Barriers: Skull with water drops - Series One
He's back on the drops again! This time in experimentation for a show coming up in November with my artistic collaborator Marina Talevksi. The show is to be called Barriers: break or break through and features a skull or representations of a skull or many skulls or many representations of the same skull ... we haven't quite decided yet ;-)
Barriers will be our second formal exhibition together after 2 Tens & A Tomato in 2014. Suffice to say that the show features skulls and in preparation for this I experimented on the weekend with some waterdrop refraction images featuring a skull... trying to get an image of a skull to refract in a water drop. It was tricky but I'm rather pleased with these initial results. You can check out my other forays into drop refraction photography in my WaterPlay gallery :-)
Through a Glass Clearly
There’s a moment when you notice something. Something that catches and teases. It may be the curve of a tree or the lightness of a feather drifting on a warm spring breeze ... unseen but for its effect upon the small things. Mostly for me it’s about the light. The way light plays with the things around us and renders them beautiful or dramatic ... the darkness of shadows and that gradient between glow and gloom. Sometimes it’s about trying to capture and entire world inside something much smaller ... concentrating it ... refracting it back at myself through the transience of a water droplet or a glass sphere.
It is as much about the journey of a photograph. A sinuous chasing down of the beauty you saw that very first time, the tender play and rendering of a picture until a certain essence is revealed ... a little something of what was seen made manifest and shared.
That’s what these pictures are. They’re little fragments of time and space collected and coalesced and placed on walls ... distilled results of the myriad journeys undertaken to create them.
In these I hope to show you just a little something of the thing I saw.
The collection of images on show.
About the Title
Through a Glass, Clearly is a collection of four short stories written by Isaac Asimov and first published in 1967. One story in particular: It’s Such A Beautiful Day, is set in the year 2117 and presents District A-3, a newly built suburb of San Francisco, and the world's first community to be built entirely using Doors, a method of travel via teleportation.
When the Door that transfers him from home to school fails, Richard "Dickie" Hanshaw takes a dislike to the method and starts to wander outside in the unfamiliar open, exposed to the elements. When he catches a cold, Mrs. Hanshaw is horrified and takes him to see Dr. Sloane, a psychiatrist, afraid that her son's wanderings are signs of a mental abnormality...
Geoffrey Dunn is a multi-award winning and internationally published photographer. He is entirely self-taught. Through a Glass Clearly is his third and final solo exhibition for 2014. The title of the show is also a reference to the act of capturing light with a camera ... through a glass clearly...
The details...
- What: Through a Glass Clearly - New photographic works by Geoffrey Dunn
- Where: The Front Gallery - Wattle Street, Lyneham, Canberra
- Duration: 17-29 September 2014
- Opening: 6pm Friday 19th September 2014
Links
- MEDIA RELEASE Geoffrey Dunn - Through a Glass Clearly
- Show postcards: Front and Back
- The Front Cafe & Gallery
- My printer - Stephen Best of Macquarie Editions
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.
Searching
I tried hard to take a picture this morning. The day was glorious ... one of those Canberra winter days where the air is still, there's not a cloud in the sky and the warmth of the sun balances the chill in the air. I love days like these. I wanted to take a photo (it does happen sometimes!) and so I packed my light camera bag with a couple of lenses and headed out on into the late morning on my bicycle. I'd heard there was a car concourse over on the lawns of Old Parliament House to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Leyland P-76 ... not that I'ver ever owned one or even aspired to ... my first car was an automatic Triumph 2000 MkII and being manufactured largely by Leyland replete with apalling quality control and ridiculously dodgy wiring I always felt a kind of sympathy for these ... they were known as lemons and I recall a house in my suburb when I was growing up that had six of these cars in various states of decay on the front lawn. My Triumph or 'Tilley' as I called her was my first venture into the world of seventies British automotive engineering ... I ended up trading her for beaten up but gorgeous brass body Canon New F-1 camera and a couple of lenses (did I ever mention I have a lens habit?) ... I miss that car, it's smell and the way it lurched underpowered into corners but I think I got the better deal ... after all I still have that camera and it still works as well as the day I received it.
There are some times I'm simply not interested in taking photos and wandering around the concourse this morning was one of those times. There were many gorgeous colours ... repetition of theme ... curly cables ... eccentric characters but it was all Meh! I had a bag of excellent photographic gear and I watched other people taking snapshots and with various cameras and mine stayed in my bag and I just lugged it around for the fun of it. It was funny I thought ... I'd come here with the express notion of taking some photos ... and now I'm here I find none of it inspiring ... at all ... so I simply sniffed the engines, remember my Tilley and get back on my bike and ride toward home. On the way I pass a bit of decay ... the old Police & Citizens Youth Club ... closed for years now ... and see a little something ... it's a busted fan set into a brick wall but it appeals to me ... the first thing today. Not enough to be arsed taking my camera out mind you but enough to snap it hastily with my phone to remind me to go back and take it properly... I continued on my searching way...
So I keep on riding toward home and I come through Haig Park in Turner ... a long avenue of trees ... I used to live in a house (now long redeveloped) directly opposite the western end of the park ... and I see the light. Here's where I'm supposed to be ... there's the photo I'm looking for ... I roll my eyes ... at least I got some exercise riding across the lake first up :-)
I had my oculus with me and it captured the scene perfectly ... it's spherical fashion refracting the vista into it's tidy and tiny world.
