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)

Even the Little Sparrow...

Another pic with Jeremy's 150mm macro lens... sigh...

Pelicans at Longreef (haiku)

sunrise at Longreef
a perambulation of
pelicans gathered

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...."

More Shell Harbour, South Coast NSW.

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