Perfume
Finding the Spot
A couple of weeks ago I attended an artists retreat down on the far south coast of New South Wales. I had my oculus, my glass sphere with me and I was down at the beach before dawn each morning looking for that time when light and landscape come together to create something breathtaking.
Sometimes a picture seems to assemble itself before my eyes. I get this feeling as a scene unfolds, like a premonition, that right this moment or very soon after something beautiful is happening in front of me or 'just over there'. Perhaps it is simply my mind opening itself to the possibility of beauty ... that I am allowing myself to be open to what is unfolding in front of me. Other times I can be surrounded by a terrific scene and light but I'm oblivious to it as I search for something within it ... something beyond it. Those times I'm looking to scratch an itch I can't reach ... I know there's something there but I can't see it ... yet! This picture is a rare one of me doing just that.
This is a picture of me taken by my friend Helga as I walked across the wave platform in the light just after dawn holding my oculus out in front of looking for the spot ... in my left hand I'm cradling my camera and my back pocket holds my cable release and intervalometer. I have an obsessive gleam in my eye that speaks of concentration and an early start. I am surrounded by superb golden dawnlight that the ocean spray is carrying in foggy curtains around me ... beautiful!
About five minutes after this picture was taken I was taking the photograph below (which blogged about here) ... I had found the spot ... I had seen beyond and now I'm sharing it with you.
How about you? Do you search, often surrounded by beauty but oblivious to it? Maybe you find yourself standing inside a tree heavy with spring blossom and buzzing loudly with bees looking for that bloom that speaks for the tree ... that speaks for all of spring? The leaf that speaks for Autumn... do you find yourself finding the spot?
I'd like to know :-)
The Beauty of Film
I recently attended an artists retreat with some lovely people. There were photographers, sculptors, painters, poets and writers and some great cooks amongst them! We spent three nights at an old house on the far south coast of New South Wales. It's there that many of the photographs featured in recent posts were taken. When I get around to it I'll even publish them all in the same place when I can get my head around all the great things that went on there.
For this post though I wanted to talk about the beauty of film. I took two cameras to the retreat; my Nikon digital and my Mamiya medium format camera. I got the medium format negatives and scans back from the lab this week. When I first started out in photography there was none of this digital business. I learned to develop my own negatives and darkroom techniques for turning those negatives into photographic prints ... the smell of acetic acid still holds a dear place in my heart as does the smell of a freshly opened pack of film. It's a wonderfully analog process - layers of light sensitive emulsions on a clear base change chemically when exposed to light. I like to think that my post-processing of my digital pictures for the most part mimics what I could do in the darkroom albeit on a much compressed time scale. I rarely manipulate my images much beyond tonal controls and cropping anyways. While I have embraced the digital revolution and all the whizzbangery it offers the modern photographer ... there's something about shooting film (apart from its smell).
The saturation and dynamic range surpasses that of my digital camera (a D80) and the rendering of detail is a wonderful thing to look at. In the photo of friend Greer presented above I had a roll of (very out of date) Fujichrome NPC160 film ... we're talking EXP:2007(!) which was given to me by another friend who'd had the film in his fridge since then. The negs came back beautifully. I took a similar shot with the Nikon but it doesn't have anywhere near the presence that this one has. Another consequence of shooting film is how much you value each frame. I get between 12-15 frames from a roll of medium format. I have to remind myself that it's both not very many and ample! That and how spoiled I have become with auto-focus, adjustable ISO and instant preview. When shooting 35mm I still find myself instantly checking the back of the camera to see how the shot came out ;-)
How about you? Are you purely digital? Did you transition from film to digital or have you only ever known digital? Have you returned to the beauty of film or picked it up anew? I'm interested in this ... do tell!
