When I teach I learn

We've just had the most marvellous weekend of photography here in the beautiful Blue Mountains.  As I wrote previously, we had a workshop last Saturday and then on Sunday we enjoyed a walk with some of the photographers along the Charles Darwin walk @ Wenty Falls.  Incidentally, only a few minutes to where to current bush fire is in Leura.  I think we have a nasty summer ahead of us in the mountains bushland.  It's had a lot of growth with the rain and now it's dry and crackly.  I live adjacent to bushland, and there is a deep layer of fallen leaves and mulch that will burn very quickly if a fire was to come along. Thankfully, the Crown Lands department have been working on the section immediately beside our house and have cleared away a few dead trees and quite a number of overhanging branches so we now have a bit more separation between house and bushland.  Fingers crossed for a safe summer in the Blue Mountains this year!

The title of this post came to mind after I have been doing a bit of teaching and offering support to friends and colleagues with a few basic photography practices.  Having retired about 18 months ago from a long career in education and management, I have begun to miss a little of the joys of teaching.  Although I hadn't had my own class for a good 20 years, working in schools ensures that you are teaching and learning every single day.  So it is quite natural to meander along my new life's path adding daily to my own learning and knowledge bank.

I'm not a professional photographer and never will be.  I have no intention of encroaching on a field where professionals have often done many years of study and full time practice.  However, the edges of this area of work are the aspects that interest me.  How do you manage your photography files, your prints, your archiving?  How do you ensure that the images you take today of your family and friends are available to your grandchildren in years to come?  How do you become a more competent photographer, able to use your camera's settings to ensure you capture the world no matter what the conditions?  How do you learn from art?

It's been a slow realisation of what I can do outside my earlier life in education.  My previous world was very regimented.  I loved it for its connection with people and for the way people worked together to make the world a much better place.  I don't want to return to the commitments, lack of flexibility and sheer hard work that was my life.  I now have the luxury of choosing a new path.  And I think it has finally found me.  Thank you to to all those other wonderful photographers who have encouraged and nurtured me as I dipped my toes into the beginnings of a new life.

So, what am I doing now?  Well, I'm trying to learn a bit about housework for a start!!!  Still a long way to go!

I'm also working with a a few photo buddies (Kay, Sue, Dot, Robyn) to improve my photography practice.  I'm still enrolled in Lens School.  I'm working with Len on a beginner's course and again, with Len, I'm writing an introduction to Lightroom.  I've been trialling components of the new Lightroom course with my mates and it's getting closer and closer to a launch.

"When I teach I learn" is a truism for me.  In all the work I have been doing on Lightroom, each time I take a new client or walk a group of people through the program, I dig deep into my own practice and each time I come up a little short.  It's about learning.  It's as much about my learning as my teaching.

This past week I have been privileged to work on some stunning images from a local photographer.  I've also supported a couple of people with setting up Lightroom on their own systems.  Busy, tight time frames but absolute joy at the challenge and the opportunity to view wonderful images from other photographers.

From both of these exercise, I emerged with deeper knowledge of my subject area and inspired to revisit some of my photography that will be better edited and presented with my new skills.  Teaching is truly the best way to learn.

Enjoy!!  I certainly am.

Eastern Turkey, 2010.  In a small village, this bridge underpass leads to a deserted old bathhouse.  New editing to soften and enhance the brickwork and peeling paint.

Evening light in Istanbul visiting the Blue Mosque with many others, we were enthralled by the beauty and significance.

In the shadows of Mt Ararat, Eastern Turkey, a local village has planted their field.  In the re edit here I have again tried to soften and bring out the colours and lines.

This tumble down building in a village in Eastern Turkey, has been someone's home in a a past life.  I loved it cropped and published as a mono but again, by softening the patina and bringing out some colours I think it is much more handsome.







The next 3 (below) were taken in the succulent garden @ the Botanic Gardens, Sydney a couple of weeks back with Len Metcalf's class.  Been there many times but this particular day the patterns and lines were my focus.  Oh, and I discovered a couple of baby penguins as well??

The image (below) was shot in Tarana, just west of the mountains late afternoon.  Had never quite worked out how to display it and I've recently decided to not hold back on "oomph!"  It wasn't quite this bright in real life, however, it did have a strong visual punch to it at the time.  This image reminds me of the absolute beauty and tranquility along the riverbank that day.

These cute little eucalypt leaves (above) were in Dunne's Swamp.  Again, I've been a bit creative with my colour treatment but the rich colours are there for the taking in the bush.  When the late afternoon light shines around and dribbles through the trees it makes beautiful imagery all around.

The Fish River @ Tarana (above)

Another view of the late afternoon light adding its magic to the Fish River.

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.

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.