J Is For JJ

Here is my beautiful boy, age about two.

He was a delight at every age, although I had to work hard to stay connected during his teenage years. Watching Rage together and playing the same computer games helped.

There's some more about him in the slide-show below. Let me know if it doesn't work properly.


And here he is with his Choc Mudcake birthday cake, with candles, in March this year.
He's just turned 24.
P.S. JJ is not his name, nor his initials. It's the initials of one of his on-line nicknames.
_

I Is For Illusions

"It's not an optical illusion
- it just looks like one!"

I have been fascinated by illusions and optical illusions since childhood.
Please excuse the quality of the top photo - it was taken forty years ago! I was mucking about with school-friends, when I spotted the possibility here. So, the snap. I didn't really have a schoolmate small enough to stand on a friend's hand!

Three-and-a-half decades later, I'm still at it, playing with illusions in photo compositions. Here, JJ can hold up our campervan in just one hand! He's strong!


And here, Mr M pats the top of a lighthouse. He's veeeery tall!

Just so you know, this is that lighthouse, shown below. The person at the bottom gives the true scale.


This illusion above is more natural, a rock that looks like an animal. It's the swirl of the water which enhances the illusion, making it look as if the creature is swimming along.

Of course, its the persistence of vision which provides the illusion of continuous motion, the basis of film, movies and animation. Here is a short animation made from still shots of an Escher print. It was an exercise for school; the Photoshop work took all day - the animation compiling took about ten minutes!


There is also illusion knitting, also known as shadow knitting. I've had a try at that, with this top. Directly front-on, there's just horizontal stripes.
At an angle, the vertical stripes magically appear! (must finish it one day ...)


And last but not least, the illusion here - how many rail-tracks are here? The angle of the sun was just right to make this illusion. And I had the camera ready. Oh, the location? Busselton Jetty, in WA. - It's the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere - 2 kilometres long.

D Is For Dragon

I have posted this picture before in the quest for dragons, but this photo gets a second airing, as it is one of my all time favourites.

It's hard to say why, exactly. Possibly because it was literally a "parting shot". I had taken several photos of this dragon and was heading home, when I looked back and saw the sky had changed. I just had to take one more photo!

And possibly because it reminds me of a Terry Pratchett novel. 'Guards, Guards', I think it is. Where the dragon lurked on towers and wasn't noticed unless you looked up or until it moved.

Although I cannot say I am an avid collector of dragons, a few have crept into my life anyway.

This crazy little creature came into my life more than three decades ago. I was in a gift store and a chappie came in, trying to get the store owner interested in selling the clay animals he had made. The shop owner didn't seem interested, but I asked to see them as the chappie was walking out. I couldn't resist this little one, sooo cute, licking his toe. The store owner was wrong to pass them up!

The dragonlet doesn't have a name. He was just clay colour when I got him. He's had various coats of paint since, as the mood takes me. The current metallics suit him. But I swear it wasn't me who painted his feet green and his tongue purple! JJ? COME HERE!

Most of the dragons that have come my way since have been oriental style.This one is a plate my sister made and decorated for me. She has been a very talented potter, making whole dinner sets, but she hasn't done any for a while.

And this one from Hong Kong definitely looks as if he's laughing at us all. When you're a dragon, anything you deem to be funny IS funny.

Another oriental. I don't seek out books about dragons (eg, Anne McCaffrey), but I'm quite happy if they show up in the stories. I wrote a story about a dragon as a bedtime story for JJ when he was young.

And yes, I must confess to being a bit "dragonish" myself at times, although not so much these days - mellowing with age, maybe. Just let sleeping dragons lie ...

C Is For Cameras

Yes, that's plural!

Cameras are important to me. I have been taking photos since I was a kid, and that’s too many years ago!

My dad always had good cameras: I remember a Rolleiflex; but we didn’t, and we weren’t allowed to touch his. I started off with a Brownie. It wasn’t mine, it was a family camera.

The first camera which I bought for myself in 1974 was a 35mm SLR Soligor. Soligor is better known as a lens maker, but they had a brief foray into making cameras. I still have that camera. It works without batteries – can you imagine that! It actually does have a battery-powered exposure meter, but that battery went flat decades ago and I didn’t replace it. By then, I pretty well knew what settings to use under what conditions. And I usually got it right – no checking the image on the back of the camera in those days.

Here is a rogues’ gallery of cameras lurking around my place. The old ones were picked up in a job lot at auction, when no-one was bidding on them. They just had to go to a good home – mine! Besides which, I had in mind to use them as part of a shop window display at work. I never did.

The big old wooden one at the top is a Thornton Pickard, English, circa 1905. It comes with a couple of extra lenses. I don’t know how to use it.

The bellows camera above is an Eastman-Kodak, circa 1917-23. I closed it up after taking this photo and now I can’t get it open again. Sigh.

