On the Inside Looking Out
I've written before about those special moments when a picture reveals itself right before your eyes. Some days when you're ready to take a photograph ... to capture something special a scene can prove elusive ... there are, I believe, times when it's almost as though you have to be 'open' to a photograph's materialisation. By that I refer to perhaps a process or state of mind whereby you as the photographer are open to the image that present itself to you. It's like realising there is an image waiting in front of you or even anticipating an image's appearance ... this one represents one of those moments
Back story: A recent trip to Melbourne, Marina and I had just been to visit the Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Marina had wandered outside and I went to retrieve my camera bag from the cloakroom. As I walked across the foyer of the gallery toward the exit I noticed this young girl outside touching the glass of the water wall with her finger. I quickly reached into my camera bag, grabbed the camera and took a few pictures (before her father came and dragged her away from an anticipated episode of soaking). This one was my favourite... on the inside looking out.
The exhibition at the NGV is spectacular btw ... should you find yourself in Melbourne ;-)
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 :-)
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.
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.
Seaside Pull
standing on land's edge
water draining back to sea
feet sink deeper still
Spent a couple of days with the kids at the south coast this weekend. When I say south coast I mean the south coast of New South Wales ... the Sapphire Coast if you listen to the tourism bods. Canberra you see is a landlocked capital and about 2 hours drive from the coast ... not very far ... and a pleasant drive too. It just seems a long way when you're in Canberra but not very far at all when you're standing with your feet in the waves. It was cold by the way ... it being winter down this way and the water temperature is around 14-15°C ... a bit too cold for swimming but vibrant on the toes! The water was beautifully clear.
These pictures were taken with my phone as I stood watching the kids muck about in the sand and rockpools. I adore that feeling as the water drains from it's sigh up the beach and sluices sandily past your feet ... and ... if you wriggle your feet ... you sink a little ... somehow becoming more fixed to a point within an environment ever-changing ... it's the kind of juxtaposition that does something for me - it really does. A little seaside pull :-)
The Enchantress
From the water she rose
hands like whispering flame
a face in shadow
elsewhere perhaps
ripples spread circles
the enchantment begins
One of a series of pictures from a session in the Adelaide hills last year.
This is also the first time I've posted wholly using android on my new tablet. Lots to get used to but I think it will work :-)
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 :-)
Last of the Summer Rains
It rained last night, a soft gentle rain that collected in heavy droplets and made everything glisten this morning before the clouds moved in again.
I do love water drops ...
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.
a full moon always rises at sunset
moon rises full across a sparkling sea the sun cedes the sky
You want to know something that absolutely fascinates me? Of course you do! You'll need to think about this a bit so let's go ... 'a full moon always rises at sunset' ... think about that for a moment. Have you ever seen the full moon rise at any time other than sunset? You know, like in the middle of the night or in the morning? The answer will be no because it doesn't happen. OK, so far, so good. Now hold that thought and add to the fact that the lunar cycle is fixed ... well OK, let's say regular at 29 and a half days (29.53059 days to be precise). So every 29 and a half days there's another full moon. OK? Now the next bit gets confusing but stay with me and let's quickly recap;
- full moon always at sunset
- full moon occurs every 29.5 days
Alrighty, there's another cycle working here too, the seasons. Every day the days get longer or shorter depending on the season you're in and by 'day' I'm referring to the amount of daylight. So, here in SE Australia the days are growing longer as we march toward Spring. There's a full moon this Thursday (2nd August) and it will rise at sunset even though the day has lengthened. What balance!
There's lots more moonphase related stuff over at Moonconnection.com which is where I lifted the diagram below;
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Courtesy Moonphases.com
Think about it next time you see a full moon rising ... just remember 'a full moon always rises at sunset'.
I'm the type of person who follows the moon and the seasons ... I know where the moon will be (roughly!) at any given time of the day or night depending on where the lunar cycle's up to.
Do you follow the moon? Do you use the sun to tell you which direction you're facing? Do you live above the arctic circle? You can tell me what happens there! Do tell. I'm interested.
Ripples
a pebble dreams of falling
sinking slowly into sleep
ripples spread in silence above
A warm lazy afternoon ... cooler in the shade by the water. A stone thrown into a pond. You hear the 'plop' ... a quick, fluid sound. You look and see the ripples radiating. Think of the pebble then ... as it drifts down to the bottom ... turning perhaps ... a little sideways drift but a certain destination. The air brought down with it bubbles away leaving a sunlit trail of sparkle as it nestles on the bottom amongst a myriad others. While above the ripples spread.
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 :-)
Fade
Fade I had no words today I thought to set words to this image to say what I thought when I created it or it created me ... I never can tell then I realised I remember standing there ... holding the trigger the roar of the ocean the bright dawn light I recall the click of the exposure ending after, I guess, the minutes I asked for that in between I went somewhere to where I do not know but it was peaceful there were no words