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 > February 2010
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Canola Landscape, 25/2/10, Pele Leung Our subject today is canola. Before digging out what canola really is, there is no doubt that the deep yellow colour of canola plays a major role of decorating our landscape. |
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Imagine there is no such thing called 'book' anymore, 18/2/10, Pele Leung Imagine... In 2030, tree became an extremely valuable resource on Earth. The reason was simple - most trees on Earth had already been chopped down for our uses. As per the predication from the computer scientists in 20th century, we finally entered... |
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Bruno's Art & Sculpture Garden in Marysville, 11/2/10, Pele Leung It has been a year after the Black Saturday bush fire in Victoria. Although the rebuild process is still in progress, most victims are thinking positively for their future. While we all want to forget this sad experience, there are always something worth remembering. |
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Can We Make Our Photos Look Better But Without Changing Them?,4/2/10, Pele Leung How good are our photos? I bet many photographers had asked themselves this question before and their answers were, as usual, quite positive. Why? Because uncle Bob and aunt May had also said their photos are great. Of course! |
Pele Leung - Canola Landscape, 25/2/10
Canola field in Victoria
Other than news, most newspapers come with articles and columns of all sorts. The topics of columns could be anything from philosophy of life to anything the writers like. Sometimes even potato could be the subject of a story. Today we are not going to discuss potato although we can possibly link up any potato stories to scenery. Let us try something more interesting than potato. Our subject today is canola. Before digging out what canola really is, there is no doubt that the deep yellow colour of canola plays a major role of decorating our landscape. It is not uncommon to find tourists taking photos of beautiful canola fields next to highway. The extensive deep yellow canola fields in October and November could easily make a beautiful panorama particularly if the crop is planted on a contoured landscape.
What is canola? Canola is one of two cultivars of rapeseed or Brassica campestris. Although rapeseed was useful as oil in lamps in the old days, using it as edible oil was not welcome due to its distinctive taste and a disagreeable greenish colour. Moreover, its uses for part of the food chains for both human and animals had been proven to be unsuitable. As the agriculture technologies improve, new variety was produced in 1974 and it became a safe kind of rapeseed to be consumed by human. The name of this new variety is called canola. As Canola originally came from Canada so its name was derived from "Canadian oil, low acid" in 1978.
Canola field in Western Australia
Canola oil is low in saturated fat and also high in monounsaturated fat. Omega-3 fatty acid is another bonus. Now canola is classified as a safe and healthy cooking oil. However, to photographers, canola also generate an excellent opportunity in the wide landscape of Australia. The photographic opportunity is just unlimited. Canola fields are quite abundant in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia and the best time to shoot them is around October and November when they are in rich yellow colour. In December, most canola fields would probably be harvested.
Canola field in Victoria. Photo by Nadia and Steve Paul.
Finally I hope our canola story is better than a typical potato report. See you somewhere in a canola field and now you have quite a number of months to prepare your canola shooting.
Pele Leung - Imagine there is no such thing called 'book' anymore, 18/2/10
Imagine... In 2030, tree became an extremely valuable resource on Earth. The reason was simple - most trees on Earth had already been chopped down for our uses. As per the predication from the computer scientists in 20th century, we finally entered the era of paperless society. This was not simply because of the advance of digital and electronic industries but also the scarce resource left to produce paper. Now paper became priceless...
Would all these be just a dream? I am not entirely sure. On one hand, I like the concept of paperless society. On the other hand, I just do not want this happen because of the tree crisis.
When traditional paper has gone our next concern obviously would be about the existence of book. There is no doubt that the concept of book is important to our civilisation. If books no longer exist, it probably implies the end of our world. To be exact, the end of our civilisation. If wood really runs out, we probably would be using other media for storing our book contents. In the near future, this media seems to be related to silicon. In current jargon, we call it digital book.
If you are a traditional book lover and like to own a Great Wall of books at home, do not panic yet as there are still quite a lot of trees around! To be fair, we should not blame the traditional book lovers for this environmental issue. I have to admit that reading a traditional book with a cup of coffee in hand is quite a wonderful feeling. As long as there is day light, our reading process will not be interrupted by power failure. However, when digital technologies improves further most younger generations would keep their hands off the old stuff. Just look at what the young people do when they are on the road. How many teenagers would be reading a real book or newspaper when they are travelling? Not many. Their travel companions are mainly the electronic devices like mobile phones, e-games or digital musical gadgets. As soon as the young generation becomes the dominant one, the concept of traditional book would eventually become history. Alright, this seems to be a bit exaggerated but you get the idea.
With the arrival of e-book readers and modern Internet browsing devices (such as Apple's iPad), all photographers preparing to produce coffee table books must not ignore the potentials of these e-concept. At the time of writing, printing traditional photographic books still has its merit. The high cost offset printing is no longer a barrier to those writers/photographers with limited budget as small volume digital printing is the answer. With simple self-published services flourishing and available on Internet, there is always a solution somewhere to suit the interested parties.
