Picture postcard   Some example images

16 August 2007

"Net zero"
You'll recognise the motif from a few weeks back when I was at Mount Rankin near Bathurst.  I used a short tele macro lens which is the sharpest lens I own.  But you wouldn't know it by looking at this picture.  I didn't use a  tripod, and shivering is not conducive to holding steady on a narrow plane of focus.  The shallow depth of field has thrown the busy background into a blur and that helps the image. 

The fragment of ice falling near the upper right border was entirely serendipitous.

1/250th @ f8 & 50mm.

"The lounge people"
An oldie from September 2005.  These people had brought an old tattered lounge to Town Beach to enjoy a balmy Sunday.  I drove past a couple of times thinking "I just have to get a photo of this."  After a couple of laps, then going elsewhere in town, then being inexorably drawn back to this possibility, I plucked up the courage to stop and ask could I take some photos.  They obliged, although the man in the background was very suspicious of my motives.  What?  You can tell? :-) I promised to return the next week with prints - which I did, for a couple of weeks actually - but I've not seen them since.  The bald man offered his tattooed arm for prominence in the picture. Check out the Staffy pup with a flipped open ear - pretending he's paying attention!     1/125th @ f8 & 14mm

Footnote: The power of the Picture Postcard! One of my Port Macquarie subscribers recognised the indigenous man in this photograph and was able to pass on the prints to him.

"Night cruisers"
This is a composite image.  I used an on-camera strobe to freeze the movement of the pelicans.  As always, this provides uninteresting and flat lighting.  Leaving the camera on the tripod, I took another shot by available light  -  the floodlights from the fish co-op to my right.  The floods threw some modelling light and shadow on the pylons.  At home on the computer, I sandwiched the two images together and revealed the best bits of each exposure to deliver the result you see here.  It's a simple Photoshop technique that is but one example of the benefits of digital photography over film. 

1/15th @ f2.8 & 50mm
 

12 February 2009

"Submission"
This week nature and heaven showed us who is in charge as Black Saturday brought Australia its greatest ever natural disaster. Now is the time for action to do whatever we can to help the victims and show the true spirit of our country. Later...reflection, resolve and renewed respect for forces beyond our control.

26 February 2009

"Agriflag"
Imagine the Koori flag, the flag of the indigenous people of Australia. Now replace its three graphic elements with some sky, some cropland, and a circular seed head. This is what you get - Agriflag. I shot the sunflower, backed by its cropmates and sorghum rows at Felton on the Darling Downs near Toowoomba. It owes all of its impact to the fisheye lens and the deliberate composition.

1/250th @ f9.5 & 8mm + off-camera strobe

18 June 2009

"Dooragan Dreaming #2"
On Sunday our camera club had an outing to nearby Crowdy Bay National Park. Arriving early in the morning, I had access to an exposed rock shelf at low tide, and the benefit of a flat sea. This is the view north from near Diamond Head, showing the most prominent landmark on our coast - North Brother Mountain.

To the indigenous owners of this land, the mountain is known as Dooragan, the burial place of the youngest of three brothers who were killed by a witch called Widjirriejuggi. Find out more about this place on Wikipedia.

I used my super-wide-angle lens in a prone position to dramatise the sweep of altocumulus clouds and their reflections in a rock pool. Jutting seaward on the right are Camden Head and Perpendicular Point. Beyond them is Port Macquarie.

1/125th @ f8 & 7mm

25 June 2009

"Maria in the Macintyre"

I Hope this one doesn't get me into trouble with my Ruby Ann! Maybe the years are on my side.

I shot this image of an old (not so old then) flame in the Macintyre River near Inverell. It was taken on 21st March, 1976 with my 35mm Olympus OM-1 with a 200mm lens and Kodak Panatomic X film developed in Microdol-X. The image did OK at the Inverell Show the following year. I have another image, somewhere, of Maria in a white debutante's dress at the ruins of the Newstead Church. A cliche 70's picture. It featured in an issue of Australian Photography magazine that same year.

I photographed this old print, which was processed in Duval College's darkroom at the University of New England, with my current camera and a macro lens. You can see the specular reflections of the artifical light - that I used to illuminate the print - on the stippled surface of the Agfa bromide paper.

I have no idea what the exposure data was! The fine grain film was rated at ISO 32, so I'm guessing the exposure was something like 1/15th @ f8 with a tripod in bright overcast conditions.

23 July 2009

"After Heysen"
The title is inspired by the work of famous German-born Australian artist Hans Heysen (1877-1968). Even as I stood among the trees in the fog at Coolah Tops to make this picture I was reminded of the way Heysen depicted gum trees in many of his watercolours. I used some off-camera flash to bring more life to the image.

Copy sold at 2009 Heritage Building Society Photography Exhibition in Toowoomba.

1/90th @ f4 & 42mm + flash

"Noccundra denizen"
Our first night sleeping under the stars on our latest outback trip was at Noccundra in south west Queensland's channel country. It's famous for its oasis network of waterholes. The next morning, we got up early and went in search of some images. I shot against the light to capture the environment. On the ground I found the carapace of a freshwater turtle. Upon returning home, I photographed the turtle shell under studio conditions and created this composite.

1/250th @ f8 & 200mm + 1/30th @ f9.5 & 50mm macro + 2 flashes

30 July 2009

"Home on the river"
Dad drives the house, Mum does the housework and, as in most families, the kids and the pets have a less taxing life. For something different, I converted this image to B&W and reintroduced elements with warm colours. The treatment reveals small details that tell the story. I like the homely touch of a pot plant garden, and the quaint household chairs for the helmsman and his absent mate.

