Sydney Lights
We went to Sydney last weekend. Ostensibly to see the beginning of the Vivid Festival but mostly to get some time away. We stayed in a place on McMahon's Point and the room had a panoramic view of the Harbour (from Luna Park, the Bridge and Opera House, through to the city and the ANZAC Bridge) I'd never seen such a view of the City before and to think this was the hotel room ... we spent a great deal of time in awe of the view and when we got tired of that ... there was always the 2015 Eurovision Final ;-) .
The Sydney Harbour Bridge was framed in thin, linear lights of splendid clarity and we could easily see the light show on the sails of the Sydney Opera House.
Thinking that there must be a million photos taken of the bridge I resolved to make mine a little different and play instead with bokeh Sydney lights. I particularly liked how the bridge is still utterly recognisable even though it's heavily blurred.
Wandering around Circular Quay on the second night was spectacular, particularly as trains were terminating at Wynyard Station and the roads down to the Quay were closed to traffic. It was glorious walking down the center of George Street with no cars. The thousands of other people there seemed to think so as well. Well done Vivid Sydney.
One of the other reasons we went to Sydney was to drop in and see my friend Gretchen's art exhibition at the Art Est Gallery in Leichhardt ... but there's a separate post coming about that :-)
Lime Marmalade: Sunshine in a Jar
One of the advantages of working with folks who enjoy a bit of gardening is the seasonal produce brought into work when there's an overflow in production. Last week, John brought in a big bag of fresh limes ... mmm limes! ... and Lucy promptly took a small bagful and turned them into lime marmalade which she brought samples of into work a couple of days later. I adore lime marmalade ... to me it's like sunshine in a jar. Spread on hot buttered toast ... delicious! Tangy, clear, zesty and not too sweet. Well done Lucy :-)
I took this photo just before I cracked open my jar. I thought, as I was munching on fresh lime marmalade toast, that perhaps I should have included a fresh lime or two in the picture ... oh well, too late for that now I thought soonly thereafter ;-)
And, in case you wish to make your own sunshine in a jar here's the recipe :-)
Ingredients
- 1kg (about 11) Limes
- 2l (8 cups) Cold water
- 1.7kg Caster sugar
Method
- Halve and juice the limes, reserving lime halves. Place the juice in a glass jug. Cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge. Trim the narrow end from each reserved lime half. Place in a large bowl. Cover with warm water. Soak for 6 hours or overnight to soften. Drain.
- Cut each lime half into quarters and thinly slice into 2mm-thick strips. Place the lime strips, lime juice and cold water in a heavy-based saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until rind is tender.
- Add the sugar and cook, stirring, for 10-15 minutes or until the sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium-high. Boil, stirring often, using a metal spoon to remove any scum that rises to the surface, for 45-55 minutes or until marmalade jells when tested (see note). Spoon into sterilised jars. Store in a cool, dry place or the fridge once opened.
Enjoy, I know I am! :-)
Assorted Landscapes
As part of my ongoing efforts to add content to my newly humming website (you have to imagine a happy humming here instead of the slow dirgey throaty song playing previously!) I have added a new gallery of images entitled, rather imaginatively, 'Land'. I would add that although there is indeed a landscape in each and every photograph in this collection I will confess up front to there often being a great deal of sky in them too. Anyways, please enjoy :-)
Website Blues
Oh I've been suffering the website blues ... for some months now (actually pretty much since I launched the new website!) the site has been been performing very poorly. By poorly I mean it took an inordinate amount of time to load and in some cases refused to display anything once it had loaded. I found this having a let's say 'detrimental' effect on my posting rate as I was constantly trying to improve the delivery of content rather than actually creating any! Thank you to all the people who took the time to let me know that they could not access the site and the blog! I mean what's the point of having a photography based website/business if no one can see your work!
