The year is drawing to a close and once again the Christmas season of festivities and celebration is upon us. Whether you celebrate Christmas in its original Christian sense, or merely in its modern secular incarnation, I wish you and your families all the best. May your Christmas be a peaceful and joyous one.
Drawing a blank /
These two images were taken under completely different circumstances a couple of days apart. Despite some obvious similarities in theme and composition, I haven't been able to construct a coherent narrative to link them. So, I'll simply present them and let you write your own narrative. Or not.
Ancient seas /
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock basically composed of grains of sand. It forms in seas and deserts where sand accumulates and is compacted and cemented together with various naturally occurring materials. The cementing materials can be quite colourful, and may form interesting patterns called Liesegang rings in the resulting stone. Sandstone, being plentiful, relatively soft and easy to cut, has long been popular as a building material. And when the stone saw meets a Liesegang ring, the results can be quite decorative.
I recently visited my Alma Mater, the University of Melbourne. Melbourne is one of the "Sandstone Universities", together with the other older Australian universities, taking this name from their liberal use of sandstone as a building material. I was intending to photograph the Law Building and its justifiably famous and beautiful cloister and quadrangle. The light wasn't right, but not far away something else caught my eye. The building blocks show here are all from a small section of the Old Arts Building, and demonstrate the natural beauty of this ancient building material. While the interior has no doubt been remodeled many time since it was built nearly 100 years ago, the exterior has lost little of its original charm.
Games people play /
Electronic gaming is big business. In all its forms it comprises an industry worth billions world wide. And, like any big business sector, it has it's conventions, and the biggest one is PAX - The Penny Arcade Expo. From humble beginnings in Seattle a little over 10 years ago, it has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. PAX conventions attract tens of thousands of attendees, including one in Melbourne. Not too many conventions or expos can simultaneously fill both the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centres, but this one does.
People come not only to play games, check out the latest and greatest and meet like minded souls, but to cosplay. Cosplay - a contraction of costume play - is a performance art where the participants go to great lengths to play dress-ups. Devotees will spare no expense to transform themselves into characters from films , comics or their own imagination. The performance seems to consist mostly of just being seen, and there plenty to see. And to photograph, of course.
Weather watching /
Every year, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology produces a calendar full of meteorological information which showcases the amazing diversity of weather across Australia. To illustrate the calendar, they run an open photographic competition which attracts thousands of entries each year. Thirteen images - one for each month and one for the cover - are chosen and reproduced in a high quality publication which sells over 100,000 copies.
I've submitted images with a meteorological bent a couple of times in past years, and did so again earlier this year, but without too much hope of success. I was quite pleased to receive an email telling me my pictures were both in the top 100, and very pleased - and more than a little bit stunned - to be informed that one had made the final cut. The image of ice crystals forming on the shore of Lake Guy, taken last year at Bogong Village in North East Victoria, will adorn the page for May. The calendars are well worth checking out, and an absolute bargain considering the quality.
Getting all misty-eyed /
It's three years and just over two hundred blog posts since I launched this web site. For me, that represents quite an interesting journey. I've made a lot of pictures in that time, but sometimes it's been hard to find the motivation to sit down and string together a few words to illuminate the pictures I've been taking. At other times, I've looked at my recent photographic output and wondered whether anyone would care to look at them. But still I keep coming back and throwing a few photos and words into the ether in the hope that someone is interested.
Those of you with keen eyes will notice that Miralight Imaging has a new look - at least I hope you do. I'm told the old look was a bit tired, so hopefully everything looks a bit fresher now. Today's offering once again shows off the benefits of dragging yourself out of bed early and braving the cold. There's always time to sleep later.
Fright night /
Halloween as we commonly know it today it grew out of the Christian observance of All Saints Eve (or All Hallows Eve), which may have supplanted pagan harvest festivals. It was a time given over to remembering the dead, both saints (hallows) and ordinary folk, from which the morbid modern associations originated. How the Christian practice of remembrance was transformed into the modern secular and commercial observance is unclear, but likely had its roots in the US, although elements - particular the dress-ups - have been known for hundreds of years.
