Category: collection

My next exhibition – LOCAL

I am very pleased to announce that I am a part of this year’s LOCAL exhibition at the Wyndham Art Gallery, 177 Watton Street, Werribee, Victoria, Australia. I am sharing this exhibition with local sculptor, Jonathan Mendez Baute.

I will be exhibiting large colour prints from Iceland and Coffin Bay National Park in South Australia; from my ‘Shifting Landscapes’ series. For the first time I have had the prints made for me, being too big for my printer. The prints were made by the fantastic team at Image Science, North Melbourne.

If you can make it, please come along to the opening at 6.30pm, Thurs 30 August. The exhibition runs from Friday 31st August 2018 until Monday 29th October 2018.

Shifting Sand – LOCAL at Wyndham Art

Melrakki by Joshua Holko

Melrakki is the Icelandic name for the Arctic Fox, the only mammal native to Iceland. Melrakki is also the latest project from renowned Melbourne photographer Joshua Holko.

Melrakki features a beautifully produced, limited edition book (I have number 5!), plus a superb print in an embossed folio cover.

Melrakki by Joshua Holko
Melrakki by Joshua Holko

The book features a foreword by Dr.Ester Rut Unnsteinsdottir of the Icelandic Institute of Natural History and extensive field notes by Joshua. Melrakki is the culmination of three winters of patient waiting to capture the magnificent images.

There are only 100 copies of this limited edition work, so if you want one, don’t mess about.

More information…

Ice lagoon Exhibition Aftermath

My exhibition of images taken at Jokulsarlon, the Ice Lagoon, in Iceland is over.

The prints have been removed from the walls and the Point Cook public art space has been handed over to a new artist. All the purchased images have been delivered and the rest put away.

Thanks to all who came to see my prints and a big thanks to those who purchased one. I sold 19 prints making it my most successful exhibition ever. And I am now in the Wyndham permanent collection and the Encore Events Centre art collection.

A very special thanks to Megan Evans and Nicholas Boseley for their advice, encouragement and support. Wyndham City provides a lot of resources to support local artists and thanks to all in the Wyndham arts projects team for the great work that you do to make Wyndham an artist friendly place.

Ice on the Beach at Jokulsarlon, Iceland
Ice on the Beach at Jokulsarlon, Iceland

Walking to work

For several years now I have walked to work along Exhibition Street in the Melbourne CBD, usually fairly early, sometimes in the dark.

I have taken photographs on many occasions as the time of year and the weather keep changing the mood and the interplay of light and shadows.

Recently I have started a project to photograph all of the corner buildings between the beginning of Exhibition Street and my office. The challenge is to photograph each corner from the other side of the road with no people or cars in the shot.

I am making some progress, but there are a few corners still eluding me. I’ll report back on this when the project is complete.

In the meantime, I add new images to this album on Flickr when I manage to get a clear shot at a corner.

The Exhibition Street Corners Album on Flickr.

photocrati gallery

Cameras in the Cupboard #9

Ilford Sportsman

 

 

This is another camera that just “turned up” in my unofficial collection. For those of you who haven’t been following this blog closely (and why haven’t you?), I don’t collect cameras, they just sort of appear.

The Ilford Sportsman was made by the German company Dacora for the British photographic film and paper manufacturer, Ilford. The first model (the Mark 1) was introduced in 1957. It was designed to compete with the Kodak Retinette range of cameras. The last of the line, the Mark 5, was introduced in 1967.

My camera seems to be the Mark 2 model from 1959.

By the Light…

As anyone who has been following my photography on Flickr and Ipernity would know, empty early morning streets is a theme I return to often.

Part of the reason is that I walk through the city on my way to work; usually sometime around 7.30 am. This gives me a good opportunity for photography.

I also like the low, yellowish, directional light that fills the streets at certain times of the year.

I have just added a new gallery to the Photography page. It features photographs taken in North Melbourne on two mornings in March.

North Melbourne, Early Morning.

Fast Photography

On the 19th March, 2010, a couple of friends and I went to Phillip Island for a day out at the classic car races.

Last year I was disappointed with the photos I took, so this year I was determined to do better. Last year I came home with a lot of blurry photos, so concentrating on getting a decent shutter speed and holding the camera still was my goal.

