Crazy

Sydney and much of the coast was hit hard yesterday with high winds, rain, branches and leaves everywhere.  I had to drive to the city in the early evening.  Crazy?  However, because of the severe weather warnings, people actually stayed off the roads so I had the "crazy" good trip into town. Who would have believed it?

Don't know why I thought about putting my old camera in with the lensbaby on??  Good idea!  The bookbinding class I have been attending @ Amazing Paper, http://www.amazingpaper.com.au/ was called off because others couldn't get there.

Good fortune occasionally shines in bad weather.  I was then able to spend a great hour wandering the back streets of Redfern, lensbaby in hand, dodging the weather, umbrellas flying across the street, looking at a sort of ghost town environment as traffic on usually busy streets stayed away.

This guy ran out of a terrace with his dog lead in one hand and his scooter in the other.  Caught a couple of fun shots as he set sail down the street on his scooter and dog running behind.

Edited in Nik - do so love Nik Silver!!

Enjoy!

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.