The Monaro Plains
THE MONARO PLAINS - Anthony Lawrence (May 2012) Wooden crosses a vanishing point wired for talk a watercolour bleed of low clouds, windbroken pines a charcoal rubbing of lost connections ~ you are here passing through uncoupled is a state of rhyme what the eye reveals the mouth extends in clipped syllables depth of field a black rain squall of starlings on a hill Words: Anthony Lawrence (Used with author's permission) Picture: Geoffrey Dunn
I love light - I really do
I love light - I really do ... especially in Autumn as the leaves turn and the light takes on a crisper feel. I love that moment each year when you step outside and realise that the light has changed ... that it's now striking at a different angle, it's quality altered ... that the season has moved on - even if you haven't. Soon that crispness in the air will become deeper bone-chilling cold and the light will become weaker yet somehow clearer. In south-eastern Australia we have four definite seasons though the local indigenous peoples recognised six. They were a little more in tune with their natural world than I think we are.
Here in Australia, we have amazing light. Light that illuminates with a clarity and intensity I've seen in very few other places ... South Africa is one. They have the endless sky too.
What about you? What is the light like where you live?
Motionless
Sometimes, when I feel like I'm not going anywhere ... not being creative ... that I'm somehow fixed in a defined space, I remember the first time I lay on the ground as a child and imagined the world turning. How as it spun about its axis or hurtled through space I had to dig a little deeper with my fingers to stop from flying off ... that crazy tilting cartwheel feeling. I remember then that stillness is an illusion, that we are never motionless ... never perfectly still ... that we are all moving even if it's a slow drift on an unseen tide.
AfterDARK at the Gardens
On Saturday evening I went along with the family to a special members event at the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG). The rainforest gully walk has been kitted out with low wattage LED lighting funded by the 'Friends of the Botanic Gardens' and Saturday night was the first time they were showing it off. There were deleicious canapes and a glass of wine at the Visitors Centre before we were split into small groups of ten or twelve. Wind-up torches were handed out by our guides and, dressed warmly, we set off.
Being a regular visitor to the Gardens I was loving being in there at night. Familiar paths and trees took on new life as they illuminated only by our torch beams. Our guide Marion took us on a walk through the eucalypts before we entered the rainforest gully .
Wow!
The place was literally transformed. The mist jets which keep the gully moist and assist in maintaining an ambient temperature above freezing came on periodically and it was like walking through cloud ... really thick cloud. Lights have been set into both sides of the boardwalk so you know where the path goes and coloured lights have been placed in the garden beds as well. I had brought my tripod and camera with me ... I decided on a single lens for the night: my Nikkor 20mm f/2.8D ... a little jewel of a lens. I wanted something quite fast and wide and my tripod enabled the longer exposures you see here.
The display looked fantastic and hats off to the 'Friends' program who both envisaged and funded the lighting program through subscription and donation.
There are plans to make this a regular event called the AfterDARK Firefly Tour begins officially in June. I suggest you get yourself along for a unique experience.
When: Sat 2 June I Sat 7 July I Sat 4 Aug
Time: 6pm and 7pm Tours
Cost: $19 adults; $14 concession (+booking fee) | Bookings essential 6250 9540 | Online bookings available from 8th May
This post has also been blogged over at The RiotACT
Canberra in Autumn
This is what happens when you put your fisheye on the ground looking up and carefully balance a circular polarising filter (that's too small for the lens) on top. Taken in the grounds of the Australian National University down near Sullivan's Creek. Astute viewers will score a bonus Telstrayama (the telecommunications tower atop Black Mountain in the center of Canberra) at the the three o'clock position.
Yes, the sky really is that blue in Canberra in Autumn and Spring ... they would both have to be my most favourite seasons.
Tell me, what's your favourite season?
Shores of a methane sea
Imagine standing on a planet much colder than this one is now and looking out over a sea of liquid methane ...
Shores of a Methane Sea ... the crunch of crystalline accretions under your boot
... the way the liquid moves and sighs - not like water
but thinner and with crackle...
About the picture: playing around with the B+W ND110E 10 stop neutral density filter.
'The Hotel' by Rudi de Jong
Picked this up in town from Rudi ...who wanders the town centres with photocopies of his work. I quite like them and happy to give him some exposure. I'll get a portrait of him one day and post that too...
