Where does clarity come from?

I had a fabulous photographic trip to Eastern Turkey last year with Peter Eastway through World Photo Adventures.  ( http://www.worldadventures.com.au)


From this marvellous photographic experience, the question is asked; what do you do with your images?  Frankly,  I have far too many and there is some learning in that for me for the future.  I think I would have done well to try to cull some while still on tour so the task at home is a little faster.


I travelled with my notebook and 2x500g external drives and downloaded daily with Lightroom.  Some of the early edits were uploaded to my picasaweb album.
https://picasaweb.google.com/shirley.steel/FANTASTIKTURKEY2010#


Anyone looking at this will realise that these were fast and furious in the digital darkroom and that I need to cull hard but I also need to do a better job on processing.


Since returning, I have printed and framed a couple, selling one at our class' exhibition late last year.  (Thankyou Helen!) I also uploaded a more restricted and better chosen selection to my phase site.
http://www.pbase.com/ssteel/turkey_2010


However, as anyone who has undertaken similar trips will know, there really is a strong desire to have your best printed in such a way that you and friends and family can share and enjoy.  So, like others before me, I am preparing to publish them in a book.  I've given myself the rest of the year to get this major project completed.  I might even wrap it for under the Xmas tree "from me to me"!


This will be my first attempt at a book.  A coffee table book that I can proudly display and fondly look through.  It might even act as a reminder to save for my next trip?


Here's the rub ... I've got  a few too many preconceptions about what to choose.  I've got the bias that comes from the first images I chose to quickly edit and upload, I'm caught having seen some amazing images of the others on tour, including the leader, Peter Eastway who has already published quite a number as illustrations in articles he's been writing on a range of topics.  Some of these are just fabulous.  So, can I find anything that is mine, unique, something that speaks of my experience and my vision and voice?  My photo buddies will laugh at this point and suggest I could devote the whole damn book to weeds or blurred images as they reckon these are the "Shirley Shots" that are so recognisable.


Well, I don't know whether this is right for me or not???


A few weeks back in my masterclass, Len Metcalf and the group were mulling over the selection I'd brought in from Turkey.  I was being a bit anal and systematically ticking every stopover off and attempting to find the best from each venue and try to get a mix across all genres and ideas.  


Well, I thought it was a plan???  And I like plans.  So, here I was, listening to people ask me question like "how do we know it's Turkey?" and "this doesn't say Turkey to me" and my response of course was, "well, I was there and I took these images and the *&%$# title will be Turkey, so what the hell???"


By now I'd figured peer review and input was not going anywhere.  Why did I even waste the ink?   And then something happened.  Old wise Len looked at them (he'd been doing this for some time) and pulled 3 out of the mix, laid them down and said, as only Len can ..... "There you are.  That's your book.  Mono!"  And you know, when  I looked with clear eyes, and not eyes shrouded with a lot of other images and bias, I too could see it.


So, my friends, sometimes "clarity" comes to us in the strangest and in quite unexpected ways.  


I've continued since that night to work on my images, slowly revisiting them with new eyes.  Black and White eyes.  It makes a difference.  This time, by looking at them as a mono image, I don't see them as hastily edited and uploaded from the hotel room in Turkey.  I don't see them as the images of my buddy travellers.  I don't see them as Peter's images from his magazine.  I see them with new eyes and I see them as my images.  


A new confidence, a new energy and a new purpose in working on my book.


I think I'm actually going to do 2 books.  


My friend Lidia (check her out, her work is stunning! http://www.redbubble.com/people/dopera) has given us a fabulous checklist of pros and cons for Momento and Blurb.  My Black and White book will be with Momento.  I will then do a second book with no preconceived notion of colour and I'll publish this with Blurb.  It will be slightly smaller and less expensive.  


Clarity is a clearness, or so the dictionary says.  It's also a really lovely slider in Lightroom.  


A tiny, tiny sample of some of the "new images I'm considering for my book.  NB  These are not final edits, just a few that I had already exported and resized for web.


Enjoy! 

This last one (above) is not mono yet, but I really like it.  It speaks of quirky.  Here I was in the New Mosque in Istanbul, having just been introduced to the Foreign Minister who was leaving the mosque at the end of Ramadam.  The mosque was at its beautiful best.   We had been invited to share the sweet treats left after the service and we spent 30-40 minutes by ourselves, headscarfs, cameras, no shoes and our small tripods.  An amazing experience.  I couldn't help but see the beauty in this single electric light hanging by itself but framed by the architecture inside the mosque.  A contradiction and a moment of beauty.

