Gallery Pick of the Week
Instead of just showing pretty pictures only, here we have space for contributors to discuss their images every week.
This is a great opportunity to get some insight from the original photographer and the content is entirely open. It could be anything from the personal feeling of the photographer about the image to any photographic techniques or location knowledge he/she would like to share with our visitors.
Gallery Pick of the Week > August 2008
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Mungo National Park, 30/8/08, Monica O'Connor Mystical and ancient, full of Aboriginal culture, Mungo National Park is an anthropological and archaeological site. it is the oldest ceremonial burial site in the world... |
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Rain, Hail or Shine, 22/8/08, Gary Chapman 5:15 a.m. and I gently slide out of bed. |
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The Perfect Storm, 15/8/08, Zoe Davis This was one of those moments when you knew you were witnessing something special and one was in awe of the magnificence of Mother Nature... |
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Photographing Landmarks, 8/8/08, David Bruce When it comes to shooting a location that has been well documented by many other photographers, there are two challenges... |
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Noccundra Startrail, 1/8/08, Barbara Bryan What is this photo showing? - You may well ask! Not many people realise that these circular lines are the trails of stars in the night sky... |
Monica O'Connor - Mungo National Park, 30/8/08
Mystical and ancient, full of Aboriginal culture, Mungo National Park is an anthropological and archaeological site. it is the oldest ceremonial burial site in the world.
Human occupation of the area began about 50,000-60,000 years ago. The region was often a vast lake, the waters rising and ebbing according to climatic change. Marine life was abundant and mega fauna roamed the land.
Over the centuries wind storms swept sand up from the lake floor, depositing it on the shoreline. The eroded walls of the ancient lake formed what is now known as the Wall of China, a lunette about 35kms in length, and 30 metres high in parts.
About 14,000 years ago the lake dried up. Wind and water sculpted the sand and clay dunes into weird formations. As the lunette eroded, fossils and remains were revealed.
From the 1850's thousands of sheep grazed the land. This resulted in extensive erosion. A variety of birds,kangaroos, small mammals and reptiles exist in this harsh and fragile environment.
Wind and water are continually sculpting the sand and clay formations. They change colour from brown during the day, to yellow, orange and reds at sunset.
The silence, relentless heat in summer,the clear starry nights and the eerie landscape make it an unforgettable experience.
Gary Chapman - Rain, Hail or Shine, 22/8/08
5:15 a.m. and I gently slide out of bed.
My Wife asks, “Where are you going? Can’t you hear the rain on the roof?”
“I thought I’d drive down to Port Fairy to the Lighthouse” I replied, trying to sound as optimistic as I could.
“Please don’t wake the kids on your way out”, was the only comeback.
I was staying near Warrnambool on Victoria’s South West Coastline with my family through what was turning out to be a very wet “holiday”. The photo opportunities had been few and far between but I was awake and a panorama idea was on my mind since the previous evening when we’d been told about the Lighthouse on Griffiths Island near Port Fairy. Lighthouses have always enthralled me. So with only slight hopes of retuning with anything I swallowed a cuppa, grabbed my kit and coat and left in the darkness. I must confess as I drove the 40 odd kilometers in the pouring rain I was starting to wonder if I was thinking clearly, maybe I was dreaming. It was still very dark when I parked my car and surprise, surprise; I was the only soul there. Dressing in my wets and trying to hold a brolly and all my gear and a tripod at the same time I had to remind myself that dramatic photos aren’t taken in perfect weather. My intention had always been to show the lighthouse in its environment. They provide an essential, life saving service and I wanted show that they are there, doing their job 24 – 7, even in the worst possible conditions and that was close to the weather right now! There is a reasonable walk from the car park to the actual Lighthouse and the closer I got the stronger the wind seemed to howl. What a stupid idea this was. That warm bed I left was flashing right in front of my eyes. The rain had eased a little but the problem remained that when I actually got there would there be enough light? Would the waves and tide be cooperative? And more importantly would the rain stop long enough for me to drop the umbrella. I had had an experience once before when using a very wide angle Noblex panorama camera where the front edge of the brolly had dipped into the frame when the wind caught it, ruining my image.
Fortunately, when I got nearer the location, I could see that the water wasn’t too wild which helped with one problem anyway and I very quickly settled on a spot with a small rocky outcrop nicely set in the foreground and the point on which the lighthouse stood came in on the right hand side of the frame making a nice balanced composition. Now for some light. Patience, Patience and more Patience, the thing any landscape photographer should have buckets off. The Sun had risen somewhere out there but I waited for what seemed to be the whole morning, huddled under my brolly in the wind and rain, questioning my sanity constantly. Then, thankfully the sky brightened slightly, then a little more and the rain cut back to just a drip. Seize the Day. I had already decided the only choice for the image I could visualize was the same Noblex camera I had relied on many times before and I only had to move about 2 metres to frame the shot. How long would I get? A quick check of the spot meter and I decided 2 seconds at f16 was needed but of course when shooting transparency film it always pays to bracket your exposure.
BIG problem. Because the Noblex has a rotating lens it would take almost six minutes to completely rotate twice to give the 2 seconds I needed, and close to 25 minutes to do a bracket of at least three exposures.
No point moving now or the only exposure I had would be ruined. With the brolly between my feet to stop it ending up back in Warrnambool, I tried to cover the camera from the rain with my hanky but it too was soon wet. PATIENCE. With the top of the camera now very wet I heard the camera’s motor finally stop, the exposure was complete and I lifted the brolly for protection. What were the chances of getting a good result? Howling wind, driving rain, salt spray and a single exposure? Not to mention the fact I was freezing cold, wet as a shag and by this time quite hungry.
