Empathy - Eric Kim (Sun 26 Mar 2017)

Vic - "10 years since I was last here, but he remembered me" - Downtown Milkbar and Coffee Lounge / Manuka / Canberra (Mon 27 Mar 2017)

Eric Kim on Empathy:

To shoot personal street photography is to only photograph what appeals in your heart. To use your street photography as a tool to empathise with your subject. To show your own soul through the photos you shoot of others.

via How to Shoot Personal Street Photography by Eric Kim.

Photos - Pamela Bradley (2016)

books - Glebe (Sun 21 Aug 2016)

Pamela Bradley on Photos:

with photos you can never really tell: one captured moment could mean many different things.

via Maybe I'll Be Cleverer Tomorrow A Reflection on a Complex and Often Prickly Father/Daughter Relationship by Pamela Bradley.

Being Open To .. - Streetshooter (Wed 29 Jun 2016)

blue / ball - memories of.. - Macdonaldtown (Wed 29 Jun 2016)

Streetshooter on Being Open:

we need to be observant of our vision and our feelings. The photos are out there if you are open to them. People are out there too and we need to be open to them more then anything else.

via Rest Easy Post by Streetshooter.

Not sure why I made a photo of this, but for some reason I could not pass it without taking a few moments to see the beauty in this banal scene.

Stance - Streetshooter (Wed 11 May 2016)

trees / rocks / shadows - Wilpena (Tue 12 Apr 2016)

Streetshooter on Stance:

I felt an energy come into me, not over me but into me. [..] What was born back then was not just me as a photographer but a photographer with a stance. I mean it gave birth to a realization of my own self worth. [..]

I don’t practice photography, I live it. I don’t just make photos, my photos define me as well. [..]

It requires a firm appreciation of the whole that we are and a total committed love of what we do and why we do it and how we do it.

via Streets of Phila … A Visual Diary … Page 76 … Unheard Voices … The Stance | Streetshooter by Streetshooter.

On Photos and Remembering - jtinseoul (Thu 13 Aug 2015)

Deb, Sophie and Kris - Blackwattle Bay / Sydney (Jul 2004)

jtinseoul on Photos and Remembering:

the most important photos to take are of the people around us. They, surely, will be the ones we remember.

via I used to think the best photos were those taken in a documentary style.. by jtinseoul.

And it is so true. Thanks jtinseoul for the reminder.

Fire Stairs - Lexington Ave / Harlem (Thu 18 Aug 2011)

Was drawn to the long shadows of the fire stairs on the wall. Worked the corner pretty hard for a few minutes trying to capture something interesting on my tiny Canon S95.

A Crowded City of Colour - New York City (Wed 17 Aug 2011)

A Crowded City of Colour - New York City (Wed 17 Aug 2011)

Location:New York - Cnr 48th and 8th

Wind in the Willows - Qingpu / China (20 Oct 2004)

Trees are exceptional people - Wind in the Willows - Qingpu / China - 20 Oct 2004 (picasa)
"Trees are exceptional, people [..]
Belonging fully to earth but living also in sky
They have no death but only transformations."

From Future Now by Tessa Ransford

Jenny always loved this photo which I took while Jenny and Joanne participated in the 2004 World Dragon Boat Championships at Qingpu, a lakeside race course, about 50 km to the west of Shanghai. I had it professionally printed in A4 and A3 sizes with a selection of my favourite photos. Jenny always wanted me to frame it and put it up somewhere in the living area so we could remember our trip to Qingpu and Shanghai as well as enjoy the intricate and subtle details of the sunset silhouetted wind blown willow.

Whenever Jenny went into Hospital we always put photos up around her room and it was always a great way to generate a bit of conversation with the many Hospital Satff that were in and out of her room.

When Jenny went into ICU for the final week of her life, I pulled the A4 print of this photo out of the pile of prints I had had made and placed it on a column in front of her bed in the vague hope that she might see and recognise it.

