Triptych

Early in the year, not long after lockdown, I spent a morning down near Philip Island. I’d intended to reshoot a photo I’d made during a previous trip, but at dawn this time, with the full (and naive) expectation that I’d receive perfect weather, perhaps a sunrise, and I could improve on my previous efforts. It wasn’t to be. It was grim, and I was eaten by mosquitoes, and the tide was too high, and so I gave up.

I ventured off in search of another place to capture something. Why waste a perfectly good 3am rise? Not far from Tenby Point, where the tree photo I was imagining had eluded me, is a small hamlet comprised of a town, a couple of shops, a wharf and a caravan park.

While I was there I decided to try some intentional camera movement techniques. It was drizzling and overcast. Not particularly inspiring, but I could do something abstract that embodied the mood, something impressionistic and aesthetic.

I picked a location that included a rather underwhelming bit of coastline, with a seaweed-stained beach and some old pylons, and divided it into three segments, making an image of each by closing down the shutter, placing a neutral density filter in front of the lens, and then wiggling the camera during the exposure. Because they all relate a single scene, when I processed the images I framed them as a triptych. I’m actually pretty pleased with the way they worked out.

Picture perfect

We are free to roam again. Anna and I headed to where vineyards, farms and goldfield settlements paint an historical tapestry across a stretch starting from Warrandyte and Hurstbridge to Lancefield and Daylesford. I didn’t take my Sony, having no intention of doing more than enjoying the day. And it was a lovely day, with the dazzling Melbourne sun that bakes the ground and sets the sky shimmering, and a hot northerly tugging at the trees. We enjoyed the meandering back roads, and ate at a typical country pub in Daylesford before sauntering along the streets, poking at Art Deco collections and cooing over craft clothing and vintage jewellery. At Daylesford Lake, where we wandered along the encircling path, stopping at all the rights viewing spots to take in the pine shrouded hills and the well-sited houses.

And through all of this, I began snapping shots on my phone. Plenty of the scenery, and of Anna in her dazzling yellow dress. I didn’t intend for more than private memories, but when I came home (and after a long rest and a cool shower to wash away the dirt of the day), I shoved them into my favourite app, Prisma, to see what art I could make. And here you have it: a postcard story.

I actually really like the tone of these images. The blues are diluted almost grey, the colours in general muted except for the deepest greens and brightest yellows, and the sky just a hint below washed out white. I have no idea how Prisma creates this tonal pallet, but now I have a mission. To put these photos into Affinity Photo, figure out the tonal transformations, and then save it as a preset so I can render photos with the same nostalgic quality. So next blog post, you might see the photo equivalent of these pictures.

Changing Colours

One of the joys of photography is watching the landscape as it transforms through the hour before and after sunset or sunrise. The sequence of photographs here were taken either side of the sun setting at Cape Woolamai in Victoria’s southern coast. The first image has a soft golden light consistent with the “golden hour”. When the sun reaches the horizon, the light is intense and the shadows cooler. Right at sunset, the light’s temperature has warmed further, bathing the landscape in orange and red hues. And once down, all that is left is the deepening blue of the twilight sky reflected in the ocean and the darkening rocks, with only the faintest hint of the sun (now below the horizon) remaining.

All these images were taken using a neutral density and a polarising filter, with exposure times close to or at 30 seconds. The use of long exposure is a technique I enjoy, because it simplifies the scene and creates a sense of tranquility that matches how I feel, even when I’m watching a surging ocean. In this case, the waves were three or more meters high - enough to shatter over the tops of the rock formations you can see here, which reach two or three stories above the ground.

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