Fortunately there was a happy ending to reward my efforts. The only exposure of that scene was the shot above, “Awaiting Dawn”, and not only that but after waiting around another for another half an hour I also shot the other image you see here entitled “Weather Resistant”. It has more light and color but still captures the harsh conditions and rugged location of this indispensable beckon. It goes without saying, we all have a similar tale of hard fought victories and more often than not there are many failures thrown in as well, but the moral I guess is, never sit and wait… the landscapes don’t come to you.
Every time I lack a little motivation to get out of bed in the mornings, when everyone else is peaceful and cozy, this occasion taps me on the shoulder…. of course sometimes it doesn’t tap hard enough.
Zoe Davis - The Perfect Storm, 15/8/08
This was one of those moments when you knew you were witnessing something special and one was in awe of the magnificence of Mother Nature.
My daughter had noticed this odd looking cloud earlier in the evening and we had a 15min drive to get home before I thought we would get caught in the storm.
When we got home I grabbed my camera and headed down to the beach since it seemed the storm wasn't coming too quickly.
Well I wasn't the only one with the idea. I drove around to different locations and at the times when I was alone I was memerized at just watching this storm. It never came closer but eventually calmed down.
I tried lots of different ISO's and shutter speeds, some were very long, but I always had it on a tripod. To the right of the image a full moon was rising, so there I was, an odd looking cloud, flashing lightning, bright stars, a beautiful still beach and a full moon rising. All that was missing was the sun and a few other celestial bodies. So you can see why I felt I was seeing something pretty special.
When the moon did peek out from the cloud I found it difficult to deal with the lightning and the brightness of the moon with the long exposures, so I had to choose one or the other and with shorter exposure times. I even have an image where people can imagine the map of Australia made by a lightning flash :-)
David Bruce - Photographing Landmarks, 8/8/08
When it comes to shooting a location that has been well documented by many other photographers, there are two challenges – trying to find something that hasn’t already been done, and at the same time being respectful of the character of the subject itself. Photographing a location or a building is much like photographing a person – the final image has to be a balance of the influences of the subject and of the photographer. Depending on the objectives of the image, if either of these overly dominates then the final result can be less effective.
The Australian War Memorial in Canberra is a case in point. A dramatic and impressive building, the range of angles it can be photographed from are limited - and many thousands of photos have been taken from these. More importantly, the Memorial is a serious place – and to photograph it in a jaunty, fun sort of manner simply in search of a novel expression would seem inappropriate to me; like a portrait which missed the essential character of the sitter. I deliberately looked for strong symmetrical compositions, as to me these felt like suitable portrayals of the building.
For this range of images I shot well after sunset, wanting to contrast the deep royal blue of the sky at this time with the effect lighting on the hard stone building. Exposures were 20-30 seconds, and obviously shot from a tripod. I used my hands to block bright lights around where I was shooting from to avoid flare spots, and my body to shield the camera from the stiff wind – even on a tripod, wind shake can be very noticeable on long exposures.
The other challenge with long exposures in this type of setting is that the contrast between the lightest and darkest areas can be too wide for the camera to deal with. To get the dark areas sufficiently exposed, the highlights are burnt out to pure white, or vice versa. In the old days of film, this was a major problem and one which could only be partly solved with the use of graduated filters and the like. I found dodging and burning techniques from the darkroom could be effective (using black polar fleece material to block part of the image as the lens was open and reduce the exposure time for some sections) – but this was very hit and miss. With digital darkroom techniques this problem can be more easily overcome by shooting a series of images at different exposures from the tripod. These images can then be combined to get correct exposures for of each part of the image. This is not as easy as it sounds to make seamless – the human eye is very good at picking up the bit that ‘just doesn’t look right’. The image with the carved stone in the foreground was compiled in this way from 3-4 individual exposures.
My favourite image from this set is the one with the flag. This is actually two images combined – one of the memorial and one of the flag fluttering. I wanted to add the symbolism of the flag with the building, because when you are actually there the two are inextricably linked in your impressions. In reality though, your eye (and camera) can’t take them both into one image in the same way your brain does. This image was inspired by the WW1 photo montages of Frank Hurley, where he felt that to truly convey the horror of the battlefield in an image it was necessary to combine several individual images to give an impression of the whole. In the same way, this image is not one that literally exists in precisely this way, but it is the image of the event that my brain retains.
Barbara Bryan - Noccundra Startrail, 1/8/08
What is this photo showing? - You may well ask! Not many people realise that these circular lines are the trails of stars in the night sky....created on film as the earth revolves whilst the camera shutter is kept open over a long period of time.
In order to create the effect seen here, I used a manual SLR film camera with a wide angle lens (to include as much of the sky as possible), with colour negative film. However the most important requirement is a clear dark sky very far away from any city or town lights.
As I enjoy travelling in our wonderful Outback regions, I take the opportunity to make these exposures when in remote unpopulated regions of our deserts or inland areas. Luck is in when there is no cloud and no moon! Not as easy to get as you might think! So then I try to point the camera towards the south to obtain the circular effect (if I can include some foreground interest to add an extra dimension to the image). Our famous Southern Cross constellation soon tells me which way is south and its pointers are included in this image as the brightest circles. I then illuminate the foreground features with a large torch or camera flash for about half a minute, then leave the shutter open for a few hours at least...depending on when I am too sleepy to stay up any longer! Of course I could use an alarm to waken me in the early morning hours, but I prefer to finish earlier as sometimes there is an accumulation of dew or moisture on the lens unless the weather is very dry and mild.
If the camera is pointed to the north, east or west, a series of diagonal startrails will result instead due to the direction of the earth's rotation in the southern hemisphere. Included in this image is also some reflection of the startrails in the waters of the Wilson River next to our campsite.