On the day before Jenny died Joanne picked up the photo and moved it across Jenny's face and we were excited to see her eyes follow it - the first sign to us of some improvement in her condition. I went off to an outrigging canoe training session that Monday night happier than I had been in a long time and I arranged to see her on the way home, well after the normal visiting hours.

When I arrived into the ICU about 9.30pm, it was a different place to the busy and noisy place it was during the day. It was very quiet and the lights were dimmed apart from a soft spot light above Jenny's bed. She was asleep and looked very relaxed, the most relaxed I had seen her in the two weeks she had been in hospital. I decided not to wake her and sat quietly at her bed side and watched her steady breathing. I spoke quietly and proudly to Jenny's dedicated nurse about Jenny's life. I left Jenny that night not knowing that it would be the last time I would see her alive.

At 9.16am on Tue 30 Jun 2009 (the next morning), Jenny left us without Joanne or I by her bedside. Yet I know, Jenny was not alone, as the above photo, the one she loved so much, looked over her as she broke free from this world.

Just as the above poem extracts indicates, it might be nice to think that Jenny transformed herself into our memories:

They have no death but only transformations

It is through our memories of Jenny that she lives on.

I will frame both A4 and A3 prints once I find a place for them and myself. For the moment I am happy to have written this post (which i had planned to do for a long time) which was inspired by the above poem extract. Thanks Charlotte.

Thanks to LottieP for allowing me to find the above extract from a poem by Tessa Ransford via her post of a beautiful poem titled The White Stone of Lewis.

(My first post from an iPad while on a weeks holiday at Coolangatta.)

Photo: Wilson Street Lock - Newtown (Sun 14 Apr 2002)

Wilson Street Lock - Newtown - Sun 14 Apr 2002 (photo.net)
The above photo was taken at the entrance door of an Anitque Factory called Original Finish (thanks Charlotte) on Wilson Street in Newtown.

I drive past here on days I do outrigger training. Often walk past here on weekends, as the area has unlimited parking and is convenient to the Cafes and Shops of King Street Newtown.

I had seen quite a few photos of this type on photo.net, and for some reason I noticed the lock and decided to photograph it up close using macro mode. It seemed to be more interesting cropped to a square format.

Surprisingly, a few days after uploading it to photo.net, I noticed that it seemed to be getting more views than my typical photo uploads. Normally, I would get the occasional viewer and would be lucky to get 20 to 30 views in the first week and hopefully a couple of comments. Somehow this photo found itself rotating on and off photo.net's home page and this explained the surge in views.

When I looked at this photo tonight after many years [1], I was surprised to see that it had reached almost 63,000 views. This has to be my most viewed photo on photo.net. Not a lot by popular photo.net photographers standards, but good for some one like me.

Some memories follow. I bought a small digital camera in Decmeber 2000 just before we went to the Cook Islands for a Holiday (see picasa). It was an original Canon IXUS. It cost $1,600 duty free and was all of 2 Mega Pixels (1,600 by 1,200 pixels). A small, cheap and out of date mobile phone camera would easily surpase this IXUS's pixel capabilities.

It was a great little camera and I used it to capture our memories.

I did not know anything about photography. When I overheard someone at Lunch talking about a web site called photo.net, I quickly found it and after I had figured out how the site worked, I joined up as member on Fri 16 Mar 2001. The site was a community that allowed the uploading of photos for comments, rating, and written critiques. There were also forums to discuss all things about photography, cameras, accessories and technique. It was the original photo sharing community. I can recall even the founders of flickr being ordinary members of photo.net just like me. They created flickr to develop a community that photo.net struggled to move to.

I met some great people. Also learnt a lot there and had just as much fun.

[1] I have not been really active on photo.net since late 2004 - ran out of quota to upload photos, but still lurk there.

