ethereal bushland

This is probably one of my favourites. It’s an area that was hit by a bushfire sometime last year. At first I thought it was just a backburn but then large areas of land seem to have been affected. Many of the leaves have been bleached by the fire and add an unexpected glow to the scene. 25mm equiv. 1/50 sec f11 ISO 640. xPan setting.

Clouds over hill

One of my least favourite things when going on a photo tour is constant sunny days. Although we try to adapt to circumstances and in some cases contrasty lighting can work in our favour, you can’t beat the contribution of a cloudy sky. In this case I think it does more than it’s fair share in making this image. A very painterly feel and not distracting from the rest of the image. Taken in Guildford, Vic.

winding creek

One of my favourite scenes in the countryside. Often during dry spells these river beds dry up. While they are still interesting scenes, the reflections add significant depth to the image.

Australian countryside

A series of images to follow from a recent trip to Victoria. Australia as you might know has large expanses of land between major cities, especially travelling from one state to another. Some of these images are from NSW and some from Victoria. I made an effort to leave the main highway between to two states. Passing through small towns now cut off from main traffic you get to see and stop at locations to explore the countryside not visible from the highway. As I’m very poor (read lazy) at taking notes on locations I can only be approximate now on where individual images were taken. In fact, having a fading memory, I may now have very little recollection!

Fujifilm acros

After many days of rain, today it was replaced by morning mist. Just enough to throw the background more ‘out of focus’ in some cases. So, I’ve continued with the square format for these images in addition to a B&W conversion, specifically Acros on the Fuji platform.

For some reason I had overlooked this sim up to now. Maybe because I had many options with Silver Efex. In all these images I have upped the contrast just to give them a little extra punch. I’ve yet to find a subject that doesn’t look good with this option.

tree conspiracy

How do you study photography? I passed by this shack/barn a few kms from my place. Flat lighting and not much going on. I don’t remember seeing this shack before even though I’ve driven down this road many times. I didn’t have a long lens on the Fuji but I did have another camera handy (A7RIII with a 35-70mm lens). A natural instinct may be to isolate the shack from the surroundings. Yes, I could have done that in post also. Though lighting conditions are not ideal, I at least wanted to capture the scene and return later, probably in the morning when the light reveals more detail.

I’m happy with this composition. In particular the ‘tree of interest’ in the foreground and even the brambles near the fence. The natural landscape here is grass and trees. It’s as if the shack has hidden itself among the trees. I’m not much of a fan of postcard pictures, so I don’t look for those scenes or compositions. After all, there’s not much of a story in a sunset. I’m rather looking for a scene in which there may be a story or perhaps something of hidden significance. That’s not to say it can’t be a beautiful image either. If you’ve ever photographed the same subject under different lighting conditions, they may evoke different feelings. If you have the patience to study an image for some time and create a dialogue in your own mind about it you can go about your creative process in a more purposeful manner.

Try It and See

I’m revisiting a subject I’ve written about in the past. I moved up from M4/3 to Medium Format. Nothing to be disappointed about in that. I still have the Olympus EM5 MKIII. I’m not likely to sell it either. To my vision it produces beautiful graphic images, as if they are pencil drawings. In fact, if my MF was to go to the great studio in the sky, I think it’s the camera I would keep. Whatever shortcomings it may have due to sensor size, it’s not enough to give me grief. Also, it’s unusual for me to go below f5.6 for landscape work. The lenses that I use are the pro versions with a constant f2.8. which will double on full-frame due to half size sensor. And the size and weight of the camera with lens is a major plus. And did I mention first class IS? Just sayin’ this 4/3 setup holds it’s own in image quality under normal landscape shooting conditions.

Saddles and such

I’m wondering if I’m stuck in this groove forever now. That is the square format. I had forgotten about it and that my camera was set to that mode from the last session. Looking at the photos taken today, I’m not disappointed. It’s an experiment gone right. I couldn’t identify the objects hanging from the ceiling here but they complement the old saddles nicely. I’m also enjoying the red and yellow highlights in the background. This display of goods belongs to the iron horse man. Some more photos to come with background story.

Putting black where it doesn't belong

Here’s the original

The original image shows very little contrast. I mean minimal. You may not even consider taking this shot due to it’s invisibility. When converting to b&w image I like to experiment a little. Increasing the contrast significantly (adding black) brings out the details. This image had an extraordinary amount of texture hidden in the original exposure.. I have to see that to some extent and for which reason I went ahead and took this photo. Bizarre looking tentacles are simply water tracks in the sand. And because the image has become unrecognisable for what it is, scale is also difficult to work out making us think a lot more about what we are seeing.

Inside the square

Continuing with the square conversation… or, following up on the self imposed moratorium on non-square formats…I reminded myself to keep to this. I lived in a house many years ago that had a very big front window. We always enjoyed the wide view of the world looking out. You could watch the comings and goings of the neighbourhood. So, the question arises why we like looking at the world through smaller ‘windows’? Is it the intimacy of the viewpoint? Like spying through a keyhole? The challenge is to fill the view with significance. Or, to use the shape to highlight a patters or some other geometry or interplay of lines. After all the square format is powerful with both dimensions getting equal weight or importance. Let’s see how we can take advantage of it. I’m going to stick to it for a while.

Exploring other formats

I took this photo in the Flinders Ranges 20 years ago. It’s one of my favourites from the trip. I didn’t take many in this square format which I really like. It may be a format more suited to other types of photography than landscape. Since having the Fuji GFX I’m happy to shoot in 4x3 as I prefer the more compact format as compared to the standard 3x2. Square though is another level of restriction. I’d like to produce a series, not necessarily landscape using this. It’s not that daring since the Fuji has the ‘safety’ feature of keeping the full-size image and not just the crop version. Still a good exercise I think.

mouthful of grass

Petrified Orang utan with a mouthful of grass. ; ) There was an episode of the Simpson’s that featured ‘People who look like things’. There’s a lot of that in nature. Except this is things that look like people… or maybe animals.

Local Xpan

Modified Fuji Pro 400H

Standard RAW conversion

Fuji Pro 400H simulation

I was so close to buying a medium format film camera like the Shen Hao 4x5 or similar a few years back. A romantic idea combined with a desire to work with the film process and enjoy the slower method of producing images. I also like Portra film stock and used it extensively with a film camera previously. To cut a long story short - it didn’t happen. Plan B was to get some of Leica’s new film stock and put it through a 35mm film camera. I borrowed a Contax G2 Rangefinder camera for that purpose then thought why use a 35mm camera and get lesser results than from MF? You can see a mixture of thoughts here basically all revolving around film. So, I approached it from all angles to try to make it work but in the end I have an amazing MF Fujifilm camera more than capable of producing stellar results without the need for further expenditure. Colour grading has infinite options if you don’t like the stock standard results from either RAW or other simulations. I began with Fuji Pro 400H sim and modified it to suit my taste. Above is a selection of conversion options.