1/250th @ f4.5 & 200mm

5 August 2009

"Reveal"
As a segue to more traditional PP fare, here's a study for Hanrahan. Rocks and water. Blue...to suit his blue reaction..."Not more bloody rocks and water!" :-)

This patch of smooth, bluish rocks at The Backwash, breaks the pattern of mostly rough, dark grey geology in the area.

1/30th @ f8 & 7mm

" Rush "
Same place and date as "Reveal" and shot handheld at 1/15th second. I've found that I can generally shoot handheld at a shutter speed that is approximately the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens and get a sharp result (In this case, the lens was set to 14mm and the shutter speed was near enough to 1/14th). But I expect my ability to hold the camera that steady will decline as I get older.

1/ 15th @ f 6.7 & 14mm

" Topaz rush "
Same place as "Reveal" and the day after. I used my telephoto zoom on a tripod and a slowish shutter speed to show the rush of water as it would appear to the naked eye.

1/20th @ f9.5 & 88mm

13 August 2009

"Aqualava"
This image may be a repeat from a very early issue of PP. I can't remember... Anyway, most of you will not have seen it before. It's from 2005 - before I saw the light and started to shoot exclusively in RAW format. The silhouette of rocks and water reminded me of a photograph I once saw of lava spewing above the rim of Mt Kilauea in Hawaii.

I positioned myself to place the rising sun behind the rock, thus avoiding lens flares and overexposure.

1/100th @ f13 & 54mm ISO 400

"Johnny Sing's main problem"
What the? Recently, while going through some photos and keepsakes from my younger days, I came across a series of cartoons. So I photographed them for family posterity.

For a year in 1978, I worked as a heavy plant operator at an open cut asbestos :-( mine near Barraba. It was a year off from university studies before I went back to do my honours thesis.

This is the story...

One of the best jobs was driving the grader to clear fallen rocks off the haul roads - to reduce damage to the frighteningly expensive tyres on the heavy Caterpillar 777 dump trucks (Tonka toys). It was one of the best jobs because there was plenty of time to snooze, especially during the night shift. One of our operators, Johnny Sing, used to get really cranky if he was allocated grader duty on the night shift and the rest of us, driving the monster trucks, didn't nurse the 85 ton dumpsters around the corners. Careless driving resulted in lots of ore rocks falling off the trucks onto the haul road. And Johnny's snooze would be constantly interrupted by honking horns - to get the grader up there to clear them away!

Boys being boys, the crankier he got, the more carelessly some men drove. Go figure!

My favourite machines to operate were the bulldozers and graders, because of the complexity of the controls. It was a challenge to operate the multiple levers and hydraulics to simultaneously steer the vehicle and position the blades in three dimensions to achieve a smooth and level cut. But I must admit it was annoying to tidy up a road nicely and then see a truck rumble past and make you do it all again.

I used to draw cartoons like these on the night shift. The signature on the blade says this was drawn on the night of December 1st, 1978. A year later my name was entitled to be followed by the letters B. Sc (Hons). I went back to uni, got my honours degree in zoology and have never done a day's work using that qualification in the 30 years since!

20 August 2009

"Spring Hill"
Andy in the UK will hate this because of the partial saturation! :-) Some kind of paper daisy flowers growing near the summit of Jollynose Hill near Port Macquarie. In the distance is Queens Lake and North Brother Mountain (Dooragan). Wide-angle lens and off camera flash.

1/60th @ f11 & 11mm + flash

"Panorama from Jollynose"
This was made at the same location as "Spring Hill", only looking west instead of south. I added the black cockatoos. They are in fact Red-tailed Black Cockatoos from Wilcannia in NSW. The local species is the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo. The image is a stitched panorama of seven frames.

1/45th @ f5.6 & 50mm + tripod and manual exposure

"I told 'em it's too rough for fishin'"
This Little Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucos) was at Shelly Beach last Sunday. I'd gone there hoping to get some flight shots of passing seabirds to use in future composite images. There were no fly-bys so I concentrated on this little fisheater. Back at home, I picked this image - in which the bird had an interesting expression - and added it to a seascape that I made last year.

The gannets in the background can be imagined to be returning from a fruitless expedition to sea. And our friend the little shag is turning to the camera and giving an "I told 'em so" commentary.

1/500th @ f11 & 800mm ISO 400

27 August 2009

"Silent boards"
The historic shearing shed at Mt Wood Station near Tibooburra no longer feels the clatter of sheeps' hooves. It's now a part of the Sturt National Park. We visited late in the day and spent an enjoyable half hour recording the interior lit by sun coming through a window. Here, I stood on top of the railing between pens to get a semi-abstract view of boards and shadows. The ambience was cathedral-like and this is one of my favourite images ever. If I frame it, I reckon I'll smear lanolin on the timber!

1/30th @ f6.7 & 11mm

"Vegemite Vee Dub"
The Volkswagen sits out the front of artist Peter Browne's gallery at Silverton near Broken Hill. Apparently, Browne used Vegemite as the pigment when he painted caricature emus on the vehicle. That's why I added the Vegemite jar. I also added our friend the magpie (from Tibooburra), some galahs and corellas from the Strzelecki Desert, and an emu from Walgett. The sinister raven in the background is from Newcastle.

It's a fun image that I created as a tribute to the eccentric artist.

1/250th @ f5.6 & 17mm + off camera flash