From left to right in the photo above:

The one on the left is another English camera, a pop-top Ensign. The best dating I can find for it is circa WW2.

Next is a baby Brownie, age unknown.

Then the Soligor, mentioned above. On the right is an Olympus 35mm zoom camera.
I got this about 2001-2002, but I'm not sure how old it was before I got it. it was my first "automatic" camera. Motorised film winding - sheer luxury!

In this photo, from left to right, a disposable underwater camera, film half used - there's probably dolphins and stingrays cavorting unseen on there. One day I'll finish off that roll of film.

Next is my Nikon F55, a 35mm SLR. I got this some time after the Olympus film camera. This one came with a couple of lenses, and I just love the 300mm zoom!
Those lenses were the main reason I went for the Nikon D70 digital SLR, which I bought in 2004. I was a late starter in the digital camera game. It's the D70 which took these photos, so it doesn't appear.

Then there's the JVC video camera. Although it's quite compact, it's definitely "old school" with a tape inside, not a hard drive. I haven't done much with it, as some parts of it don't seem to work well. Or it could be the operator, getting too old to learn all this new-fangled technology.

Last but not least, my baby digital Olympus with 10x optical zoom (love that zoom!).
This was a necessity when it became obvious that lugging around the big SLR digital was not always easy, or possible.

I use the D70 and the Olympus mostly, but I have been known to grab whichever camera is closest, including Mr M's Canon (formerly a Sony, till it got dropped once too often) and JJ's Canon. They use my cameras too, if it suits them. Especially with the big lens on, for getting up close and personal.

I've never been too techie about cameras and settings, all that f-stop stuff. I'm more about getting the look I want. I do remember enough to know what 'depth-of-field' is, and I like to play with that.

If I didn't already have a suite of lenses for the Nikon, and was buying a digital SLR from scratch, I'd probably get a Canon.

The urge to take photos comes and goes - it got a huge boost when I bought my digital SLR. I love photographing waves at the beach.
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B Is For Beaches

Spiky Beach, East Coast, TAS

I love the beach, oceans, water and waves. Just drop me off at a beach in the morning (with some shade and some food, of course) and pick me up at sunset, and I’ll have had a perfect day.

Here is a beach we actually did get to have a swim at

on our generally cold September holiday. Forster, NSW

The eastern-most beach we've been to -
Wategos, just below Byron Bay lighthouse

I can watch the waves all day. Their individuality fascinates me. Their formation, cresting, then tumbling. How each waves is different while still recognisably part of a pattern. How the inner lift of water can show the sea floor. That incredible moment when the water arches over just before gravity wins.

Western-most beach we've been to -

Cape Naturaliste, W.A. Those waves were huge!

I like to watch surfers. I admire their skill. They also give scale to the size of a wave. And they give a legitimate excuse for watching waves. If you just watch waves, well, you’re a bit barmy, right? But if you watch surfers, well, that’s okay because it’s following a sport!

I like to walk along the beach, idly beachcombing, seeing what treasures the waves washes up, and just as quickly reclaims.

I get impatient with sunbathing (besides, I boil like a lobster, and it’s dangerous!) and I don’t always feel the urge for a swim. I love to snorkel, if the opportunity presents itself. My ambition is to snorkel somewhere where the water is warm enough to not wear a wetsuit, but without the dangers of stingers & jellyfish.

Coolangatta Beach, Queensland
While this isn't the most northerly beach I've been to, it's the only photo I had.
It's from our September trip, and the weather was lousy. We still went walking on the beach. Beaches. All of them. Between Brisbane and Sydney. Oi.

I want to live by the beach, on a small cliff (to keep my place safe from rising sea levels from global warming); but the way the property prices are, I don’t think I ever will. So, I visit, and take lots of photos.

One of the most southerly beaches we've been to on mainland Australia
- Castle Beach, near Cape Otway, VIC.
Wilsons Promontory is probably further south. It's on our 'must visit' list.

A Is For Architecture

Roof ridge detail, Melbourne

I've joined up with the ABC-Along on Ravelry.

I'm hoping it will spur me on to post to my blog a bit more frequently.

My "A" is for Architecture. I've been interested in architecture since third year high school. We were given a project to do for Art class, which was to design a room in a house. I did a bedroom, with a wrap-around desk-cupboard-drawers arrangement, and then made a 3-D model of it in cardboard, with teeny tiny cloth curtains.

I've been doodling with house designs ever since.

Mr M and I designed and built our house. It mostly works, in terms of passive solar energy. Where it doesn't work is where we had to compromise because of cost. Sigh.

I like the quirkyness of these witches' hat rooves.

There's quite a few of these around my local suburb
- it must have been the HOT style of its period.

I like the architecture of pre-Modern styles best - very little modern stuff appeals, and Federation Square (Melb) is an abomination - all style just for the sake of being controversial and no substance.

Lovely wooden verandah posts is Melbourne.
The verahndah has an equally lovely tessellated paving floor.