I had tried optimising all my images, streamlining the code, caching plugins and even dabbled in some CDN (Content Delivery Network) action but nothing seemed to make it go faster. To cut a long story short I got in touch with the techs at my hosting provider (VentraIP) and asked if they could investigate this for me. They found some incorrect setting in my PHP version which, once corrected, made the delivery hum right along. A few more tweaks including updating the way my site caches content and delivers it has really increased my delivery speeds to a fraction of what they were before. Now that the site appears fully functional I have been inspired to update some of the image galleries and overall appearance parameters to make the site a more streamlined experience. Do please give it a go if you find yourself so inspired and let me know if it's not behaving itself! I will have strong words with it ;-P
Website blues? Not as blue as this Koi I captured at Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney turned out ... but still it's a pretty picture ... so pretty I had it printed up large and it now hangs on my wall. I'm thinking of doing a series of them and getting RedBubble to make some cushions and tote baggy things for sale.
Masked
So we made this little movie ... an arthouse piece in a world that plainly isn't. In the movie, we're wearing masks ... well, in the latter stages we're wearing masks plural seeing as we had only one mask when we began filming and had to share it. It wasn't until I came across a supply of masks in Chapel Street in Melbourne over the final weekend that we were able to appear together both wearing masks. But that's an aside.
It's a strange feeling to be wearing masks in public, on the street, in coffee shops and shopping malls. Noone seemed to think it particularly odd, we didn't get asked to leave anywhere and anywhere people did look a little alarmed we just assured them we were "making a movie" and everything was fine! One thing I did notice though was that when I was masked, people I was flashing a reassuring smile to as they walked past or lingered couldn't actually see said reassuring smile; just some nodding weirdo in a mask.
I did take the opportunity to take some stills as we were shooting but likely nowhere near as many as I perhaps should have :-)
Here's a few.
You can watch the movie here
Hot Baby (Take 2) = much happier baby
Back in December I did a baby photo session of then four-week old Bjørn. That sunny Sunday reached 39°C in the afternoon … and little Bjørn was a hot baby and hot babies tend to be a little cranky. I got loads of lovely pictures of Bjørn but they were largely split into two groups … peacefully asleep or grumpy 
Now, I do know that parents love pictures of their children looking happy and smiley so I undertook to do a second session to capture some of the said happy and smiley pictures. Fast forward through the 4-week blur that is Christmas, travel, new year et al and little Bjørn is not so little now ... well ok he's still pretty little ... just not quite so little ... anyways on with the pictures! :-)
We met up at the Botanic Gardens on a Sunday morning and I foolishly wore a white shirt and as I lay on the damp dewy grass in amongst the wallaby poo ... this became apparent ... this foolishness. My shirt looked as though it bore external witness to a coffee drinking problem ... which is quite untrue ... like really.
Pocket Places: Paths into inner Canberra
Ever shot a poet on a bicycle? No? Well neither had I until week before last. Canberra poet PS Cottier (whom you may remember from this shoot) got in touch with a fun request:
"I just found out that I am having a small chapbook published about
riding the bikepaths of Canberra. It has some autobiographical
elements and is a prose piece in a series called Pocket Places. The
publisher asked if I have a suitable colour photo of myself on my
bike. I said I have some lovely photos with a parasol (and we may
use one from that session) but none of me riding my bike."
So, after a glass of wine at local pub/cafe The Front we set off on a little soiree on the bike paths of the Inner North. Here's a selection from our wander.
The book will be called Paths into inner Canberra, to be published by Ginninderra Press of South Australia. (GP began in Canberra 19 years ago but moved to Port Adelaide in 2008.) It will be part of their new Pocket Places series, and will be available here for the enormous price of $4. It will be about 24 pp in length.
Links
Just because: Butterflies
I was up in Far North Queensland (that's FNQ by the way!) last week with the kids visiting relatives in Cairns and Townsville and I had the opportunity to travel up to Kuranda in the Barron Gorge National Park. It was hot. Barron Gorge NP is part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. It was hot. Whilst there we visited the Butterfly Sanctuary and so here are some pictures of butterflies ... had I been a truly dedicated type I'd have annotated these with their proper species names ... but you can see that I haven't ... perhaps you didn't even notice until I'd pointed it out? Oh well, it was hot* :-)
So, just because ... butterflies :-)
More pictures of the trip to come ... but first you know ... butterflies :-)
Links
*Hot being a comfort index in Cairns of 42.8°C with 75% humidity.
Did I mention it was hot?