And ... just because I like you lots I took a picture of the setup ... I found a small fallen branch and stuck it into the soil to create something to rest the oculus upon ... that's bushcraft that is ... lol :-)
And how about you? Do you ever grab your gear and go for a walk and leave the camera in your bag ... or take absolutely nothing except exercise?
Playing with flowers
I thought the other day 'it's been a while since I played with flowers' (as you do) and so I bought myself a bunch of my favourites ... gerberas. They're a member of the sunflower family Asteracae ... daisies really. There's something about them that does it for me ... they have myriad facets, they have symmetry and a range of colours ... they're as fun from beneath as they are beautiful on top. Put a water drop on them and there's fun and beauty for all. Here's a selection:
Do you have a favourite flower? Or a favourite thing to take pictures of? Or even just a favourite thing?
Do tell :-)
Back on The Drops Again
I'm back on the drops again.
Anyone who has followed my photography for a time will know how much I love to play with water ... I love how it plays with light ... how under the right circumstances it becomes a lens, refracting and playing and changing the world we see into something other ... something imaginative. Today I'm talking drop photography. Taking pictures of water is something I work hard at ... well perhaps work isn't the right term because I enjoy the process and the journey. There's the setup, which can get fiddly (not to mention wet!), getting the drips just right at a frequency which allows the drops to be singular and not interfere with one another. There's the choice of backdrop ... that's the image or pattern you want refracted (remember it will be upside down!). The distance between the backdrop and the drop itself determines how large the pattern will appear in the drop. Too far away and elements of your kitchen begin to appear in your drops ;-)
Below is a behind the scenes shot of the setup I used to take these ones ... I even labelled it!
See, you can do this at home in your kitchen!
Using this stripy back drop provides refractions like these...
I'm going to print some of these.
Changing the backdrop to a spotty one produces refractions like these
As I said it's fiddfly and there's lots of variables but it just takes some practice and a reasonable sense of timing little luck ... ok and the ability to live with a lot of empty frames ... oh and I used the fork in front of the backdrop to focus by holding it in the drop stream and focussing on it ... the fork mis good also because you get a feel for the way the drops are falling vertically or slightly off and can vary the focus accordingly.
Next time I set this up I might even do a little video if anyone's interested? Do tell :-)
Poised
as I ride the wave
the rush and churn of new over old
I am still.
centered and reflecting a blue sky
I love gerberas.
Suspense
My colour - your colour blending unseen against solidity As pattern is introduced My being warps it Becomes visible Clearly refracting seen only as a distortion of your regularity bending the very rays and become visible against them perfect imperfection reveals a passing lens I remember falling past you on my way to a fluidic oblivion caught the relic of a splash I made when I was someone else
Water and the refraction of light are common themes in my work. I remember being in primary school and realising that things were visible only if they shone with their own light or reflected light into my eyes. I had this little mirror I used to take to school and I would play games with it like positioning it in the grass on the oval at just the right angle so that it effectively disappeared. I would then spin around or close my eyes for a time, and proceed to look for it ... could I pick out the tiny replication that signalled where the reflection was? That moment of suspense when I thought that perhaps, this time I had actually lost the mirror... upon reflection (no pun intended) I was maybe a little odd as a child. Not that much has changed, I was in love with light even then.
When did you realise you were in love with light? Was there a moment when you really noticed it ... noticed it or simply became aware of it? Do tell :-)
Let Me Count the Ways
As you may have guessed by now I'm in love with refraction ... the bending of light through water or glass. This picture is one from a couple of years ago when I was right into refracting patterns through droplets of water. My setup for these consisted of a sheet of glass suspended above the pattern, in this case a frangipani blossom, with droplets placed onto the glass. I adjusted the height of the glass until the pattern was contained within the drop. I particularly liked blurring the background so that it gave the viewer the knowledge that the drop was refracting something much larger behind it. This picture, Let Me Count the Ways, represents the culmination of those efforts and attempts (and failures!) to create something ... an idea ... an essence.
On another note: I'm going away on a family holiday for a week or so and am leaving the internet behind. I won't be visiting your beautiful blogs in that time but I promise to look when I return.
Geoffrey x
Turning the World Upside Down
I carry a beautiful thing around in my camera bag. An oculus. It's a clear glass sphere and it changes the way I look at the world. It doesn't look amazing on it's own ... in fact it can appear quite dull but sometimes I hold it up in front my face and it takes my breath away. Through the properties of refraction, it renders any scene into a tiny world ... a tiny, totally in-focus world. An upside-down, totally in focus world. In the image above taken just after dawn on the far south coast of New South Wales, I rested the sphere atop a rock looking out toward the waves. The fine bedding of the Ordovician mudstones of this part of the coast have been buckled and twisted and rent vertically in places. I brought the sphere (and it's refractive contents) into focus and rendered the background blurred. It looks great right way up but I like to rotate my oculus images through 180 degrees to aid the viewer's appreciation of the scene. The little sun flare off the edge of the sphere is one of my favourite parts of the image.
In the image below, I'm holding the sphere with my left hand and shooting with my right. It was taken in coastal forest. This image reminds me that the world is a fragile place and one that we literally hold in our hands as a place to nourish and feed ourselves.
I'm fascinated with different ways of looking at ordinary things. Refraction and refraction images are just two.
What about you? Do you carry anything special in your bag? Something that turns your world upside-down or causes you to look at the world in a different way?