Yesterday, we watched the Oprah interview on TV with close family. Our family discussions continued on the drive back home. Given that like mst Australian families our own family is now blended, the issue of race is very pertinent and real to us. I know that we all have unconscious biases because of the childhood narratives and environments we have grown up in, so being aware of this is the first step to enabling change. Having the courage to call it out is important because bad stuff happens when good people say and do nothing. I can’t help the colour…
I saw them on my way out this morning
Fallen petals
Strewn on the sandstone path
The promise they held just a day ago
Extinguished in a moment
Their pristine white garb now crumpled
By a passing storm that went unnoticed
It happened in the dead of night
While we all slept, silently
The sad petals still here in the morning
Their dreams in shatters
They look up at the other blossoms
On the tree where they all used to live
Encouraged to shine
Until that storm
When it all went wrong.
They care about the Right to Life
But not…
The image I have shared is a sunrise I shot at Bombo Quarry last week and it speaks to me of the struggles we face in Australia today.
At sunrise, the quarry is a hauntingly beautiful place despite the pain we have inflicted on it. It is an ancient landscape once sculpted by the ocean but more recently re-shaped, as it was blasted to bits by men with sticks of dynamite in their quest for blue metal. As I sit on the clifftop and look down on the crashing waves, I am enveloped by the sounds of Country. …
For thousands of years the Djiringanj people came to the Bermagui Waterhole to camp and have ceremony. It was a sacred place and a permanent source of fresh water with an abundance of fish and shellfish. The waterhole lies on a major coastal walking track and is linked to the ceremonial, initiation and spiritual sites of the Yuin people. So, while the waterhole is on Djiringanj land, many other Yuin people and more distant Koori people also camped here, always making sure there was enough food left for those who would come after they moved on.
As we immerse ourselves…
We went up to the Central Coast to join some friends on a sunset shoot at the Gosford Waterfront on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t great and I didn’t capture any images worth sharing. But then we decided to go further north toward Norah Heads and sleep over, so we could shoot a sunrise in the morning before heading back home today. It wasn’t a great sunrise either and I was walking back to the car, when I noticed these fabulous clouds in the west and the light spilling across. I shot this handheld but wished I had setup…
I’ve been channeling Van Gogh and the Dutch Masters while trying to get my head around the history of still life painting. I’ve learnt that in the 17th Century the French Academy created a hierarchy of art ranging from historic/religious, portraiture, daily life, landscape to still life right down the bottom. I’ve never really bothered with this genre of photography till we went into lockdown and time stood still.
“It seems to be that it is a painter’s duty to put an idea into his work” ~Van Gogh
“A Musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” ~Abraham Maslow 1908–1970
It is NAIDOC week in Australia where we stop to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples. Steve and I were very fortunate that in the 5-years we lived in our motorhome, we were able to visit so many Aboriginal communities and cultural sites to learn a little more about the oldest living culture on earth spanning, somewhere between 60,000–120,000…
