Australia Day 2011

An early swim at Clovelly Beach and then off to Lakemba to eat Lebanese food with Vietnamese friends - what better way to spend Australia day?

Just Show Up...

My friend Audrey recently asked me to join her in writing for her new blogsite which she has initiated for sharing of creative inspiration, called 365 Just Show Up. This image is one I posted there recently, after an early morning shoot with friends near Palm Beach in Sydney's north.

With photography, light and timing is everything. And sometimes that means 'showing up' when the rest of the world is sleeping. This weekend, fellow photographers Richard, Anastasia and Vlad and I arranged to meet near Palm Beach on Sydney's northern beaches area, to catch the sunrise over the water. We needed to arrive at the location somewhere between Astronomical Twilight (which was 5.17am on 7/8/10) and Nautical Twilight (5.46am on 7/8/10), in order to scout the location, get set up, and have an hour's shooting time in the magical pre-dawn light.

For those of a technical mind, Twilight has 3 defined phases: Astronomical, Nautical and Civil that refer to specific points in 6° increments of the sun's angle to the horizon before sunrise and after sunset. Each phase lasts approximately half an hour. (Australian readers can use this Geoscience Australia calculator to obtain the Sunrise / Sunset and Twilight times.)

Astronomical Twilight = the instant in the morning (or evening) when the centre of the sun is at an angle of 18° below the horizon. At this time it is possible to still see the light of stars in the sky.

Nautical Twilight = when the centre of the sun is at an angle of 12° below the horizon. At this time in the absence of moonlight, artificial lighting or adverse atmospheric conditions, it is dark for normal practical purposes. For navigation purposes at sea, the sea horizon is not normally visible. (Occurs approx. half an hour after Astronomical Twilight)

Civil Twilight = when the centre of the sun is at a 6° angle below the horizon. At this time in the absence of moonlight, artificial lighting or adverse atmospheric conditions, the illumination is such that large objects may be seen but no detail is discernible. The brightest stars and planets can be seen and for navigation purposes at sea, the sea horizon is clearly defined. (Occurs approx. half an hour after Nautical Twilight)

Sunrise: (Occurs approx. half an hour after Morning Civil Twilight)

The reverse occurs in the Evening: Sunset, Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight, Astronomical Twilight, fading into the darkness of night.

Thanks for the feedback!

Following a suggestion from my friend Becs in Lismore who is also a keen photographer, I made a new version of the Newcastle headland photo in Lightroom3, using a combination of sharp (the man and the sculpture) and misty (the sea and the railings) - and this is EXACTLY the effect I was looking for. Well done, Becs! Thanks so much for your insight - a collaboration always makes more than the sum of its parts!

Sculpture By the Sea - Newcastle NSW

Early morning walk around the headland of Newcastle Beach. Two versions... a misty one and a sharp one - which do you think works best?

En-Visioning Sydney, August 2009

Four members of the photo-gang (Richard, Morena, Berend and Kyle) arranged to meet at 6am last Saturday, rain or shine, to create images from the early-morning Sydney streets and headlands... We started in Kings Cross before breakfast, then sheltered from the drizzle at a cafe in Paddington and ended in Bondi around noon. The over-cast weather with soft tonal light was perfect for creating black-and-white images. The pics below are Kyle's photos, except for the last one which is a portrait by Berend.

(the last pic is a portrait of Kyle by Berend)

Conversation above the Bronte Cafe

Surfers on the Bronte Express

Beach Ballet

Pelicans at Longreef (haiku)

sunrise at Longreef
a perambulation of
pelicans gathered

Looking North to Bronte

The view from headland at Clovelly, looking north towards Bronte beach.

Seagull (haiku)

an overcast day
did not divert the seagulls'
hopes for fish and chips

Banners... click pics for full-size images.

After making the banner for my friend Jeremy's blog,




I thought I should do the same for Photo-Ventura.




Funny how it goes in the choice of images... how do you chose your five most representative images? Three of the ones in my new banner were taken on the same day - a cold wintry afternoon last year, down at Shell-Harbour near Wollongong, NSW, on the way to the Buddhist Temple. My photographer-friend Richard and I had gone on one of our 'outings' - to-see-what-we-can-see - but the weather had turned and we were freezing our butts off, not sure if there was anything 'there' to photograph. Just goes to show, the most evocative images don't always come on a 'perfect day'...

In the end, I chose 5 images that evoked a sense of journey and ad-venture-a!

The boat? Boats in general connote journeys past and journeys yet to come and the orange buoy echoed the red of the heading-text very well;

The heart-shaped rope-bollard represents the 'heart' of courage and inspiration necessary for a journey: an anchor, a place to connect to, a safe harbour;

The blurry incense smoke is evocative of the spirit and mysticism inherent in every journey - the parallel story that runs alongside every inspiration to travel through space and time, the narrative of the inner journey meshing with the outer;

The bright green graphic-like palm frond brings Wood energy to the page: venturing forth, sprouting, growth, renewal;

And the duck...? Have you seen that image somewhere before?... Besides being a good colour resonance with the hues of the other pics, it is an oblique reference to the Direction-Finding-Duck in Michael Leunig's 'Voyage of Vasco Pyjama'.

Here's Leunig's quote - it is from his book The Curly Pyjama Letters, in which Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama correspond with each other from the perspectives of their two worlds. Mr Curly is at home at Curly Flat and Vasco is travelling the world in the company of his direction finding duck.

Mr Curly writes to Vasco:

"... In response to your question,
'What is worth doing
and what is worth having?'

I would like to say simply this:
It is worth doing nothing
and having a rest...."