That's not to say I don't like ornamentation - I do, and love the almost frivolous nature of some of it. I particularly like Art Deco.

Beautiful tuckpoint multi-colour brickwork, in Melbourne.

I've already done a couple of posts about some architectural delights I have come across, here and here.

Look up, look up! Above verandah height, and see what's there.

Merchant's building in Fremantle - glorious dome!


Victorian lacework verandahs in Melbourne

No doubt there will be more architectural photos on my blog - I could fill pages and pages with them!

The Easy Life

Ah, don't you just love it when you can roll over in the morning, reach for the camera, snap off a shot of dawn like the one above, and then roll back over for another few hours sleep!

I didn't even have to get out of bed for that photo!

After Christmas in Hobart, we took a few days holiday on the East Coast of Tas, and that was the view from our room. Spectacular.

The day before, we had a little snorkel at the beach in the picture below. It's just a tiny cove just south of Spikey Beach, which is, of course, near the Spikey Bridge.


The water was a bit cold, as it usually is in Tas - we would have had hypothermia without our full length wetties.

Oh, you want to know what the Spikey Bridge is? Well, it's a convict built one, from 1830? 1840? I should have paid more attention to the information board. Doh.


And now you can see why it's called Spikey Bridge.


And yes, there has been knitting, even while away, even in the hot weather. No photos yet.

A Whale Of A Time

I'm having a whale of a time!

Yes, that grey blob WAS a whale, so very close to shore - maybe no more than 200 metres. But the weather was so awful, as it has been every day, that photos just don't come out well in the grey light, in the rain and wind.

We waited to see the whale breach, but it didn't. So I consoled myself by taking lots of pictures of waves. What a surprise!

And in the cool evenings, I do get a bit of knitting done. In fact, I think I'll have to knit like crazy to make myself a jumper really quickly, it's been so cold. Global warming? Bring it on!

Entering The Convent

I thought I would post a few more photos from the convent we visited the day after the Mid-Winter Festival.

It seemed to be such a mixture of architectural styles. I guess it was built and added to over quite a number of years. I don't know the history of the convent. Strangely enough, I don't particularly want to know. It becomes like a painting - it is what it is, without explanation or interpretation.

Here is an upper storey verandah with a lattice covering which seems almost Moorish or Arabian. Hints of the harem?

And here is the end of a building - it may be a church or chapel. The syle seems almost Spanish Mission to me.

Then there are these two lots of stained glass windows, one in a downstairs room, the pair are on the staircase landing. They are definitely Art Nouveau styling. What's most remarkable and surprising is that they are stained glass windows in a religious institution, but with no religious iconography.
These windows would not have been cheap to make.
The cloisters have the beautiful deciduous tree in the centre. Although the photos were taken mid winter, there were still autumn-painted leaves clinging to the branches. The pointed arches seem medieval-Norman in style, while the columns have a Corinthian style capital.
That is the most Art Nouveau interpretation of acanthus leaves that I have seen on a capital. (acanthus, or 'bears britches' is the usual leaf ornamentation for Corinthian columns). The close-up should show this.




This is one of my favourite photos. It didn't turn out the way I had planned. Maybe that's why I like it.
I was trying to focus on the cloister columns in the background, and have the plants in soft focus in the foreground - peeking through to the secret place in the back.
The fool camera just wouldn't focus on the background. It was just the little camera (Olympus), and not my usual serious camera (Nikon D70 DSLR).

But, it is what it is, and I like the feel of it. The background becomes more moody, more mysterious.

A Different Kind Of Spiral

Here are some better photos of the cloche hat mentioned here. Polly was out at the time of that post, but I've persuaded her to do a bit more modelling. This shows off the shape of the hat much better.


The photo below shows the spiral pattern made with the M1 technique described for this pattern; you know, the make one which also makes a decorative hole. If I had had a photo like this, I would have known straight away what the pattern was asking me to do.

My strange stitch style (not-quite-continental) coupled with perhaps a needle size a little bit too big, has given this an almost crochet effect. I like it.

The Direction Of A Spiral

The day afer the Mid-Winter festival, I entered the convent.

No, not as a nun! The St Helier's Convent in Collinwood is open to the public. It's no longer an operating convent, but there are two cafes there, and a glass-blowers' studio, choir practice halls, and some wonderful photo subjects.

This is one of my favorites from that day's shoot. It's a rather pagan looking cupola which stands at the entrance of a quadrangle or cloister.


There are other great shots, which I may post later

These are shots of two spiral staircases. Much of the convent site is rusting in peace, as were these. I'm intruigued by the process of decay in the urban environment.

These staircases spiralled in the same direction.
















I liked the patterns formed by the uprights crossing over the steps - accidental rectangles.

Now I'm curious - do the spiral staircases in the northern hemisphere turn in the same direction as the ones in the southern hemisphere, or, like water going down a plughole, do they go in the opposite direction?