Finishing My This Week in Litter Project

I’ve decided to finish my TWIL project (This Week in Litter) not because highlighting litter is not an import reminder of how us humans treat the natural world but that I have learnt a lot making the photos and have probably reached the point where I can confidently shot from the hip using the back screen on my new olympus camera, without interrupting my walk, by more than a pace or two.
 

As I started this project I would stop, nicely frame the rubbish in the view finders and take the photo bending over. Worked fine, but people tend to give you strange looks if you are photography rubbish on the ground. I soon figured out I needed to be more discreet. Just facing the camera down at hip level and using the back screen to compose worked better. The only other obstacles were getting focus and exposure right (because both are hard to gauge off the back screen at the best of times, harder when this screen is essentially arms length away). Well I just needed to trust the camera, put it in P mode and used the Autofocus. A couple of early photos showed camera blur, but I took hundreds of photos and the muscle memory soon kicked in. Stop switch the camera on, move the camera to frame the rubbish, press the 2X button if necessary, half press the shutter, wait a fraction of a second and then roll to fully press the shutter (all in a second or so).

The results where very suitable. The photos not the rubbish

PhotoProjectr :: TWIL7 Sunshine Coast & Brisbane

This is a composite This Week in Litter project was was on the Sunshine Coast part of the time and in Brisbane later. I saw a lot more litter, surprisingly more. The biggest sock was the amount of litter aggregated by the homeless sleeping rough on the streets and parks around Brisbane



The other obvious thing was that Brisbane has lots of smokers and they throw their butts around indiscriminately, pretty much everywhere and hundreds if not thousands.

PhotoProject :: TWIL6 a slight surprise

I’m in the middle of the sunshine coast, north of Brisbane and I was a little surprises at the general lack of litter on the beach, in parks and main tourist areas. I did notice these signs, and it looks like they are generally working up here. Well except for the every present cigarettes butts (again to many to usefully photograph individually).

I did find two locals that obviously can’t read the signs.

 

PhotoProject :: Twil 5 en Nouvelle Caledonie

I had to stop photographing cigarette butts, because there would have been many hundreds.

PhotoProject : This Week In Litter 4

Again less litter as I only had a couple of walks. Wow so many cigarette butts thrown onto pine needles, lucky its been wet! Third week of my  #TWIL project

PhotoProject :: This Week In Litter 3

Not quite as much litter, because I was out walking less. Still mainly plastics. Third week of my #twil Project.

PhotoProject :: This Week In Litter 2

Just discarded items I noticed (and photographed) as I was walking around, this week. Second week of my #twil project

PhotoProject :: This week in litter

Photographing rubbish might seem strange thing to do with a camera,and it probably is. However there has been much in the news recently about our two largest supermarkets here in Victoria no longer giving customers single use plastic bags. The dominant reasons given is these bags are disposed of carelessly, clogging out water ways and damaging marine environments. I walk around such places often, usually with a camera and although I often see plastic in the litter I don’t see such bags. So I though I’d start a photographic straw pole and record any litter on my walks. I actually did find such a supermarkets bag full of rubbish (that's how most bags seem to get used) But throw into a vacant block!

I was actually expecting to mainly see plastic bottles (mainly water bottles, Styrofoam cups and takeaway coffee cups and mainly their lids. i did photograph several of these. However a couple of items surprised me. Firslyt burst ballons (found at three separate locations?

the other item that at first puzzled me was little plastic bags part filled and tied up, but discarded in people’s front yards or beside paths? Then I realized what they contained. Hardly the spirit of their creations!