Photowalks Resuming (at last)

The lengthy covid-19 lockdowns and some personal health reasons, meant I stopped running Photowalks some time ago. I'm pleased to announce I am resuming them in conjunction with MGA (the Monash Gallery of Art). There will now be a small fee (to help cover the administration), and I encourage anyone with a camera (including phones) to come along.

Sunday June 12th. 1:00pm

Meet at Monash Gallery of Art

860 Ferntree Gully Road

Wheelers Hill, VIC 3150

Note registration is now via the mga eventbrite site or events on their web page,

Smashing sounds of summer

I enjoyed the first of the Monash council’s Sounds of Summer concert, which featured Georgia Ray as a support to the Vaudervile Smash. I hadn’t heard them before but they were great full of energy and very funky. Lots of great photo opportunities, including a series of multi photo panoramas. The lakeside venue at the mga gallery was great but perhaps the crowd was less than expected.
 
 

Sketching in the Presence of Original French Masterworks

I had a wonderful time sketching again (it was the second event at mga, thanks also to frank of last peek drawing events) in front of original works, sketches photos, prints and poster of the french masters Degas, Lautrec, Daumier and Atget. This session of figure drawing was based on a ballerina, perhaps not a theme I would pick but the challenge of the short poses and trying out a range of medium keep me focused and enjoying the situation, It forced home my concern that so much of what folk take as experience living on the social web is a poor reproduction on a tiny screen of the reality of life and art.

Some of my sketches

The Importance of the Physical

I’ve just been to the 25th birthday party of the monash gallery of art and shared some of the yummy birthday cake. Best of all the place was buzzing and not just with friends of the gallery, lots of kids where enjoying the photobooth and other activities or just running around in the wonderful surrounding outside. Not a soul with their eyes glued to their phone or iPad.The current exhibitions brings together some highlights of the mga photographic collection, which in turns includes many key photos in the Australian photography. The photos are hung in salon style and their physical presence is very powerful, and yet they display much originality and clarity in the essence of the subject captured. This is a very welcome change when so much of what is promoted as art is gobbled up on social media and small screens. Yet it is dominantly just look at me, wanna-be celebrity, copy cat stuff. It is a pleasure to step back a pace or two and contemplate good photography hung large (well 10” by 8” up) on a wall.

Update on Christmas gift ideas for Photographers in Melbourne

I was visiting the mga gallery, the Monash Gallery of Art (it has specialised in Photographic collection and  I am a member of the friends of gallery) and browsing through their small shop. When I realised I had overlooked a great source of christmas gifts in my previous list, So if you are still looking for a gift for a keen photographer and you live in Melbouirne, the  MGA gallery is worth a visits. It has an amazing range of things in their smallish gift shop; photo centric badges and button, through the fisheye keyring (shown on right) that can snap onto your smart phone (and they also have the macro lens version), through a range of classic plastic film cameras to a very comprehensive range of the best photo books and well as other refined but less photographic gifts. A stop off at the mga Cafe is a way perfect to keep this all low stress shopping and enjoyable. If you live out on the east side of Melbourne you might also consider a gift of a Friends of the Gallery Membership, they organize plenty of activities to interest almost everyone.

The joys of hand colouring photos

I spent a great afternoon learning a little about hand colouring photos at a workshop run by Janina Green at the Monash Gallery of Art. Hand colouring precious photos was once an important aspect of preserving family memories or postcards for tourist, but it can be a wonderful way to add originality (and extra value, not just sentimental) to a photographic image.

There are some wonderful hand coloured works as part of the Photography meet Feniinism Exhibition on at the monash gallery of art till 7th December.

Sculptures in the (sub)Urban Landscape

Wednesday was a magnificent spring afternoon so I was out looking for an Urban Landscape photo opportunities. Thes two metal sentinals look vey happy in the stong light.

 

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Metal



 They are all Google+ Autoaewsome HDR* images, finished off with a perfect Photu Suite 9 Big Softy Vignette

On the Brickpath

Late Afternnoon Spring Sun, leaves a subtle dappled light on the Brickpath

 Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/the-brick-path

PhotoFriday :: Curvy

Curvaceous sculpture outside the monash gallery of art

 which I have previous photographed with three different camera phones

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Curvy

Sneek preview of “The Road”

This week’s photobook club was a preview of the hanging of the next exhibition at the Monash Gallery of Art. It brings our little group back to our first meeting where we where given the privilege of looking into Wes Stacey’s suitcase containing an extensive set of hand made photo books. He had collated photos from his travels in 1974 & 1975 into simple one page per photo diaries of his road trip around Australia.The photos are being hung in the same way the only other exhibition of these works (see below). However in the mga gallery the walls are still the deep dark tone used for the Bill Henson curated show, so the arrangement of photos look marvelous,  like a cross between very large contact print sheets or an analogue instagram photostream. The exhibition “The road: photographers on the move 1970-1985”,which also includes other important photographers works, about “the golden age of automotive travel in Australia”.

Melbourne Photo Book Club

The small but growing Melbourne Photo Book Club has made it through their first year. So congratulations all, I’m finding the actual physical aspects being able to hold, flick through and discuss the photography, feel the papers and compare the book formats with others is way more inspiring than isolated research on-line which normally gets drawn in shameless self promotion of basically the same old formats, products and social media sites.

The December meeting had a special arrival. The box of photobooks that had been circulating around other photobook clubs all over the world, had arrived, was opened and poured over by everyone. It was filled with great stuff, The variety of formats, styles and subjects was amazing, It is encouraging to see such creatives are attracted to photobooks and creating things in the physical world. As the On-line World and Social media are jostling to get more images on your screen in an ever-changing photostream (where many of the images are so much the same anyway) it is refreshing to hold a book, contemplate what you see and turn the page rather than gestural swipes on a piece of glass with no tactile response.

Melbourne’s Photo Book club only meets bi-monthly on Tuesdays at the Monash Gallery of Art in the Cafe, watch the mga calendar for details

Instagram Workshop :: Lesson 1

My little post yesterday didn’t include one very important point about Instagram. It uses only square crops! However when you are used to 3:4 and landscape formats the square is somewhat constraining and particularly how you tackle composition does require a rethink. Misho’s suggestion to center the subject and keep the background simple were a great start, but this still left me plenty of room to experiment.

Fractured Threads Exhibition

an extension of the still photograph

Rob Birze & Sandy Birze and myself are having an exhibition of our Photography in The Ramp Gallery of The Monash Gallery of Art. We are three local photographers who came together through the VIC/TAS thread of the Australian Photographers Group in Flickr. We are all active on the photographic social webs, sharing interests in some common themes, multi exposure, multi-image works and fresh ways to look at still photography. Our techniques are very individual and authentically photographic. Using both film and digital photography they bring together multilayers of details and glimpses in time to create very strong impressions of the subjects they photograph.

Exhibition runs from May 31 to June 19
Gallery Opening Hours: Tues to Fri 10am–5pm
Sat & Sun 12noon-4pm

Chainsaw Art

Another Photosynth, this time prepared as a "walk around". This photoset was taken at mga's "materpiece in a Day" Novemeber 2009.

Sorry Mac & Linux users,Photosythn still only works for Microsoft Windows.