Why can’t I stop photographing bark?

Tags

bark, spotted gums (Corymbia maculata)

The answer to this question is easy. Bark is beautiful and endlessly various in colour, design and composition. Look at these photos and tell me I should stop paying tribute with my camera. They were all taken in an area of about an acre, just below the house where I sometimes spend weekends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wrenched from the sea

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seaweed

The seas have been rough and many victims of this roughness have ended up on the beach. Walking early means I get along half the beach in shadow. This helps seaweed photography because it removes some of the gleam that tends to draw the camera's eye and eradicate sharp detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Reconnaissance

Tags

bream, Brou Lake, sand spit

Now that fire has faded and rain has fallen, we're thinking about boating again. We need a vast expanse of water so we can play round with the sails, which we haven't christened yet. So on Sunday afternoon we drove down to suss out Brou Lake. We walked along the lake edge of the sand spit, trying to figure out the extent of the lake with the help of houses in their tiny clearings.

 

There were some unexpected spin offs to our jaunt. A young couple camping there had been fishing too successfully. We scored their second weighty bream and a recommendation for the WikiCamps app.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shadows

Tags

seaweed

I usually try to avoid shadows on the beach when I photograph because I've always thought they detract from the identity of the shell or the seaweed or whatever. If the sun's out, I'll crouch and nullify its shadow with my own. It looks as if maybe I was wrong, yet again. When I decided to feature shadows, I captured delicate images where the shadow doubled the visual pleasure. Maybe I need to challenge all my dearly held beliefs so I can uncover the beauty my rigidity has been hiding from me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Farewell, Doris Lessing

Tags

Doris Lessing

 

I don't know if I dare blog my farewell to Doris Lessing after reading her wonderful Nobel speech, in which she says

 

How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by this internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc.

I'll dare, because I'd be delighted if she came back to haunt me.

 

 

My special bookcase, inherited from a beloved uncle and nestled into a corner of my bedroom, contains a lot of Doris Lessing books. I value them enough to keep them close to me, out of borrowing range and therefore safe from disappearing.

 

I loved the portrayal of Martha Quest, growing up in Africa and then moving out into a wider world. There weren't many young women using their intelligence, independence and sexual freedom in the literature I was familiar with when I was a youngish woman. Nor were there many writers who described landscape so lovingly and precisely, and with such relish, as she did in her novels (and in her Nobel speech.)

My mind is full of splendid memories of Africa which I can revive and look at whenever I want. How about those sunsets, gold and purple and orange, spreading across the sky at evening. How about butterflies and moths and bees on the aromatic bushes of the Kalahari? Or, sitting on the pale grassy banks of the Zambesi, the water dark and glossy, with all the birds of Africa darting about. Yes, elephants, giraffes, lions and the rest, there were plenty of those, but how about the sky at night, still unpolluted, black and wonderful, full of restless stars.

Not many writers had her gift of comprehending futures as she did in books like “Mara and Dann” and “The good terrorist”. More than anything else she avoided the cliche and romanticising of fictional lives, and dealt with hard things honestly, particularly in “The fifth child” and “Ben in the world.” It took me a long time to tackle her “science fiction” because of a dislike of the genre, but when I finally did I found them philosophically and humanely satisfying. Like Yeats, her craft grew and matched her ageing and the world she aged into. Her death has taken me back to her books and all the challenges and provocations they offer.

 

 

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html

 

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Notation for a Symphony of the Sea

Tags

jellyfish, ocean, shearwaters

It's been raining hard and the sea is up. As I walked along the waterline, I saw notations marking the action of the ocean, and imagined the sea as composer, using its power and its subtlety to make marks orchestrating a symphony of the sea.

 

 

Continuo throughout: in which a didgeridoo plays notes of power and repetition and snare brushes on drums provide the swishing sounds of the waves rolling in.

 

 

Allegro

In which flute, violin and xylophone shape the sound, and then oboe, viola and marimba join in to add substance.

The delicate traces of the sea linger along the tideline: the calligraphy of grass, and the more robust calligraphy of seaweed.

 

 

 

 

 

Adagio

In which cello, oboe, clarinet, predominate, with occasional grace notes from the flute, and sonorous intrusions from the bass drum. This movement fades into near silence, with only the subdued sound of the continuo.

The sea leaves its less delicate traces where it meets sand: as it rolls in and retreats, the muddy traces of floodwaters make a filigree of lace.

 

 

 

 

Scherzo, in the style of Chopin

In which the music gives tragic voice to the fate of creatures of the sea caught up in storms. This could perhaps be choral, offering alternating voice to jelly fish and shearwater.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finale

In which the symphony reaches a full-orchestra crescendo and then fades into a quietness where strings predominate.

All the complexities of the ocean settle and simplify into the calm place where the creek and the sea join together.

