Month: February 2019

We’ve been cooped up inside since EE’s “Incident” a few weeks back. But with some improvement and a bit of willpower, she decided that a morning visit with Eloise would be therapeutic. And well, who am I to argue with the ‘good doctor’.  So a check on the weather, and it seemed early morning would be still, great light and not too hot.

A couple of kind souls offered the advice when we arrived, “Don’t Hurry.  She’s not here yet”.  And like one of those prophetic statements that just becomes self-fulfilling, it did. While we waited around,  EE sitting quietly on her new ‘mobile’ seat,  didn’t take long to discover some thing that most others  had overlooked.

A family of Spotted Pardalote had nested in the cliff bank, just below the edge, and as there were quite a number of exposed roots offering great perches in the sunshine, the little birds were moving back and forth encouraging their young ones out into the open.

By mid-morning and a reassuring cuppa of Grey of Earl, we pretty much concluded that Eloise was fishing elsewhere this fine morning.

About that time our flickr mate, Derek turned up hoping to try out his new 500mm f/5.6 PF lens, so I had a chance to ooh, and ahhh, and drool just as bit.  Hope he has remarkable success with it, and it does look a great lens to walk about with. EE even tried on the mobile and expressed interest. So there goes my bank balance I’m thinking.  Mind with the shortage of the lenses worldwide, I should have ample time to save up enough bottletops and bits of string by this time next year for her lens. 🙂

New lenses must be in the air, as I’ve taken control of a 70-200 f/4, for a beaut walkabout narrow landscape lens.  It also works a treat on birds, if I can get close enough.  Funny how sometimes equipment just ‘feels’ right.  I’ve only ever had that happen to a few lenses I’ve owned, but the little 70-200 is sweet. Thinks back to when I purchased a 30-100mm Powerzoom for the Nikon 1 system.  I just loved to carry that lens around, but could never get inspired to make great pictures. But  it felt like the Tao just flowed from it.

Mike Johnson of the “Online Photographer” has this to say about Laws of Lenses, if you want a bit of a smile. https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2019/02/mikes-seven-laws-of-lenses.html

Sadly our morning ended without the Lady making an entrance.

So to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was only a small piece of paper, about 75mm square (2 1/2x 2 1/2 inches to be precise).

It was sitting on the bench top, vivid in its whiteness against the dark top.
Next to it sat three small plastic trays. Each contained a clear fluid.

I was given a small pair of metal tongs and told to pick up the paper and place it in the first tray. I did.

It sat on the top of the liquid and surface tension took over and it stayed floating only partially submerged. “Push it under”.  I did.

A clock with big hands started to tick the background.

And.  Nothing much else happened.

And after about a minute as I peered at the wet paper under the orange glow of the ‘safelight’, a faint change began to occur. Light grey blurs began to appear, and slowly they became shapes and the shapes took on form and tone, and eerily out of the white paper a photo of “Blackie” our cat, began to emerge.

After the clock ticked off its time, I transferred, Blackie, with a considerable reverence, into the second and then the third trays.  Several minutes later, “Mind your eyes, ” Dad said, and the room lights were turned on. And there sitting in the dish was indeed a photograph of Blackie. And, more importantly for the moment, one that I had produced.

I was hooked. At around 12 years of age, my life, as they say—changed, and a direction for life was set.  I not only wanted to know, I knew that I wanted to know more about this fascinating process that could make white paper into a real photograph.

It was a contact print from a negative that I’d made some days before.  And, yet, it was,in all its monochrome glory, a Photograph.

I had to know.  And in a small country town, I knew where to look.
The local library.

The journey continues.

Enjoy a great week.

 

(The negative of Blackie the cat is long gone.)
The Header shot is pretty much a direct B+W conversion from colour.  No clever stuff, just Tom and I would spend lots of time working window lighting for effect.

 

Went to a talk the other night by a birding expert, Sean Dooley. One of the things he spoke about resonated with me as I’d just been pondering the way photography has affected my life, even from the time I was a young’un.

He told a tale of how as a a little tacker, he’d been watching and recording birds for a while in his local swamp at Seaford.  One day a bird landed, that was not of the usual residents.  He immediately knew it to be a Glossy Ibis. A bird that only migrated down on occasions and while not rare, was at least unusual for his area.  He explained the excitement he felt, first in finding or seeing the bird, and then in knowing what it was, and in knowing something about it from his studies.  That excitement was what drove him to spend a year long project seeing as many birds in Australia as possible.  He then wrote a book.

Steve Jobs is reputed to have said, after being fired from Apple the first time, “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.”

My current mentor has got me thinking along those same lines.  What is it like to be committed to the photograph, not just the process, but the excitement of making the image.

To becoming a beginner again and being committed to the photograph itself, and in turn not letting the subject down.

There is of course a number of sides to this commitment.
Here’s another.

Being in the field is a profound experience.  It’s what makes bird photography such a noble pursuit. It isn’t just the photography that matters, nor bringing back a technically perfect image. But, rather being out in the field that shapes our souls. To take the time to listen, look, and to see. It’s what makes it difficult and at the same time its such a deep experience.
It’s not about the trophy shot, but about learning to sit and contemplate the beautiful mysteries of life.

Gotta go, I’ve a day in the field ahead. Time to become a beginner again.

When I was a mere broth of a lad, and photography was something my Mum did with the family box camera, there was a radio show on a Sunday Evening on our local radio station.
We didn’t google, facebook, instagram or snapchat. Stange as that may sound, and we didn’t have an endless range of tv programmes to watch, we didn’t even have tv.  We had Radio.

On Sunday Evening “Along the Track” with Crosbie Morrison would take  a young lad on a journey into some form of the natural history.  Interestingly enough, at the height of his popularity, and it was syndicated all over Australia, its been estimated that he had a listener base of 75% of the radios in australia. (how one determines such number crunching, ohhh and ahh, is beyond me. 1/125 of a second at f/16 still amazes me!)

From possums, to crocodiles, blue wrens to electricity generation, we all went along the Track with Morrison and dreamed big bold dreams.

Did his talks bring out the inquisitive, insightful need to know about things in natural history.  Who knows, but I do remember being glued to the radio as he explained about a spider that someone had sent him in a matchbox, or the migratory skill of birds around the world.  David Attenborough is as close as the tv audience of today gets to that. But, and this I think is where radio was so adept. Without the visuals.  We explored it all in the theatre of our mind.

One thing that legacy still holds for me, is an interest in even the most common of creatures.

I was fascinated last evening while working with some wader and sandpipers, of how long, long, long the legs of a Pied Stilt are.  Normally see them knee-deep in water and its  hard to appreciate the length of those long pink legs.
This one graced me by wading out of the shallows and standing on the water’s edge long enough for me to make a frame.

Enjoy