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?

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.

One

Round and thin ground - not polished – sheens from within

colour the light grey of clouds that promise but bring no rain

Pale orange flecks spittle across its face

But these come after

My first thought?

That it would go far

skipped across the smooth surface of a dam or creek

maybe to the other side

maybe to be held again

maybe

The Other

A rough kite shape, smaller

Quartz intrusion speaking of a violent past

struck by the cross formed

I don’t believe in the crucifix

But I believe in space and time intersecting

A singularity we call the present

Both

Seen amongst millions

Pondered, chosen

Carried up from the sea and

Placed atop a wooden table,

Talked about - discussed and played with

Then one forms a circle around the other

Yes, that works

They’re together again

Found stones

(Ness, May 2011)

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'?

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 :-)

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!

(Written at Ness 6 May 2012)

Fresh salt tang scents the delicious white noise of surf on rock - 
irregular boom and thump
unexpected quiet - pauses
Never turn your back on the Sea
She is inexorable and quick
faster than you think
Slams, knocks and pulls
Cold!
A short bubbled tumble before you're pressed into the polished rocks
then
fade into icy blackness 

I wake from this, standing - face tinted orange with the day's new light

Dawn feels like days ago and I'm wearing potential's golden glow
The world looks different from here
huge and at once tiny
My effect on it? The same.

(Written at Ness, May 2012)

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?

My sincere apologies if this change means you temporarily lose me – I'm sure we'll find each other again!

I think it's a step in the right direction don't you?

Sincerely,

Geoffrey

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