It's christmas time, and you know that that means. Christmas lights! I'd taken pictures of them around San Jose a couple of times, I'd looked at and enjoyed the lights around Jersey while I was selling my car, I'd looked at lights all over manhattan, but now it was time for some lights in australia. The Courier Mail runs a christmas lights contest every year, and of course, it often ends up being the usual suspects, but that didn't stop us from going to have a look. This year we also went out to Pine Rivers, to see some we'd never seen before.

The australian lights differed a lot more, partly out of an emphasis on colour, but also I think because there's no walmart. It's pretty easy to decorate when you can go and buy piles of fairy lights from walmart for a couple of dollars a throw, but I think there was also a lot more contstruction. A lot less of the moving deer from Home Depot, and a lot more of the blokes making great big things in the back yard, and then attaching coloured lights to it.

One thing that was fun tonight was that both Helen and I were wandering around with SLRs, tripods, cable releases, and also two mini digicams. People were amazingly polite and helpful, not even a hint of annoyance at us being in their way, which is what concerned us the most.

A whole stree of lights	Trees, skiing santas	People admiring the lights	Patterns from lightrope
Santa skiing	Aussie redneck santa	Everybody loves christmas lights!	Little girls like spinning lights