a lovely bright and warm sunny day, and the the stayed clear until now (midnight). My wife and I had a walk outside and I tried to grab a shot of the Moon with a 105mm, well with a lens like this, you can't expect a big shot.

I've just been for three weeks in Vietnam to visit my wife's family in Long Thanh in the South. It was an unforgettable experience, this is my third time in the country and I always like it, the people, the food etc... And obviously the weather was really hot and humid. We stayed in Long Thanh for around two weeks and also went for a swim in Long Hai and stayed in the Swiss Village Resort in Mui Ne, Phan Thiet.

Every thing was an excuse for taking pictures. I took with me my mini Polaroid PoGo printer which the kids enjoyed a lot. Having their pictures printed out instantly was exciting for them.

As a tradition between my wife and I, we are always doing jumping shots anywhere we are going :-D And this time was no exception and it was contagious.

For more details about the shot above, please have a look at its Flickr page. Also check out this other photographs of me against my wife.

More photographs from the series can be found on my Facebook fan page.

2009 is ending soon. It was for me a wonderful year and I hope it was for you all as well. I've met new wonderful people some of which are now friends, I've learned and shared new techniques but I need now to spend more time with my wife and visit old friends.

For all who do celebrate Christmas, my wife and I wish you all to spend a wonderful Christmas time with your family and friends. For those who don't celebrate, we wish you to enjoy this end of the year and have a great party for this new coming year.

This is my last post of the year, and I hope 2010 will give me more time to update my blog more regularly than I did in the past 12 months. I see you all in 2010 for an even more wonderful photographic year.

I started to use off-camera flash in my photography works back in 2007. At the time I used to photograph everything with available natural light, playing around with reflectors and finding angles that would match the ambient light. But then I started to learn using a flashgun in a proper way and became addicted to the fact that having a flashgun in your bag makes it your own available light that you can carry with you where ever you go and use it whenever you need it. But as exciting as it is when you start to get nice balanced shots, you tend to go all the way with flash only and forget the natural light. Don't forget that lighting with flash is not The way but just A way to light your image. So recently I forced myself to include natural light shots in my sessions.

I've recently been contacted by several photographers, including Tony Kieu, my cousin in Australia, wanting to start taking photograph of models but just don't know where to start with. As most of us at the beginning, they started to take portraits asking their wife or a family members to pose for them, then, after a little (or big) while both parties can sometimes start to loose interest and the photographer just wants to get into something more challenging: photographing a model.

Taking pictures of a friend, of your wife or of a family member is something easy. It's a person you're going on well with so it's easier to be open and do some crazy things. Meeting and photographing a stranger is something else. For a lot of photographers it can be a really big challenge which can get worse with the time if they don't make the jump and try it.

Hopefully, with the help of the Internet, you can prepare and liaise with models online which makes it easier to arrange a meetup for a photo session.

China and Vietnam are sharing the same lunar calendar and astrology (except for the rabbit which is a cat in Vietnam). The Ox is going to govern this year starting on the 26th of January.

The Vietnamese New Year or Spring Festival, also called Tết, is the most important of our traditional holidays. It's the time for all the family to gather together around lovely food, forget about all the bad things that happened last year and start a new one in a happy atmosphere. It is believed that what ever happen on the beginning of the year is likely to be repeated throughout the year, so everyone tries to be happy, put any anger or bad feeling aside that's why kids are excited as they can do what ever they want (or nearly) without being reproved by their parents. They can also eat a lot of those lovely dried fruits and receive Lì Xì lucky red envelopes containing money, I wish I was a kid again :-P

This year, as every year, the London Chinatown Chinese Association has organized a celebration of the Chinese New Year in Centre London. There were traditional dances, songs, Lion dances etc... From Trafalgar Square to Soho, all the streets were very busy and full of colours.