I set the ISO at 800 and the program mode to aperture priority at f8. This gave me a shutter speed of around 1/1000.  I turned the auto focus off and manually focused on a section of the track in front of me. As the cars came out of the fast right-hand corner at the bottom of the main straight, I tracked them until they reached my pre-focused spot, then I pressed the shutter.

I got some good results in terms of sharpness and the position of the car, however, my lack of a longer tele lens (I was using a 200mm) and the fact that I don’t have access to the track, meant that the images were still rather dull.

So I wandered off to the pits and tried to make some interesting images there.

Here is a gallery of the best ten photos of the day.

Cameras in the Cupboard #8

Zeiss Ikon Contina

One of the cameras in the cupboard has a significant place in my life for a number of reasons. It is a Zeiss Ikon Contina.

In 1955 my mother’s eldest sister, my aunt Ruth, decided to leave our home town of Geelong and travel to Europe. This was not a common thing to do in the 1950s. Apart from the fact that it involved a 6 week voyage by ship, it was virtually unknown for a young country girl to travel unescorted to Europe for an indefinite stay.

Ruth got work in London, met up with several other women from various parts of the world and spent every available minute of the next six years touring Britain and Europe. She returned home after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1961.

I think Ruth’s Zeiss Ikon is a Contina 1a, made between 1954 and 1957. However, it has the Novar f3.5 lens, which means it was made prior to 1956. I am not sure if the camera was purchased here before she left or as soon as she arrived in England.

It is a very simple camera without rangefinder-type focussing, just a distance scale on the lens. There is no light meter either, but the lens is adjustable from f3.5 to f22.

For a simple camera, it is very solid, heavy and well made. My aunt was a fastidious woman and the Contina is in superb condition. I am struggling to find a mark on it, even with a magnifying glass. The leather carrying case is also in unmarked condition. One might be tempted to think that is has never been used, but I know it travelled around Europe for six years, and I have the boxes of slides to prove it.

Unfortunately Ruth was neither a good, nor prolific photographer. A lot of her images are badly underexposed.

But this camera represents a number of things in my life. The trip up from Geelong to Station Pier in Melbourne is one of my earliest memories and my first trip to Melbourne. It was the first time I ever saw a passenger ship, and the only time I have ever waved one goodbye, with the streamer throwing and a band playing.

And on the way home I got to ride in the dicky seat of my uncle’s 1936 Plymouth coupe.

Cameras in the Cupboard #7

Agfa Clack

This is another purchase. I saw it sitting in a second-hand junk shop complete with its “leather” case and instruction leaflet and I just had to add it to the collection.

The Clack began production in 1953 and continued through until 1965. A twelve-year production run is unheard of in the digital age.

The camera is very simple, basically just an update of the early box cameras. The Clack takes 120 roll film and the whole roll/spool assembly slides out of the camera so it can be loaded. The image size is 6×9 (centimetres) and only 8 shots fit on a roll.

The Clack has two shutter speeds, normal and bulb. But it does also have two aperture settings, one for sun and one for overcast.

And, I have to confess, at the moment it isn’t in a cupboard. It is in a packing crate under the stairs. But it will be unpacked and back in a collection cupboard eventually.

The photo of the Agfa Clack was taken ‘strobist’ style with a Canon 580EX 11 flash fired through a Westcott umbrella just to the left of the camera and a large white reflector just to the right to provide some shadow fill.

Family Fotos #4

This post is about another image from my grandfather’s collection of negatives. See Family Fotos #3 and Family Fotos #2.

This post also ties in with the approach of Remembrance Day, 11th November. It was an important day for my grandfather. To him it meant he could return home to his young wife, and a son he had never seen.

My memory tells me he wasn’t that fond of Anzac Day. It was a day for him and his mates to get together, remember their friends who never came home, and have a serious drink (about the only time he ever did). Outsiders, ones who hadn’t been through it, weren’t welcome.

I am sure he would hate the current generation’s obsession with deifying Anzac Day into a near-religious holiday.

My project of scanning all of his negatives has stalled recently. Life has been rather busy since we moved, with work, a wedding and some annoying but not serious illness. So, here is one I prepared earlier.

The photo shows my grandfather, Charles Cone, and one of his mates from 2nd Field Company at Mena Camp in Egypt, some time in early 1915. In the background are horses from his transport unit.

Front and centre is a kangaroo.