'The Hotel' by Rudi de Jong
The oasis
the home away from home
old friends
the beer flowing freely
the publican
the weary pilgrim
music from the juke-box
the visitor
the cry
"Drinks on the house for everyone"
everyone filled with joy
troubles forgotten
problems solved
the beer glass raised high
the final word
Christ himself
a friend of publicans
and sinners
the Hotel
'The Hotel' by Rudi de Jong (20/3/2012)
Picked this up in town from Rudi ...who wanders the town centres with photocopies of his work. I quite like them and happy to give him some exposure. I'll get a portrait of him one day and post that too...
My image went viral on Pinterest (and I didn't know)
I was going through my Google+ stream earlier tonight and came across a reshare of this image ... only it wasn't reshared from me but from someone else! Cranky! Theft! Piracy!
I contacted both my contact who had shared it to me and the original person who had it in their stream with no attribution. They got back really quickly and apologised meaning no harm and promptly removed it as I requested ... it still had my old 'Lushpup Images' watermark on the bottom left of the picture! I asked where they found it and they said #pinterest and sent me the URL (they really were quite helpful and I became less cranky). Sure enough there was my image with the watermark ... no attribution. What caught my eye was the list of 200+ reblogs listed on that page. When I did a Google Image search for the picture I was returned 15 pages of exact matches from all blogs and sites all over the world ... I stopped looking after that.
Interestingly, downloading a copy of the image from a number of sites to my machine (coming home in a way) the Author metadata still listed Lushpup Images as author and copyright holder ... not that anyone looked at it ;-)
Now, in the rare times I go searching for my own images using Image Search I come across one or two sites. I send them an email and in 99% of cases we resolve it through removal or attribution. In this case, where the image has clearly gone viral, what to do? I have heard that Pinterest throws copyright and intellectual property pretty much out the window by leaving it up to the individual account holder...
My image went viral on Pinterest (and I didn't know) ... What would you do?
Melbourne across the Yarra - Tiny Planet
I learned how to do a 'Tiny Planet' image from an existing panorama last night. This was taken last year in lovely Melbourne. Shot from the south bank, it's a view of Melbourne across the Yarra River. A 5-shot panorama stitched together in Photoshop before being 'planeted'.
The tutorial I followed was this one published by www.photoguides.net and it was ridiculously simple to produce something gorgeous.
Go and give it a go and be sure to let us know how you got on :-)
Add EXIF data to your scanned images
OK ... so you've been out taking pictures with film. You've got the film developed and most likely had the negatives scanned so you can add the images to your digital library.
Perhaps you like to use keywords to index or sort your library. Maybe you like to see only those photos taken with a particular model camera ... like your film camera? Digital cameras record information about the image captured in the form of a series of EXIF tags (Camera, Lens, Aperture, Exposure etc). It's these tags that applications like Picasa, Lightroom and Aperture read when importing your images. Scanners apply EXIF data to the images resulting from scans. Film cameras do not (with some rare exceptions) record EXIF data so you'll need to create it. So here you are, seeking to add EXIF data to your scanned images.
Since Adobe’s Lightroom and most of the other tools that I use are geared towards DSLRs, I have felt the need to add as much EXIF data to my scanned images as possible. The more photos I add to Lightroom, the more important Smart Collections are getting to me and the less I want to rely on keywords. Things become even more complicated when I started using more than one film camera and wanted to use the standard ways to sort my photos by camera. Besides, I have this blog and display my photos online, my visitors want to inspect the EXIF data to get a feel for how I arrived at a particular exposure.
If you have googled how to update EXIF data in an image and you have landed here ... you have probably also come across the ExifTool by Phil Harvey. This tool can do everything and more, but in the end it is a Perl script with a command line interface. What was needed was a graphical user interface to the ExifTool and Bogdan Hrastnik has stepped up and developed the ExifToolGUI Windows tool for which you can find all information here. Strongly recommended!
After a little bit of time spent in the 'Newbie' stream of the ExifToolGUI forums I worked out how to alter the EXIF data of my scanned film images to reflect the Camera and Lens used to capture the image. Voila! Best of all I can modify the files as a batch. Since my images were already in Lightroom, I selected the images in the Library view, right-clicked them and selected 'Metadata > Read metadata from files' to refresh the image tags reported within the library.
