Port Kembla + Bulli

The last few days have been busy for me, not with work but shooting landscapes everyday after work. Why? i'm not sure, I just had an urge to get back out there and shoot some landscapes. Wollongong is lucky enough to be on the east coast, surrounded by beautiful and picturesque coastlines which make for wonderful photo opportunities.

The usual set up was used for these photos, trusty nex 5n with the pretty average SEL16 which unfortunately is not very sharp, especially in the corners where it starts to smudge and get pretty average. However, stopping down to about f8 makes it relatively acceptable. I'm not a pixel peeper so to me, they're ok. Not sure how they'd look blow up to large size prints, but certainly online they're fine.

Anyway, short and sweet. enjoy the photos.

Bulli pool. 

Twenty-nine.

Industrial landscapes #3. Sony NEX, 5n, SEL1628, 25s, 100iso @f4.

Twenty-eight

Industrial Landscape #2. Sony NEX 5n, SEL1628, 30s, 200iso @f4

Keeping with the industrial landscape theme, I ventured down to the wharf and tried to find some interesting geometrical shapes and colours to contrast against the clear skies over Gladstone. I was immediately drawn to the colours of the shipping containers and how precisely they were stacked on top of each other.

My idea of industrial landscapes is to try and capture the juxtaposition of industry and natural landscape. I'm choosing to photograph these images at night as I feel that the black night sky compliments well with the sometimes highly colourful industrial objects and machinery. By shooting at night I can somewhat maintain a bit of continuity in the series by having the sky a similar shade all the time.

We'll see how we go..

Twenty-seven

Industrial landscape #1. Sony NEX 5n, SEL1628, 30s, 400iso @f2.8

It's been a while since i've gone out at wee hours of the night to go and take photos - it certainly is nice to get back into it.

I've always been interested in landscape photography, I may not've been very good at it, but always enjoyed it. I'm (un)fortunate enough to live in a mining town, so there is never a shortage of of subjects to photograph. I've always been interested in 'industrial landscapes' trying to capture beauty of some sort in often cluttered and not-so-pretty industrial work sites.

I was lucky enough to be able to 'wander' into this worksite tonight and roam around and take photos as I pleased. Whether I was trespassing or not is a different story, i'll assume that I wasn't.. The photo gods were on my side tonight and left me with a perfectly clear sky to capture the milky way in the skies above my rock pile.

I was drawn to this pile as it reminded me of the sand dunes in the Sahara, the way the pile would naturally form beautiful shapes and the way the light from across the street fell on my subject. I tried to capture the shadows on the pile to add depth and contrast into the shot, or else i'd have been left with a pretty flat and boring pile of dirt but a nice sky.

Hope you enjoy.

An ode to my unsung inspirations.

26/365

This is going to be a different type of photo for my 365. Some of you may like it, some of you wont. When I was at uni my mate Donald used to say that my worked was heavily influenced by Martin Parr and Mark Power, which I would often reply in distain with certain expletives that are better left to the imagination as I found their work to be boring, uninspiring.

To say that my work reminded my mate of Martin Parr and Mark Power made my blood boil, as an enthusiastic and up and coming documentary photography student at RMIT, I wanted to be nothing like those two, I wanted to be like Oculi and Ashley Gilbertson. Photojournalists, documentary photographers documenting social issues in the world, seeing the unseen, spreading news and imagery in the world, making a difference - oh how the times have changed.

Mark Power and Martin Parr are different in the world of photojournalism/documentary photography. They have a very, stand-offish approach to photography. Yes they will get in close occasionally and get that shot, however, as a whole, they document the environment, they capture the whole scene. The beauty in their photography is that it makes you look into the image. Their images are sometimes quite picturesque and look like paintings, some of their work reminds me of 'Where's Wally' - Martin Parr in particular - as he captures the whole scene, such as a beach, and makes you look into the image to see what it is that he's seen that is so special. At a glance it looks like nothing, a snap shot, but the more you look, the more you explore the image, you realise how good it really is.

source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlsRIZ2_KA1mjn6ITTEkjhwNy31rj3aUSQLCx_AY4eWSPENIwV-9kySbYJ_8uyIFBA9t5B-BMpBofpmOmMAL_HU0Q9u4Hg_vkfjKHCusscI3nfTnPcC2-rOfrfm_RdUV7Xlku39XRt8I/s1600/P1070003.JPG

I don't know what it is, perhaps my subconscious, but my work (personal) really is inspired by these two. My style of photography is very observant, I like to capture a scene as a whole, I like to see what else is happening in the frame, not just the subject. Hard to imagine now that these two photographers I once snubbed off as hack photographers who didn't belong in Magnum, have now become my idols. Lesson is, never judge too early.. 

Mark Power.

Mark Power.

Martin Parr. 

So lets just get things clear, I don't claim to be as good as Parr or Power, nor do I claim that my image is anything like theirs - it certainly is not - however, there are aspects of it, that are influenced heavily by them. 

Hope you enjoyed a trip down memory lane with me, will hopefully have some more Parr/Power 'inspired' images in the future!

Sources:

- http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image/Martin-Parr-2.jpg

- http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2010/6/9/1276097665176/Mark-Powers- photograph-of-001.jpg

- http://www.fotopolis.pl/galeria/Warszawa.-February-2005.jpg

11/365

Sony NEX 5n, SEL1628, 1/40th, 100iso @f9.0