Twins - Fraser Island (April 2002)

Twins (Joanne and Jenny) - Fraser Island (April 2002)

Photos: Intersection - Victor Hugo Markets - Toulouse - Sep 2009

Intersection - Victor Hugo Markets - Toulouse - Sep 2009
Like the converging lines of the receding lane way. Really draws the eye in. Easy to find this effect in the narrow streets of Europe. Also like the Victor Hugo Sign on the circular concrete car park ramp. The current Market location was built around the late 1950's.

Taken near the following Intersection Photo (posted 16 Aug 2010). The circular car park ramp can be seen beyond the support of the Red Sign No Entry Sign.

Victor Hugo Markets - Toulouse/France - Sep 2009

Photos: Brisbane - Wed 01 Sep 2010

Brisbane - Wed 01 Sep 2010
Brisbane - Wed 01 Sep 2010
Brisbane - Wed 01 Sep 2010

Photos: Tower Bridge Exhibition - London - Sun 6 Sep 2009

Tower Bridge Exhibition - London - Sun 6 Sep 2009
Tower Bridge Exhibition - London - Sun 6 Sep 2009
A couple views of London's Tower Bridge.

Photos: Intersection - Brussels/Belgium - Fri 11 Sep 2009

Intersection - Brussels/Belgium - Fri 11 Sep 2009
Lots for me to like in this Intersection photo, with the colours standing out, particularly the red/greens, the yellow/blacks and the red/oranges.

Photos: Intersection - Singapore - 29 Sep 2009

Intersection - Singapore - 29 Sep 2009
Could not help but photograph this scene. Like the two painted crossings. Waited for a car, which luckily enough was red. Wow, almost a year since we were Singapore.

Photos: Venice Graffiti (Sep 2009)

Red - Graffiti/Venice - Sep 2009 (picasa)

Wake Up Italy - Graffiti/Venice - Sep 2009 (picasa)

Recently noted that I was surprised by the amount of Graffiti in Venice. Did a little searching and found this post - Strange Geographies: Venetian Graffiti (30 May 2010) - by Ransom Riggs where he writes:

One thing that surprised me about Venice was that graffiti was everywhere. There’s almost as much art on the streets as there was in churches and museums [..] once I stopped being offended I started being fascinated. While the oil-and-canvas masterworks hanging in the city’s galleries may reflect of Venice the Renaissance era, it’s what’s painted on the outside of the museum wall that reflects what Venetians — at least the ones wielding cans of spray-paint — are thinking now.

Photos: A Rainy Day in Venice (Wed 16 Sep 2009)

A Rainy Day in Venice - Wed 16 Sep 2009 (picasa)

A Rainy Day in Venice - Wed 16 Sep 2009 (picasa)

Just a couple of simple photos to remember a Rainy Day in Venice. I like the colour, scaffolding, the graffiti (it's everywhere which surprised me for such a historical city) and in particular the umbrellas in both photographs.

Really enjoy Jonathan Walker's writings on Photography and have learnt a lot from him.

In particular, I have really enjoyed his writings of his experiences of taking photographs in Venice. The resulting series of photographs, titled Let us Burn the Gondolas, is fantastic.

Photos: Intersection - Toulouse/France - Sep 2009

Victor Hugo Markets - Toulouse/France - Sep 2009

Photos: Intersection - Shanghai - May 2010

Intersection - Shanghai - May 2010
Just another intersection photo. Could say there are some Jeffrey Smart influences in seeing this photo. Was firstly, drawn in by the Red Car and Front Red Sign. Then was pleased to see the receding Red Signs as well as the Blue Signs. All came together nicely. The most complicated version of the colour theme photos I have posted so far.

Another and closer view ..

Intersection/Another view - Shanghai - May 2010

Favourite Photos: Macau/China 2010 - Green and Yellow

Green and Yellow - Macau - Mon 02 Aug 2010 - (picasa)
Just back from a week in Macau for the 7th IDBF Club Crew World Dragon Boat Championships. Had a chance to wander around yesterday and found this photo which continues with the same colour theme as Blue (Fowey/UK - Sep/2010) and Green (Shanghai - May/2010).