 

 

 

 

 

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Early morning light on a grey day

Tags

beach walking, cloud eflections, early morning

I'm amazed at how quickly I've managed to re-establish a walking habit – after a health coach from my health society made an unsolicited call and prompted me back to walking virtue. As always, I wonder why on earth I haven't been striding out every day, since it gives so much pleasure, sensual and photographic. My legs have a mind of their own and they are ready to go almost before I get myself out of bed. My walking hasn't yet become aerobic, although I've moved fast on a few times as the ocean tries to anoint my virtuous feet. However, on one occasion my head was far away from my feet, trying to work out how to say “Róźa's mother” in Polish, when a rogue wave curled up to my knees before I could activate my agility.

Last night it rained and thundered periodically, so I was on the beach earlier than usual in a rain-lull to enjoy the reduced palette and other special pleasures of a grey day after rain: cloud reflections in the wet sand; shells and seaweed without shadows; rain pocks in the sand; patterns oddly reminiscent of Monet's waterlilies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erratum:

Maybe I was wrong to say a reduced palette. As I look again at the photos it seems that the light has in fact expanded a limited palette, and provided it with highlights that would be unnoticed on a bright sunny day.

 

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The creek enters the sea

Tags

early morning, water patterns

There has been enough rain over the last week to open the creek at Potato Point. My morning walk has taken me to the beach as the tide flows, drawing after it ripples, water mounds and intricate water braiding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dear Greg Hunt

Quollgirl

DearGreg

Can I call you Greg? I’ve felt on first-name basis with you for some years now, and in my house, we even have cute pet names for you.

I’m not sure why you’ve decided not to go to Warsaw for the annual climate change talks. I know you are busy trying to repeal the carbon tax, and I appreciate that this will entail a lot of work, but Warsaw is quite a nice city, and you probably will need a holiday away from all those nasty greenies. You’d better not be saving your energy for Paris in 2015 – it would look like you were engaging in stereotyping and overlooking a former Eastern Bloc country while still being willing to show up in the City of Light for a wine-swilling junket. Anyway, Poland has quite a lot to offer the discerning tourist, and with this in mind my…

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In praise of fingers

Tags

body parts, fingers, gratitude

 

I've lived with my fingers for nearly seventy years, and it's only just occurred to me to value the work they do. I've written about legs, hands, breasts, teeth and brain, but I've never even thought about the very particular contribution of my ten digits. They can't be quite indispensable because I've known two men who have lived brilliant lives without the use of fingers. I'm a lesser mortal, and I can't imagine life without all the things they can do.

In the kitchen, I'd be lost without the ability of my fingers to chop spring onions, chilli and ginger for the curry or dates and apricots for the muesli; to grip the scrubber to remove stuck-on food from the frypan; to wrest lids from bottles of jam and sauce; to open cans of tomatoes or corn or beetroot; to peel oranges or mandarins or apples.

In my infrequent forays into the garden, I need those digits to prune callistemon, to persuade the lawn mower to start, to pick my precious lemons from their tree, to continue the murder of my red cedar by slitting its base with a tomahawk and painting on poison, to pull up the proliferating baby palms and to activate the sprayer that squirts pyrethrum for the eradication of ticks.

My fingers are my accomplices as I pursue my obsessions. They tap the keyboard of my iPad and control the stylus as I churn out blogs, edit photos, catch up with the lives of my children on Facebook, flick between apps and wilf on the net. They click the camera button to capture orchids, sea foam, pythons, bark, rock face and grandtwins. They pull the wool over the needle as I battle to master the complicated pattern of my son's jumper, currently growing at the rate of 6 inches a year. They cover the holes on my recorder as I practise Bach and Mozart and struggle to comprehend the vagaries of syncopation.

As I move around the supermarket, my fingers pick up items so I can scrutinise purpose and contents, and assess the quality of fruit and vegetables. They tilt tins or boxes on high shelves so I can get a grip on them to toss into my trolley. At the checkout, they unbutton my Warsaw bags and help me to shake them open, and they allow me to pick through the small change and relieve myself of the weight of 50c pieces and $2 coins. (A palm suffices in Poland, because I hold out my handful of drobna for someone else to sift through.) If I'm shopping for material, my fingers squeeze and assess texture and weight.

My fingers have served me well with my grandtwins. They have manipulated the stroppy fastenings of the safety belts in the pram as I reload two tired grizzly kidlets after a few hours playing on the rug in the park. They have led wondering eyes upwards as I perform the actions accompanying my less than wonderful rendition of “Twinkle twinkle little star”. They have enabled me to change nappies on wriggling bottoms and finesse the pulling of jumpsuits over reluctant heads. They have provided the variation to the drum-beat of my palms as I pursue the rhythmic education of two sets of ears. They have allowed me to extract blades of grass and floor fluff and other tiny discoveries from exploring mouths. It's my fingers that allow me to feel that beautiful softness of baby skin, and to gently ruffle their fine hair.

Subtract from my life all the things my fingers enable me to do, and I am lost.

 

 

 

 

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