Photography, if you’ll pardon the pun, has been the lens through which I’ve explored the world around me.
From the very first photo attempts with Mum’s Box-camera, “Keep the sun over your left shoulder, Dear!”, through a Kodak Star camera as a present, to graduating to a the Magic Carpet of a Super-Balda 120 roll film adjustable camera, the visual journey has always inspired the enthusiasm, imagination and dedication of making remarkable images of everyday things and events.
Those first ‘photos’ of Blackie the cat, asleep, in the sunshine, on the porch, to the blurry shots of a “Red Rattler (train) passing under the footbridge at Hampton railway station, may not have passed on down through the tunnel of time, but each press of the shutter today, still carries the memories of those early moments.
Photos have always been part of my life. The National Geographic Magazine, stacked year by year ready to fill in a rainy day on the couch, later, Life Magazine at the local library on the way home from school, and I’ve mentioned before the special librarian who must have had a fascination in Photo-folio books that let me explore how others saw the world around them.
And on reflection, (another photo pun!) each press of the shutter, like a tiny drop of water shimmering on a leaf, opens up new vistas of exploration. David Malouf said it this way.
… in dreams that blow in from out there bearing the fragrance of islands we have not yet sighted in our waking hours, as in voyaging sometimes the first blossoming branches of our next landfall come bumping against the keel, even in the dark, whole days before the real land rises to meet us.
– David Malouf, An Imaginary Life
We don’t get Sooty Oystercatcher on our beach zones as regular visitors. Their Pied cousins while not regular are among some of the usual visitors.
So its always pretty exciting to spot a Sooty along the beach. Unfortunatey they are quite human adverse and will fly further down the beach or wade out on low tide to the safety of rocks far to far away for photography.
This one chose a halfway point, and I tentatively tippy-toed around the small shallow pools in the low tide sand to get the chance to isolate the bird against the water. Fortunately it stayed.
There is dear reader no connection. that I’m aware of, between the black of the Sooty’s feathers, and Blackie the cat.
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER doesn't mean I'm LOST 