Spider Webs and Bokeh

On a sunny and frosty morning, the trees and fences were decorated with perfect, dew-spangled spider webs, so I had to go outside with the ‘proper’ camera to try to capture some. It was worth the icy fingers and toes!

Weekly Photography Challenge: Liquid

I had an image in mind immediately for this liquid challenge,  but I’m still running late…

 

Anyone with a camera and a wet Echinopsis has probably taken at least one shot of water drops in the middle of the rosette, but I had to take another one anyway!

Baling murky water out of a water trough revealed a gleaming bloom of oil slick – another photo op. How wonderful it is to have a pretty good camera that slides into my pocket!

The last image is of some creatures living in an old bathtub/pond in our garden.

Weekly Photography Challenge: Structure

Everything has structure, I guess, although not always photogenic. Still, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, photogenic must be in the eye of the photographer…

I’ve chosen one image of man-made structure, and two natural. The structure of the buds fascinated me, and the sun behind the tree highlights the structure of the branches. The old pressed glass bottles are tantalisingly displayed behind frosted glass in what was once an internal window. My Dad built shelves into one side of what used to be a sliding door and I recently added upcycled frosted glazed doors to the open side to make a shallow cupboard of sorts. I have since applied a film to the old plain glass. The plan was for more privacy while still letting in light, but I am constantly delighted by the appearance of ghostly forms through the frost.

Weekly photography Challenge: Edge

This week, an image from the edge is the Photography Challenge. Last week I was in Brunswick for a few days (Brunswick is edgy, ask anyone!), where I took this photo of Ironbark trees growing in the middle of the narrow street. Both edges were lined with cars at the time.

On Monday, we had to make a trip to Ballarat, about one hours drive from home. There’s been plenty of rain this winter, and the countryside is very damp and green. There are plenty of edges in these photos, taken from the passenger seat as we drove. The edge of the road, of the paddocks, of the railway line in the distance and the brimming farm dam…

Since then we’ve had continual rain, a phenomenon we haven’t experienced in this part of the world for many years. Everything is very soggy underfoot, dams that were almost empty are now overflowing. And the bottom edge of our property is under water!

Friday Poem: Song For The Broken

List-making is a time-honoured method of building a poem, and this poem is basically a list of attributes of a broken unhappy person – but, like Pandora’s box, there is Hope hidden at the bottom.

Split-off
Over-feminised
Conflicted
Words words
Describe you
Circumscribe you
Cannot fill you in

Clouded
Hopeless
Emasculated
Time to run away
Burnt out
Faded
Imploded
Nothing defines you

Hours of madness
And joy
And despair
Joy & Woe
In the end
Emptiness
Quicksand to the neck
Dead sea

In the end
Something else begins
Begin again.

The first image is of Reedy Swamp (aptly named!) near Shepparton, and the other two are of the very broken old harmonium at my parent’s house. Mum would have liked to have had it restored, but Dad moved it outside when some decorating was being done, and that was the end of it as a musical instrument. Years later, it is a poetic ruin, covered in fallen leaves and sticks and slowly falling apart.

Weekly Photography Challenge: Framed

How an image is “framed” when taking a photo can make all the difference between ‘meh’ and a great shot. This week’s challenge asks us to put a frame inside the frame, as it were. There’s plenty of theory to be learnt to help with framing, but some lucky people just seem to have a good “eye”, and frame their shots well without even thinking about it.

The miniature railway at Elmore is framed by the station on one side, and the fence on the other. We all climbed inside the frame of the carriage to ride around the tracks with Juniper – she loves trains. Can you tell?

On the previous day Bryan I visited the aptly named Reedy Swamp near Shepparton. I looked for a frame of trees, and found this one. The old Blitz crane is at my parents house – it was a part of my childhood. Now it’s rusty old radiator makes a frame around a Bridal Veil Creeper, and at Buda, an historic house in Castlemaine, I took a fancy to this window, which resulted in framing myself.

Friday Poem:Prayer

I had another poem in mind, but I found this one first…It seems appropriate as the Australian Government is being forced to close Manus Island refugee detention camp – not that they plan to exercise any mercy if they can help it. I’m not sure if that is forgivable…it’s certainly not excusable.

Give me compassion
Big enough to forgive
Those who have none.

Heart of Compassion,
Give me the power of love.
Burn out my ego –
It’s better to burn out
Than fade away-
But either will do
For my ego.

Burn out my obscurations!
Fade away my false self!
Empty me of everything
But Peace and Love and Empathy.

If only governments could be emptied of ego, obscurations and falseness, and filled instead with compassion. I can dream…

The first photo is a drive-by shot with my old phone during a hailstorm – very obscure! then we have a crystal from a broken chandelier, and last, the rainbow light that the sunshine summons from a faceted crystal, always so pure and beautiful, I can’t help but fetch a camera if I have the chance.

Weekly Photography Challenge: Fun!

Fun! Isn’t that the favourite photography subject of nearly everyone with a camera?! This week’s challenge theme is both very broad, and very personal, because one person’s idea of fun can be another’s idea of hell-on-earth…

We had a family day out in the Grampians on the weekend, which was extra fun because we had Matilda with us – and at nearly-eight months, she finds everything fascinating and strange, from the water rushing over the rocks, to Grandpa’s ginger ice cream.

The walk to Venus Baths, near Halls Gap, is pretty easy, even with a pram (apart from steps nearer the Baths). It’s popular in summer, a big rocky water slide for the young and adventurous. On a nippy winter afternoon, the water is only for looking at and listening to. Alex really wanted to let Tilly touch the water, but couldn’t find a safe enough spot, so she’ll have to wait until she’s much bigger. The same goes for ginger ice cream – vanilla might have been more fun for her!

Weekly Photography Challenge: Narrow

This week’s photography challenge is to portray “Narrow” – I guess that’s actually quite a broad suggestion…

I could have chosen many things, but it’s 5 (5!!!) years since we set off halfway around the world to visit the beautiful Pacific North West, where we spent far too little time exploring the narrow waters of Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Strait, so for my own nostalgia I am sharing a few photos from that trip.

We are hoping to return next year – I’d love to stay much longer than a month and really soak up the place, but we’ll see!

Friday Poem:Grampians

I’ve gone into the back catalog for my poem today, but the photos are fresh from this afternoon. We glimpsed spectacular cloud hanging over the mountains as we drove home, so I pulled the phone/camera out of my pocket and shot through the rainy windscreen.

Little, old mountains,
Ancient bones of an ancient land
Lie sprawled across the boundary of the plains;
Jagged and crumbling peaks
Are cloaked in vegetation
Scarcely younger than the rocks themselves.
The ancient crone
Hugs secrets to her breast.