Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

My choice for the theme pattern is a water fountain in Kings Cross Sydney. I love the way water can be used to make things that are so captivating.

Water Fountain, Kings Cross, Sydney

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

Glacier calving – Alaska

For this challenge I have chosen a picture that captures an action, as action represents change most fundamentally. However at a more philosophical level, the significance of this particular picture is that it shows water in all its three states – solid, liquid and gas. Water, and its change between these three states, is arguably one of the most powerful agents of change on earth. From basic changes through erosion, to the more derivative changes brought about by its support for life and therefore all change wrought by life. Included in this list is the fact that water (as vapour) is the single strongest direct agent for climate change and also the means by which man powered its industrial revolution (via steam) –  therefore enabling modern man’s impact on the earth and its climate.

A Word A Week Photo Challenge: Hat

I’ve been playing around with some old candid photos of friends and came across this grumpy bear / Hagar the Horrible. Thought I would try it on for (HAT) size!

The Word A Week Photo challenge is done by “A Word In Your Ear” (http://wp.me/1pmcV). Check out her blog, great photos and stories.

Ciao,
Bazza

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lunchtime

This fantastic luncheon dessert was served up in a small vineyard restaurant in the back of Ulladulla (NSW Australia) of all places. The winery is Cupitt’s Winery, and if you are interested you can see more about them here (http://cupittwines.com.au/).

A Word A Week Photo Challenge: Zoom

I have been playing around with the Extrude filter on Photoshop to create a pseudo zoom affect and so figured that would be a good fit for this weeks challenge “Zoom”.

This challenge is led by “A Word In Your Ear” (http://wp.me/1pmcV). Check out her blog, great photos and stories.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward

The world is an amazing place with so many bizarre things. To me, one of them is Lake George near Canberra. Looking “normal” in this photo, complete with sheep, it does from time to time fill up with water. For me this picture really draws the eyes forward. The frame of the picnic shelter acts a little like blinkers and helps to focus the eyes immediately forward on the distant “lake”. Does it work for you?

A Word A Week Photo Challenge: Industrial

Sunset at Port Kembla, circa 1982

The Word A Week Photo challenge is done by “A Word In Your Ear” (http://wp.me/1pmcV). Check out her blog, great photos and stories.

Ciao
Bazza

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

Being born in New Zealand, a part of me will always belong there, but I have lived in Australia now for more than half my life, so that is where I call home.

I still remember an eerie, uncanny sense of un-ease for months, actually years, after I first moved here. I always felt somewhat unsettled when outside and wanted to go inside or under trees or something. It took a long time before I recognised that I even had this feeling and longer still until I realised what it was.

It was caused by a sense of vulnerability or exposure to something. Yes, part of that was my pale, freckly Nordic skin panicking at the harsh Australian sun, but there was much more to it than that. The feelings were caused by the sky. There is a reason this is called Big Sky country.

I’d grown up in a young, folded land, where shade and hills  were never out of sight; where a primal sense of available shelter was always with you. Where the sun was your friend, not a seering foe to be reckoned with.

The photo above was taken on one of my road trips in Australia and captures the sense of a big sky – for me at least, which is my sense of what distinguishes Australia. This may not be the only place with big sky, but big sky is Australia.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

It is ironic that with a theme of “Unique” I should have a picture so similar to the one Michele used as a stimulus for this theme. I give myself latitude in using it as it was taken in 2003 – about 9 years before Michele’s, and in Bergen, Norway, not the USA. When I saw this small flower bed with the super high, different coloured Tulip it did indeed stimulate all the emotions and thoughts that were aroused in Michele – which is also why I took the photo!

However it also provided me with further thought. In Australia we have this thing, or at least we often beat ourselves up thinking we have this thing, that we call the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. I am not sure if this exists anywhere else, but it is where the masses desire the successful standouts to be brought down, for no apparent reason other than they dare to standout.

Mind you, there may be a reason for this sentiment, with so many of the successful businessmen of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s being crooks, shonks or at least exploitative and unpleasant people. But then, maybe that is what it takes to get ahead in business in the first place…

Ciao
Bazza.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

3 Pillars of Love: Music, Cupid and Poetry

This week’s photo challenge was difficult for me. It made me realise how much my photography has focused on scenes or things, rather than people, their lives and their emotions. There were a few photos I could have used for “Love” which were nice to look at, but they were very clichéd, and therefore also uncannily boring.

The photo I have chosen, while symbolising love, is lifeless and dull, not like love at all. However it also encompasses, with that very detachedness, my approach to photography in the past. It therefore serves as a reminder or lesson to me to be more open to people and “life”. And that is probably one of the best outcomes of love anyway.

Ciao,
Bazza