Hot Baby
On the same weekend I took photos of actor Raoul Creamer, I also did a baby photo session of four-week old Bjørn. Turned out that Sunday morning was hot and sunny ... it reached 39°C in the afternoon ... and heat tends to make for a hot baby and hot babies tend to be a little cranky. So I got loads of lovely pictures of Bjørn but they were largely split into two groups ... peacefully asleep or grumpy :-)
Here's a selection of the more peaceful ones ... I particularly like the one where he looks like an old-school Soviet Premier ... you'll know the one (it's the not-so-peaceful one) ;-)
I've arranged a further session with Bjørn, who will hopefully bring his happy smiling face along, next week. Parents and relatives do appreciate pictures of happy, smiling children :-)
Feathertalk
I do love feathers. I do love water droplets. The way the drops form tiny spherical lenses when placed upon the hydrophobic barbs on the surface of feather quills. It does something for me, this feathertalk ... it really does. Here are a couple of examples shot on my bathroom window sill ... :-)
In other news I'm busy short-listing for my final show this year. Through a Glass Clearly is a solo show I'm putting on at the Front Gallery here in Canberra opening in mid-September. It will feature retrospective photographs covering just about all of the genres I shoot in ... which, looking through my shortlist ... covers quite a few! ;-)
More new and updates as it progresses.
Shoot: The Second Movement show band
Last week I had the opportunity of taking a few pictures for the The Second Movement show band when they got together for their mid-week rehearsal.
A little history... The Second Movement played in and around Canberra in the late 60’s and early 70’s and were resident band at the Civic Hotel Lounge. The group became resident band at the Deakin Inn when it opened in 1969. The band played at the Deakin Inn up to six nights a week for four years until they retired in 1974.
In 1967 the band signed a recording contract with EMI and recorded two singles, which were released nationally. The singles were produced by Robert Iredale (who was Johnny O’Keefe’s’ record producer at the time). The singles had moderate success and made it into a few top 40 charts.
After a thirty years’ absence the original band (there were some personnel changes in the early seventies) decided to get together for a 30th anniversary party bash at the Southern Cross Club Canberra. Some of the band members hadn’t played in a band since the band retired in 1973. Others no longer lived in Canberra so the logistics of a reunion offered many challenges. However the project went ahead and the night was a huge success. The band enjoyed themselves so much it was decided to continue the band which would make itself available for the occasional booking.
Ostensibly to create a few simple pictures to refresh their website, the session was fun and enjoyable and a lovely bunch of guys the majority of whom have been playing together for more than 40 years! The band member whose house was used as the rehearsal space restores old Jaguar cars ... he had an absolutely gorgeous red E-Type Mk2 that you can see the band posing with in a couple of the photos.
The band did insist in standing outside in the bright noonday sun which caused a little squinty action but the sunshine and blue sky certainly set off their matching blue stage suits! I did manage to convince them to pose together in the back shed where the featured image was shot ... that one's my favourite from this little shoot.
Links
In An Attic of Her Soul
In an attic of her soul
retreated
walls growing close with encroaching gloom
outside clouds blacken low with late twilight hue
shadowed eyes of a mother gaze outward
left behind
inside
while life outside marched on
with passions external
cradling with a stiff arm
the child looking upon with hungry gaze
while she searches and searches and searches
forever waiting
with mannequin's gaze
for signs and signals
of where her love has gone
In An Attic of Her Soul ... a work intended for the 2 Tens & A Tomato show with Marina but didn't make the shortlist ... for this show anyways ... the next one definitely :-)
Saturday's Sunset
Sun's departing rays
day collapses into embers
hot kisses linger
While at the coast on the weekend I witnessed a brief but fiery sunset. I was reminded of a quiet fireplace, embers burning aglow and of how a sunset is like the sun drawing the light of the day back into itself as it departs the sky ... the earth still warm and glowing from it's day-long kiss. An utterly romantic view of course of otherwise straightforward planetary rotation, but I like to indulge the romantic notion of collapsing light and embered skies.It adds a certain beauty to the world and that transition from day into night which we loosely call twilight when it is neither day nor night but a betwixt and between of experience and anticipation ... a time when there's a seeming pause to the world.
And then there's 'hot kisses linger' ... well they do ... don't they? :-)
Saturday's Sunset was captured at Malua Bay on the south coast of New South Wales ... the sky was afire but only for a moment.