Were you interested in science at school?
Were you interested in science at school? I was!
Recently I was asked by a friend on Google+ if I would mind if her son (in Year 7) could interview me as part of a school science project. The project involved speaking with with someone working in science. I was chuffed to be asked and I received a sheet of 12 questions. I had fun putting the answers together and I thought I might share them.
1. What is the best thing about your job and why?
The best thing about my job is that I get to colour in. OK, there’s the cool technology and the high-end computing gear and the conversations with bright people who really understand their scientific specialities. That and the thought that you’re doing something useful and in a way that will be helpful to the people that come after you.
2. When and how did you become interested in science?
I think I’ve always liked science. I have always been interested in the way things work but as I got older I became more interested in the way things work together … the relationships things (and people!) have with each other … the way they interact.
3. Were you interested in science at school?
I was! I was very lucky to have teachers* who were not only interested in science but helped to teach me to think scientifically. I learned that science is not a thing you learn, a subject for memory but a way that you learn … a method if you like. Sure, we did simple experiments at school but most importantly it taught us how to think. You asked if I attended a private school? I did not … public education all the way.
4. Have you won any awards for being a scientist & if so what were they?
Not for the science or research. I have won awards for the contributions my team’s work has made to much larger projects. A lot of what I do is create block for other people to place together to create something else.
5. What qualifications did you need for your job?
I required university qualifications in natural sciences and many years of information technology experience to do well in my job. I have a Bachelor of Science from the Australian National University. Another important part of my work is explaining to others what my area does and I’m a skilled communicator.
6. What is computer mapping and remote sensing?
Gosh … how long have we got?
Computer mapping (or GIS (Geographic Information Systems)) is making database recording not only what something is (tree, light pole, drain, road, house etc) but where it is in relation to something else (on top of, next to, 100m away from, north of etc). Measuring the where of the object and how it relates to the where (or spatial location) of another object is very time-consuming and fiddly. Computers (and GPS (Geographic Positioning Systems)) enable us to make those calculations very quickly and so representing & mapping those relationships becomes much easier.
Remote sensing refers to measuring the nature or properties of something from a distance rather than directly. There are many remote sensing platforms and sensors … some slung beneath aircraft or helicopters or mounted on satellites. These sensors measure all sorts of things; light, reflectivity, radiation, magnetics. The information they collect is filtered and processed and then overlaid over data and information to again look at the relationship between things. Not only the relationships but, perhaps more importantly how the things measured change over time.
7. What type of discoveries have you made?
I haven’t made any discoveries per se. I have helped to document and report relationships between ecosystems and natural resources (eg forests and water and salinity)
8. Are you passionate about your work or is it just a job?
That changes. Mostly I’m passionate about it … I do care about the quality of the work I do and ensuring that it’s useful to others to include in their work. Other times the repetitive nature of science based work (using the same tried and true technique over and over again to ensure consistent results – there is a lot of that in science-based work!) seems a drag and it becomes a job. That said, I believe what I do is important and makes a contribution.
9. Why does this type of science interest you?
I think I mentioned colouring in. The natural world is everywhere and we really don’t understand it … sure, we get bits and pieces of it and there are lots of people studying separate pieces of it very intensely but overall we don’t know how and why it does what it does. That we don’t know is what interests me.
10. Do you do experiments as well or do you just do research?
Not experiments in the ‘test-tube’ sense but we do put forward hypothesis, develop methods, test them, analyse results and then report them … so I guess we do 
. Research? Always researching.
11. Have you done other types of science before?
No, not really … it’s all kinda scientific. I just want to say again what I said earlier … that science is not something to be learned but much more a way of thinking.
12. What do you want to achieve in your career?
It’s not a career more than a lifelong journey of discovery and (hopefully) understanding what goes on around me.
*thank you to teachers Lavers, Quodling, MacFarlane, Roxby, Scown, & Roseby :-)
Links:
Australian Science Communicators
Questacon - The National Science & Technology Centre