Lap Dog (haiku) - At Breakfast...

the well-behaved dog
sat, but his eyes longingly
followed the bacon

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...."

More Shell Harbour, South Coast NSW.

Following on from the Banner Pics of Shell Harbour, here are some more images from that winters day.

Poetry is Ours (haiku)

Patching together
fragments of signs creates whole
worlds of new meaning...

(found on a roller-door in Chinatown)

Fifty-Fifty

Suburban speed-limit painted on the road outside my clinic.

EAR

(KEEP CL)EAR - painted road marking in a carpark in Canberra.

X

No-parking zone in a Canberra carpark.

Hunter River, Newcastle

A view of the mouth of the Hunter River, from the cycle-way at Nobby's Head, Newcastle, NSW.

Blue Collar Washing Day

Cycling down the back-streets of inner-city Newcastle, we couldn't resist this peek into classic Novocastrian domestic life: the Hills Hoist with a blooming crop of fereshly laundered blue work-shirts.

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbour: Like Water For Chocolate...

A fragment of Sydney Harbour water, filtered through Picasa - the free picture software from Google.

Picasa - a great (free!) picture organising tool...

Picasa (web-Latin for 'Picture House'??) is a great picture organising tool by Google, with some very simple but useful picture editing tools (straighten, crop, lighten, darken, saturate, black-and-white, etc).

It preserves all your pictures on your hard drive, making back-up copies of originals whenever you make editorial changes, so all your pictures are safe. It makes browsing and organising your images a breeze.

You can produce some great visual effects, as well as 'rescuing' flawed photos. And it's heaps easier to use than Photoshop, though I do often work between Picasa and Photoshop - while Photoshop wins hands down for tasks such as layering, masking and spot-healing, some of the Picassa tools (eg, straightening/croping, lightening/darkening) are so much quicker and easier in Picasa and can create a better effect.

And it's FREE - did I mention that?!
Thanks Google.

Physical TV

From time-to-time, my friends Richard Allen and Karen Pearlman from the Physical TV company will send me an SMS with the details of their latest creative endeavour - where and when they will be rehearsing/performing. I am usually over there like a shot, whenever my work schedule permits, because it is always enlightening, always inspiring to engage with them in the creative process. Over the 20 years we've known each other, I've been privileged to participate with them on a number of projects, from the worlds of Theatre, Dance and Performance Poetry, to more recently, taking stills photographs during the filming and rehearsals for their many and varied cross-media events. You can see some of my photos on the Physical TV website. Richard is also a Yoga teacher.

Over the last few weeks, they have been in rehearsal for a piece that will be part of the festival Short & Sweet+Dance at the Seymour Centre, running between 23 February-14 March 2009. Here are some pics from the dance-studio rehearsal in Chippendale, Sydney.

Orange Car, Orange Building

Couldn't resist the tonal matching of this scene in front of a warehouse in St Peters, Sydney...

JJ Roberts & Soul Maker Sound System

Last Friday night I was fortunate to have the opportunity to photograph some of the members of Soul Maker Sound System - JJ Roberts and his son Jono and their fellow crew-member Jason. Brent asked me to make some photos for the promo of their re-launch coming up on 2nd May 2009.

Reggae Music is an integral part of Rasta Culture. Rastafarians have a strong belief in Jah, who they consider to be the creator of our planet earth, the sun and the whole universe. The planet earth is considered a gift to all living beings, with all creatures having a right to live physically and mentally free. Reggae song lyrics deal with many subjects, including: religion, love, sexuality, peace, relationships, poverty, injustice and other social and political issues.

Soul Maker Sound System had its beginnings in the inner suburbs of Sydney in the early 1980’s when Jamaican born Sound System owner Jonathan “JJ” Roberts began playing rock steady, ska and reggae to Australian audiences. Over the last 20 years the name Soul Maker has become synonymous with Dancehall and Reggae music in Australia and as one of the oldest in the industry has been around to watch the industry grow and expand. The early part of Soul Maker’s journey was difficult due to being the only entity of its kind in Sydney, but thanks to the hard work of JJ Roberts, Soul Maker and other pioneers of the Australian Dancehall scene, the word spread and awareness of the music and the culture grew. Soul Maker is gearing up for a re-entry into the Industry in 2009 with a number of events being planned. Bless!!

Soul Maker Sound System Photo-shoot

Here are the results of last Friday night's photo-shoot with some of the members of Soul Maker Sound System - JJ Roberts and his son Jono and their fellow crew-member Jason. The photos were made for the promo of their re-launch coming up on 2nd May 2009. It was a delight to work with them - I think you can see their soulfulness coming out in the pictures.

Palm Sunday

A palm tree on the banks of the Hunter River, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.