Inspired by talk of heavy metal

Strange what suddenly refocuses your thinking????  Sometimes a word is all it takes.

A small group of us from our local photography club are committed to working on a personal project of passion this year.  Just a fancy way of saying that we are going to commit to do something special that gives us both joy and a bit of pain and that we agree that we will present it for viewing at the end of October.  These things are not new and the last couple of years we've called it a portfolio.   It's actually a great thing to do.  And having to commit with a group ensures that I "deliver" and not just have it as an ongoing thread that never finishes.

Where am I going with this????  Well, tonight we had our first round table discussion and while we were talking one of our group mentioned some old machinery and that led me to comment on a fabulous book I own Take Tour Photography to the Next Level.  It's written by George Barr and published by Rocky Nook.  Highly recommend it.  George Barr is easy to read and by way of illustration he has many images of machinery, hand tools, metal and ordinary things.  None of them are the pretty chocolate box image but every one of them is an interesting image.  I never tire of reading and rereading it.

So home I come and pick it up again and flip through it and I begin to reminisce about some of the old machinery and pieces of metal that have attracted my attention and I've often wanted to photograph.  And then I remembered!!!!  I have all these lovely images I took at Tarana a couple of weeks back that I haven't finished playing with.

So, here for your enjoyment  (and my satisfaction) are some more of my metal images from Tarana.  One of the things I love the most about knowing how to use a camera is the way it can make the ordinary seem extraordinary.  I look through the viewfinder in the right light, with the right sort of moisture in the air, some wispy movement in the surrounds and suddenly an ordinary shape becomes a star in its own right!  Magic, pure magic!

I warn you, I'm going to add too many - yes, I know I have recently learnt to be more discerning and leave people wanting to see more .... but not this time.  This is a celebration!

Enjoy ....

PS  I am back 2 days later and finishing the upload (I'd realised at around midnight that maybe I wasn't going to be able to sleep if I stayed in my photography zone, so I wisely turned it off) and today my books from Amazon have arrived and included is the next George Barr book as well as a couple from David du Chemin and a fabulous one from Bruce Barnbaum.  I have so many beautiful photography books that I will start a section on the blog.  I always love reading everyone else's reading list.

OK, I lied.  This one (above) is not part of the metal idea but it was in the same garden and I loved it.

Wet ANZAC Day in the city

In the last hour or so, I seem to have lost the beginning if this post.  I'll see if I can remember what I wrote ....  Just looove technology!


My photography group spent the morning in the city with Greg Dickens http://www.photosydney.com.au/ doing a bit of street photography and recording the happenings as we saw them around the start of the Anzac Day march.


I've come home, wet and weary and have spent a couple of hours downloading and sorting my images.  Not much from today that will be much use.  In fact, I've had to delete at least 70% of what I took.  Some of them were pretty shocking!  I thought I knew how to focus at least!!!  Obviously not. 


Never mind, the challenge continues ... Even when I return with a pretty meagre bag of images (like today) it's always a bit of fun to mull over the failures (or non successes?) and remember why I pressed the shutter in the first place and try to work out what I might have done better.


I've had a bit of a feet fetish with my photography of late.  I had some fun today looking at the colour and movement along the pavement as people made their way past.  I've included a couple here.


I captured a few shots of people that I quite liked however I don't feel completely comfortable posting online, so I've culled even further.  There was a pipe band with a couple of very young members who made great subjects.  I think I have one that is a little anonymous that I'll be able to pop in here.

This was my city of Sydney, 25 April, 2011 as I experienced it.  Wet, miserable, crowded, enjoyable, fun!!

These two fellows (above) explained that they were French  (from Noumea) and were quite chuffed to pose for their portrait.

The city was alive to the sounds of bagpipes.  The weather may have been horrid, but the music was fabulous.  If I remember correctly, this image was taken about the time I realised that I could perhaps pan and follow a subject for a few seconds.   Hello?? This is not a new idea but I'd obviously forgotten all about it.  Photography is never easy!

The excitable group (above) were waiting for their special person to appear in the march and a few moments after I took this image one of the woman ran at her  "special someone" and squealed for joy.  It was certainly a moment and although I was not tall enough to shoot that scene, when I looked at the couple of images I'd taken at this time, the emotion is certainly evident.  On reflection, I was pleased to have a story to match this image.

