Well this post has been much delayed, partly as I have been busy with other things (even a photoimaginator has to cook, pay bills, clear out junk etc) and also because I was not sure if I wanted to include these next two images in my blog. They are not great images and I generally want to restrict the images I publish to ones that I love and that I hope will inspire or move you in some way. Yet they do complete the series on what photographic club judges limit their imagination to; cuddly animals, cute kids, ugly critters and funny foreigners. Well the first two were quite easy. Mmmm … ugly critters, well I don’t have any close-ups of spiders or snakes, much loved by the judges, but I do have this little beauty (well I suppose it’s mother loved it) taken by the Chobe river in Botswana.

And as for funny foreigners, well this makes me uncomfortable at two levels. Firstly, it is too easy to make fun of people from other cultures and other traditions, Ii prefer to find human differences fascinating and a cause for wonder. Secondly I really don’t have the shear nerve of pointing my camera at other people who may well not want to be photographed.  So I confess, I didn’t take this next picture of a couple of cool dudes; Muse&Mentor did that whilst we were out on the Great Ocean Road (Victoria) with some dear friends, and I had popped into the gas station.

So now I have explained whilst I don’t like photo clubs, too many competitions with boring judges and the same boring images, with those few daring to innovate being derided. So if you have had the same experience then take heart, you are not alone. Equally if you have found a better club then I hope you get much more out of it than I did.

Well this continues the theme of my last post, my take on camera club completion winners of cute animals, cute children , ugly animals and ‘funny’ foreigners.

These images were taken on a sunny day, whilst visiting some friends of a friend, on a very modest 5mp camera. I tried playing with them in photoshop and everything spoiled the dreamy impressionistic feeling. So these are unphotoshopped images. The moral being that sometimes you just leave an image alone.

Now those of you who live in the UK know it all too well; for others … we have had a few storms recently; UK is full of water. Indeed huge storms have lashed our sea towns and I, I have seen none of it.  I have either been in Oz (well not all bad then ) or busy with a new job, or much routine admin to be done; and I don’t live anywhere near the best of UK’s coastal scenery. Frustrating for a photographer who loves waves. But today I had a few hours spare and took a trip a trip to Newhaven on the Sussex coast, not the best but OK, thinking that after yet another storm yesterday there should be some good waves battering on the harbour walls. Zippo. Zilch. Sea was calm. Grrr! So I am off waves for now. This image comes from Kings Canyon, Northern Territory, AU, and the nearest waves are hundreds of miles away. And yes, the rocks really are orange red, often weathered into strange shapes and patterns such as this. And I almost walked past, but then spotted this cliff section. Fascinating. And the moral of the story; sometimes luck plays a part in capturing that special image.

Now I do have a fondness for preserved steam railways. It is not nostalgia, I do just about remember them as a kid and they scared me, great smoky clanking monsters, and at the back of the apartment where I lived there were some allotments and behind them some railway marshalling yards; the sounds of them getting up steam in the early morning, struggling and wheezing, was the stuff of nightmares. So it was as an adult I got to appreciate them, these extraordinary examples of pre-electronic precision power engineering.

And I would take my children to visit the preserved steam railways, of which there are a couple near me; the Watercress Line and the Bluebell Line, and filled with tales and images of Thomas the Tank Engine they would have a great day out. Time passed and my children grew up, and no more steam leviathons for me until a year ago when I took myself off for a few hours for a return visit. And very photogenic these great machines are, yet, being true to myself, it is sometimes the small details that fascinate me. So here are a couple of images, one converted to black & white for that bygone days feel. And rather than the most perfect picture of the whole engine, I hoped to capture some sense of the feel of these wonderful scary monsters.

So it was Christmas Eve and Muse&Mentor had to go into Hobart to sort out some financial transactions for the Mother. And I got dropped off by the harbour as I had nothing to contribute to the financial stuff.

And harbours, like all boundaries between earth and sea are interesting, places of contrasting textures and influences. Yet this day was dull and grey and everything seemed dull and listless.My photographic style seems to need light, whether it is bright and sunny or dark and stormy; dull, grey and listless does not work.

And even the reflections in the water seemed dull grey and listless. And then, briefly, a patch of blue sky appeared, and light with it. The water came to life; a few shots and it was gone.

Take your camera, take your opportunities.

In the past I would have taken a photo such as this, smiled and then disparaged it as ‘chocolate box’, just too nice. I got a profound slap from Muse&Mentor for this. So I reflected and reconsidered. It is a lovely image from the Lake District. Crummock Water to be precise, a place I love and have walked both around and on some of the peaks that tower over it. It is pretty and is meaningful to me. And the moral of this … you may have done the same and disparaged some of your images as not being arty enough, so rethink, are they pretty, do they move you and if yes then they may convey some of your passion and move others.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I had to do relatively little to this image; other than recognise it was there for the taking. There is a group of rocks at one end of this Tasmanian beach that really is a strange orange/yellow. And the sand on the beach is incredibly reflective so that you get the reflections of the rock and the blue sky.

Now I have said it before in these pages, yet it is worth repeating; I am well aware that circumstances provide me with opportunities to travel far and wide and that not all are fortunate enough to be in that position. Yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t options to create images in what is close at hand.

So I could lie to you and tell you that this image came from layers of waves rolling into a beach. In actuality I just saw textures and patterns in Muse&Mentor’s curtains that appealed … sunlight filtered through an insect grid creating curious diffraction patterns on blue curtains. One camera, some puzzled looks from Muse&Mentor and the process starts. Flip the images onto their side, intensify the contrast, layer and voila; pure abstract, see waves if yiou wish, or the music of the spheres or whatver takes your imagination. Photoimagination.

Now whilst I do love to photograph waves crashing on the shore, Gaia and her daughter Tethys dancing and playing, sometimes gently and sometimes in fury, I also have a fascination with estuaries and rias (river valleys part drowned in post glaciation sea level rises) where their very enclosure precludes all but the smallest waves. In such places you can watch the blurred boundary between land and sea as tides come and go over marshes and mud flats. These places can be just as treacherous as the crashing waves, with quicksands and tides travelling faster than you can run over the flat sands and creeks. The preceding images come from the ocean side of South Arm, Tasmania. Yet scarce a hundred metres away across the dunes is Ralphs Bay, a tidal lagoon almost entirely surrounded by land. A quiet place of gentle waters, mud flats, wading birds and small clusters of houses. I got to spend too little time there, after all you can only do so much in one trip, and yet I hope to return to explore more of this ‘in between’ world.