The practice of trick-or-treating, where children go from door to door seeking sweet treats, was largely unknown in Australia till recently, but has now grown into an annual revenue boost for the confectionery industry. In the small country town of Korumburra, the entire historic tourist attraction of Coal Creek is given over to the celebration, with thousands of costumed revellers filling the park. Judging by the queues, the most popular attractions are the trick-or-treat stations, where children wait patiently to collect a few treats. To me, it looks like it all harks back to the ancient harvest festivals, where people feasted after the crops were safely gathered and stored. Looks like we've gone full circle.
Driven to abstraction /
Our minds are very good at processing what we see. We can take in complex scenes with thousands of individual details and somehow make sense of it. The gestalt theories of visual perception were developed by German psychologists in the 1920s in an attempt to explain how people tend to organise visual elements into groups or a unified whole.
But sometimes, in perceiving the whole, we can miss the fascinating abstract detail to be found in the mundane objects which crowd our vision. Occasionally, I'll go out looking not at the big picture, but at the small. Moisture, plastic wrap and a bit of sun turns a pallet of bricks into art, a brief shower transforms a simple steel table, and blue sky reflected makes a cool counterpoint to warm geometric tiles. Even a stack of take-away coffee cups can confound observers if you get close enough. Seeking details like this helps me unclutter my mind and train my eye. It makes a calming change from trying to make sense of the world.
Waterfront real estate /
Australians just can't get enough of the beach, and living within earshot of waves breaking on the shore is a popularly held dream. The bayside suburb of Brighton has easy access to several popular beaches, and also boasts some of the most expensive real estate in Melbourne. The closer to the beach you get, the more it costs to buy into. But perhaps the most desirable properties, and hardest to buy into, are also the smallest.
A row of colourful huts along the beach at Dendy Street are popularly known as the Brighton Bathing Boxes. They have become quite a tourist attraction, and even it winter the beach is swarming with visitors and wedding parties. These tiny gems are so tightly held that on the rare occasion one comes up for sale, it always makes the news, and they change hands for more than whole houses in some suburbs. No doubt, sitting on your front porch on a warm summer night watching the waves lap just a few metres away, is a very attractive prospect. For the lucky few who can do it, the tourists are probably just a minor inconvenience.
Water, water, everywhere /
Melbourne has notoriously changeable weather, and this spring season has had some pretty dramatic swings in mood. Last week we went from one elusive day of near beach weather to snow flurries and on to destructive gales over the course of four days. Of course, being Melbourne, while it's a topic of conversation, nobody was particularly surprised.
If warm weather has been in short supply, one thing there's been no shortage of is rain. While there's been far too much at times, the occasional shower provides some photographic opportunities. Of course there's the standard puddle reflection and umbrella shots, but I've taken something of a liking to rain droplets on steel. It started when I got to the station to catch my morning train and couldn't sit to wait for its arrival, and suddenly I'm seeing interesting patterns everywhere. In fact, it was almost a nuisance when the train arrived on time and dragged me away from my photography. Now there's a first - can't remember ever being annoyed at an on-time train.
Spaced out /
Occasionally I walk into a building and my first thought is "whatever the architect was smoking, I want some...". Such is the case at 70 Bourke Street. The building is interesting enough from the outside - angular and organic at the same time - but it's only when you get inside that things get really interesting.
The immediate impression of the main entrance is that it's nothing too far out of the ordinary. But looking up or down tells a completely different story. Up is a soaring atrium taking the eye past a series of curved and coloured balconies to a huge skylight which floods the space with light. Down is a series of interconnected ramps panelled with rich natural timber which snake their way to the lower levels. It's immediately mind-boggling and captivating, and a credit to the owners for hiring an architect with a vivid imagination - and possibly a very good stash.
People you meet /
People are fascinating subjects, providing endless variety for the photographer in search of an interesting picture. No matter how many portraits we see, the human face's seemingly infinite variability of shape, colour and expression keep the subject fresh. It's one thing to get a professional model into a studio where you have control of timing, background and lighting, but street portraits are something else entirely.
First you have to work up the nerve to ask. Not easy at any time, but if the person is is engaged in performance, customer service or even just wearing a silly hat, it can be a bit easier. Perhaps even more challenging are the technical aspects of getting the shot. All the things taken for granted in the studio go out the window in the street. Lighting is rarely ideal, backgrounds can be a distracting nightmare, and you don't have the luxury of taking your time - you are after all imposing yourself on peoples busy lives. However, when it comes off, it can be really rewarding, which provides all the encouragement you need to keep trying.