Quiet Dignity

The guy holding this cap up in the crowd for all to see made for a good shot.

These next couple of images are my tribute to the umbrellas on the day!

Hats, hats, hats.... and a range of experience and emotions beneath.

And here (below) the city pavements and the trees and buildings above,  added their own beauty.

 I was fascinated by the array of matching and marching feet.

This small image below is my moment of abstraction for the day!  The movement that was captured almost gives a painterly effect.  I think the white bit that's hanging down is maybe attached to the uniform???

While we waited along King St and watched the start of the march, it was hard to ignore the enthusiasm shown by this young fellow for his task of keeping his group in step.  Check out the look on the guy on the LHS.

The navy groups quite often seemed to be led by a young female carrying the ship's name.

And in this image (below) we have the Little drummer Girl, keeping near perfect time.

From the same band ...

In the zone @ Tarana

Highly recommend all photographers find some way of isolating themselves for a short time just to focus on photography. It is the advice you see so often from those who are successful photographers and artists. For me it's always so easy to forget this advice and it's only when I find myself with this special opportunity that I begin to sing photographically and make all sorts of promises to myself to repeat this activity more often.

Don't get me wrong. I pretty much have my head in my photography world most of the time, but it's often in the midst of doing 3 or 4 other things. All of these photographic opportunities are fabulous - I never know what I'm going to get or what I might see or what might present itself. However, when I truly remove all the "noise" from my daily life and just allow myself the time to soak in all that is around me and think, dream, imagine, talk photography .... my work is so much better.

A few days ago I headed over the mountains, west of Sydney to spend a couple of days @ Tarana and the Fish River area. It was cold and much of the Autumn foliage was already on the ground. I travelled with 2 other women photographers and our brief was to laugh, talk, share, shoot! And I think it is fair to say that we excelled in all aspects!

We stayed at the Tarana pub in the cabins that were warm and cosy. The BBQ worked, the fridge worked, the water was hot and the sunrise the next morning was to die for - that's for those who were up in time to see it. Sadly (or wisely?) I was in bed but my buddy photographer kindly brought the viewing screen in so I could see what I was missing.

It was once the home of trout fishing 
http://bluemountainsfishing.net/fishriver.html  and looking at the river as we drove around you can see why this is. Much of the river bank that we drove around is fenced so it was only accessible in a couple of places. One of the better ones was Flat Rock Picnic Area on Mutton Falls Rd between Tarana and O'Connell. Really worth planning a couple of hours here if ever you find yourself in the area.

One of our group is working on a personal project about water so it was a great opportunity to spend some time in an area that had boulders, rocks, gravel, flowing water, small rapids and unbelievably beautiful colours and reflections. I'm still working out how I want to show some of the work I did but including here a few of my early edits. I've also uploaded a handful to my pbase site. http://www.pbase.com/ssteel If you clock on "recent" you should see them.

Enjoy! I think I will get some real pleasure out of working with these images over the next couple of weeks. 

This image (above) was taken in the area close to Flat Rock reserve.  I'd been working with a wider lens and an ND filter and polariser but just had a feeling that I wanted to see if I could get something different with my 105macro.    I like the result and particularly some of the underlying colours in the water.  Interestingly a couple of the images taken in this river look to be black and white.  I can see no colour at all.

Early morning, close to the hotel.  I was wandering around with some pretty weird looking clothes - I ran out of the cabin excited about the light and dew and didn't bother dressing for public view!  I was warm and I got some great shots and that is really all that matters.
I loved the pearls of light behind this wispy plant.  It was moving slightly in the morning breeze and I like how the movement adds to my enjoyment of the image.

What glorious colours!  A birch tree I think?? Or maybe a beech??  I get them mixed up.

The hotel had a few pieces of old farm machinery in the grounds. It fitted in beautifully but it was at its most captivating early morning with dew drops and low sun in the sky. I let my wonderful Sigma 105Macro do its thing and the abstract image (above) is the result.

Garage sales don't need to be too boring???

Took my old 400D and my lensbaby with me yesterday and really enjoyed seeing what I could find.  Bright light, sad dog, quiet street ... all were fun to snap......

Enjoy!

Rosie (above) looking a bit sad with the camera - obviously not used to having portraits done??

Another Rosie shot (above).