If you are thinking of publishing and printing a small volume of books yourself, do not ignore the potential of e-book. With publishing a real book and e-book in mind, your book design file (eg PDF format) can actually be used for both media. So why not throw the same file in to make the best out of both. I am not sure what you will do but now you have more choices.
Pele Leung - Bruno's Art & Sculpture Garden in Marysville, 11/2/10
It has been a year after the Black Saturday bush fire in Victoria. Although the rebuild process is still in progress, most victims are thinking positively for their future. While we all want to forget this sad experience, there are always something worth remembering.
My memory went back to my first visit to Maryville, a lovely town which was almost completely destroyed by the bush fire last year. In our 2002 trip to Marysville, my wife and I came across a local tourist interest, Bruno's Art & Sculpture Garden. The garden was a home of numerous sculptures from all sorts of real, artisic and imaginative human figures. It definitely is a class of art by itself. Believe it or not, it is an art collection created by a single person - Bruno Torfs.
Unfortunately this sculpture garden was heavily damaged by the cruel bush fire in 2009 although 60% of the sculptures still survive. The owner Bruno did not give up and is able to bring his baby garden back to life within a year. It has been reopened to public late last year.
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Some of the older sculptures published below might not exist anymore but I am sure Bruno would not stop producing some even better ones for us to inspire. If you manage to have some time over the weekend, it is definitely worth taking a short trip to Marysville. Your trip would certainly cheer up the locals and also encourage their recovery.
Meanwhile I hope the following photos could give you some ideas how excellent Bruno's work is. If you like what you see, please pay him a visit and I am sure you will not be disappointed by his latest creation. See you all there.
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A small portion of Bruno's collection in his esteemed sculpture garden in Marysville
Pele Leung - Can We Make Our Photos Look Better But Without Changing Them?, 4/2/10
Phillip Island, Victoria
How good are our photos? I bet many photographers had asked themselves this question before and their answers were, as usual, quite positive. Why? Because uncle Bob and aunt May had also said their photos are great. Of course! There are only a handful of photographers would accept their photos are below average. This is normal as self-respect always plays a major role here. It is not uncommon to hear from some photographers how much work he/she had spent on producing their photo(s). I was told everything was carefully prepared and executed. However, in many cases, I personally just could not see how those well prepared steps have helped in producing a real masterpiece. Obviously they saw different things from what I saw. Something could be great to the photographers but the miracles simply did not work for me. Who is right? Nobody.
Is there any practical approach to evaluate the real quality of a photo? No - if you include personal feeling and your own photography education background into account. Yes - if you really can convince all your photographic peers your talent and authority of photo evaluation. What I really saying is that photo appreciation is definitely not an easy task although there are some guidelines flowing out there to help. However, discussing photo evaluation guideline is actually a huge topic by itself so I have no intention to cover it here. What I want to talk about today is how to make yourself and your photos more presentable. Your photo skills would not be better overnight but your photographic reputation might. How could you become a better photographer to some people without improving your photographic skills? This sounds unbelievable but it is possible.
First of all, I have to say that we all take bad photos. Possibly the number of my junk shots are actually more than yours. If (and only if) I seem to be a better photographer than you, it might be mainly because I do not show my bad or even average photos to anyone. It is very important to remember the theory of "less means more".
In this digital era, most photos will be displayed mainly on screen. As most photos nowadays are much larger than most screen sizes, it is worth presenting your photos in animated slideshows. With the help of zooming and animating features, you could bring the attention of the viewers to certain corners of your photos and enhance the impact. This approach would work best if your grand photos only contain small points of interest. As a result, your photos generate more interest even if you have made no physical change to them.
Once upon a time, I heard someone said "no matter how excellent an individual image is, it could never beat a good set of images which compliment each other". This might not sound entirely right to us but this theory has its merit. If you feel the same thing, it might be worth pulling a few related images together and making them as a set. One of the common approaches for scenic photos is to make use of the following combinations:
- Angles of view (ultra wide, standard and close-up)
- Time of day (sunrise, daytime, sunset and twilight)
- Seasons (four seasons of the same view)
- Weathers (different weather of the same view)
Unless you are very keen on showing off your photos every day otherwise keep the frequency of your exhibition to an absolute minimum. Although I am not asking you to go for the extreme like showing one photo per year, my suggestion is to show less frequently than what you previously intended to. Make your audiences hungry and only feed them your best food at the right time. It is your choice of becoming James Cameron or the High Street Director with multiple productions per year.
Karijini National Park, Western Australia
To wrap it up, I do not mean to keep you from improving your photography skills. All I want to say is to make full use of the images you already have to impress your audiences. If you really could improve and make better photos in the future, then it will be a bonus to you. Happy shooting and presenting.