Temple of the Sun
Another oculus picture from my coastal artist retreat from earlier this month at Ness. Here the rising sun clears the top of an exposed rock.
Looking at a scene refracted through the glass sphere makes it appear both internalised and externalised at the same time ... like I'm both within and without simultaneously ... it does something for me ... something deep.
Do you have a special object or way of of looking that touches you deeply? You know, makes you think of things differently for a moment? That takes you beyond?
Do tell :-)
“It’s dead” said Petra
1. She held out her hand Upon her palm a tiny lizard, a skink A shining dark olive back – thin yellow strip along the sides Iridescent blue-aqua beneath its chin Beautiful “It’s dead” said Petra as she held it aloft by the tail – and it was I looked into its eye and saw right through to the verdant bush beyond The tangled twigs and rocks – a land of nooks and tasty creatures “Most likely where this lizard is now” I thought as I peered through the eyeless window I remembered to breathe – brought myself back The sounds of this world filling my ears as I returned from reverie and soft melancholia Into the light - the present 2. She made a small home for the lizard A little box lined with tissue and care The tiny claws catching still – a feeble anchor it looked like it would dart away in a flash but it already had Discarding this garment long ago a once animate husk Beating and alive
(GD @ Ness May 2012)
Chasing Rainbows
At the end of 2011 I had an exhibition of my work showing with a fellow artist at a local gallery. Part of the deal was that we had to 'sit' the gallery during the weekend opening hours. I took the Saturday shift and also took the opportunity to photographically document the show. I was putting the final touches to shutting up the gallery when I heard a clap of loud thunder and the afternoon sun disappeared. I had ridden my bicycle across town to the gallery and was literally about to step out the door when the heavens opened. You could just make out the car park through the rain and hail ... a little supercell ... after all of fifteen minutes it was past and the sun was shining brightly though the rain still falling lightly. I thought "there's got to be a rainbow following that" and I finished locking up, jumped on my bicycle and set off in the sunshiny rain ... I adore sunshiny rain. I love rainbows. Chasing rainbows? Oh yes, let's go!
Steam was beginning to rise from the freshly washed hot roads. A little way down the street and I could see the forming rainbow and quickly thought of places I could go where there wouldn't be any powerlines or buildings. I headed down to the eastern end of Lake Burley Griffin, the lake that runs through the center of Canberra. It's a ten-minute ride from where I am so I ride quickly ... the rainbow's in full blaze when I arrive at my site. I have pretty much all my photogear in the Chariot bike trailer because I had been documenting the show. I put on my Sigma 10-20mm and could see both ends of the rainbow easily within the frame ... (one of the reasons I wanted such a super-wide lens was so I could see both ends of the rainbow) ... not only that but the reflection of the arc in the water at each end. The small island in foreground is bathed in that brilliant storm-light. This picture won me first prize at this year's Royal Canberra Photographic Competition.
I talk often on this blog about those times when a picture simply seems to assemble itself before my eyes ... this was definitely the case here. It was a beautiful day.
Turning the camera around, I shot the scene behind me with my bicycle and trailer, sun behind the building being constructed, pavement shiny wet.
Do you chase rainbows, or storms or clouds or frosts? Have you ever seen a picture forming 'just over there' and raced to capture it?
The Small Details
It's easy to overlook the small details ... those little things largely unnoticed. Often they're the things I find most rewarding to capture ... the pictures that bring intimacy to an otherwise mundane scene.
12 Minutes with a Super Moon
I am always struck by the saturation quality of moonlight. The colours have a rich and understated vibrancy.
This is a small bay on the far south coast of New South Wales captured using only the light of the moon ... the Super Moon of 6th may 2012 to be exact. The exposure time is 12 minutes @f/9 and you can see there was plenty of light ... and colour! Our eyes simply don't see the colours of moonlight ... they're physically incapable of doing so. In fact seeing by moonlight is perhaps the closest we will ever come to naturally viewing a scene in monochrome. (In brief, it's to do with the rods and cones that lie in our retinas and something I will do a separate post about.) It was close to midnight and although the surf was pounding in on a king tide (presumably to do with the perigee of the moon) with waves reaching to a couple of meters from the tripod ... the long exposure has effectively smoothed everything out.
About the 'Super Moon'
The Moon’s distance from the Earth is not always the same due to the elliptical shape of the orbit and variations in the gravitational attraction between the Moon, Earth and Sun. When a full moon occurs close to the perigee of the Moon (the point of its closest approach to the Earth) we observe a “super moon” phenomenon.There are anywhere from 4 to 6 super moons every year, not all appear as intense or last as long in their 'super' effect. The perigee of the Moon on the 6th of May was the most powerful in years and caused many discussions in scientific circles. There was even a claim circulating that a Super Moon contributed to the 'sinking of Titanic' (wtf!) occurring as it did 100 years after the sinking in April 1912 ... my mind boggles when I reflect that some people believe this!
What about you? Did you see the Super Moon? Did you watch the moonrise or do anything special other than perhaps go outside and look and think 'hey, it does look a little bigger'?
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!
Space and Spirit Both
Faint breeze and sunshine
cricket chirp and flycatcher calls overlay the oceans rhythmic white roar
occasional slap
unexpected silences - an absence
I stare until the scene turns white - sound painting abstracted spikes and swirls
I think of you then, distant
in space and spirit both
yet in that instant - that void
I am connected by more than I know
(Written at Ness 6 May 2012)
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?
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?
Petroleum
Petroleum
windswept leafy autumn chill
fuel that warmed machine's internals
now drained
tanks vapour filled
hollow booming - signage an empty promise
abandoned a day and already unkempt
fenced, dug up and replaced
the land given a new life
and on future warm summer evenings
when myriad people sip and gaze
from fresh balconies
a faint waft of petroleum
hangs sweetly in the air
-May 2012
Our local service station has finally closed. It marks the end of an era for this little suburb. One of the last small servos to go. The bicycle shop - it was handy having one just down the road - closed up months ago. I was on my way back from a family shoot on Sunday and saw that the place had finally closed ... so I stopped and took some photographs. The signage came down yesterday morning. I know all things must change and the world moves on but I was sad to see it go. Soon it will be as though nothing was there. Units will be up in a year. Nothing will remain except the faint waft of petroleum hanging sweetly in the air.
What about you? Do you document the things that change before they change?
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?
Assemble
Sometimes things just assemble themselves. Like this picture... I came across a table at my in-laws place in the countryside and there was an assortment of things on it that the kids had collected and been playing with ... there was this arthropod in a glass of water (I still haven't gotten around to identifying it yet ... it seems to have a lot of segmented legs!) and there was this illustration from a newspaper by the illustrator 'Reg' ... the two objects just seemed made to go together and well, here they are :-)