Tag: Photography

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East Coast 2017 ii Apr

East Coast Tasmania. Photography blog.
First, some late afternoon shots:


And then there was dawn. Most of the shots below are exposures of 2-3 minutes. I love such super-long exposures and the silky effect they enable. It’s always fun playing with water pre-dawn. Quite frankly, I’m not sure which of the below tones I prefer. Each has its own attraction for me. I’m always interested in feedback if you’d like to comment. That would make a pleasant change from the endless spam that clutters my Inbox these days.


On the East Coast of Tasmania. the rocks have a beautiful ‘latent’ orange hue – that is, the hue is always there to some degree or other, but in very low light, the rocks really begin to glow – as in the photo below.


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Cradle Mountain 2017 autumn

Quamby Bluff in the early light. I so love a dawn start to my jaunts. 
Whilst everyone else seemed to be dashing to Cradle Mountain for the fagus season, my interest lay in the fungi that usually appear at this time of the year, and in the waterfalls that should be flowing after our recent rains. I was impatient to get there and see what I could see.


I had a wonderful day – by myself, so I had head space, and yet not by any means alone, as everywhere I went I met new lovely people who wanted to chat to me, so had a delightfully companionable day as well. It was a perfect mix of solitude and sociability. Many, many of these people helped me in one way or another: one cleaned my car camera (for reversing) for me, one helped me adjust the stiff legs of my new tripod and taught me how to use it as a monopod as well. When I lost my black gloves at late dusk, people assisted in trying to locate them for me. On every trail I walked, I met people who wanted to discuss ‘fungi success’ on other trails, or camera gear, or to relate stories to me of this or that walk they’d done elsewhere. The mountains were full of nature addicts. It was so lovely to be helped rather than be the eternal helper, which my role as carer of my ill husband dictates. With every breath the air felt so fresh and clean: two lungfuls for the price of one, it seemed.
What follows is more of a photo essay than a verbal one. It is the story of my love of light, of nature, and of this beautiful, peaceful spot that I am privileged to call home.


Russula persanguinea 


And now we come to sunset. My battery is running dangerously low. I get into place, reckoning I’ll shoot until it runs out and then head for home. Shortly afterwards, a seeming crowd of photographers appeared. It got quite crowded, with tripod legs being intertwined with mine (but not spoiling my image). I was sure glad I’d arrived early.


I would have loved to stay at the party and shoot the stars. It would have been a freezing party, but jovial, I’m sure. Maybe next time I’ll be a little more careful when I pack my bag!!!

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Crater Falls 2017 Apr

Crater Falls 2017 Apr


I needed some breathing space, some time out from being stuck at home as a carer., some solitude to regain some sanity. Only the wilderness could do that for me. off I set. I had never photographed Crater Falls before. I had just rushed past, giving it a nod in acknowledgement of its beauty, but always being obliged by the others I was with not to linger long enough to do it photographic justice, which takes rather a long while, actually. I had a lovely day rectifying that, and searching for fungi, which were playing hard to get, despite its being autumn. Groups of fagus hunters went merrily by. There was a great mood in the forest that day.

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East Coast 2017 i Feb

Tasmania’s East Coast: a place of healing. Feb 2017

My brother-in-law, Ken, is on the phone, wanting to speak to Bruce. I ask, to clarify, “Where are you expecting us to be?”
“Aahh, Intensive care.”
I feel a little guilty, because we are at the beach. My husband was let out of the ICU yesterday afternoon. I think I should justify my actions – my apparent recklessness and irresponsibility – so I begin: ” Do you know how, in books set in the eighteen- and nineteen-hundreds, patients with lung problems were sent to the coast for fresh sea air?”
Surely this casts my action in a good light.
“Yeees.”


“Well, Bruce was released from the ICU and hospital late yesterday, so I packed our bags and drove us down here today. I felt a great need to be by the ocean.”
I nervously await his response. Judgement … or approval?
He was delighted. His voice was soft and warm, the vowels drawn out as he took in what I had said.
“Wow. I really can’t think of a nicer place to be to recover after you’ve been in hospital. He’ll get better there, for sure. Can you see the sea from where you are?”
“Yep, and we’re about to have a short walk along the sand and maybe even a paddle if the water’s warm enough.” (It was).


And thus my husband begins his convalescence. And, as Ken is a lawyer, I guess I’m not going to be sued for lack of appropriate care of my charge. It was a glorious day on which to be alive, and to celebrate life to the sound of crashing waves, the feel of white sand under bare feet, the smell of salt in the air, the sight of deep blue, and the sense of joie de vivre that being on the beach brings.


That evening, I was shooting long-exposure sunsets on a little beach, and quite an audience amassed. They were all very interested in what was on my screen at the end of each shot, and, as this is inherently interesting, I didn’t question their gathering, although the number was rather surprising. I reasoned that it was a beautiful evenening, but that, there not being much else on, watching an image flash on a screen every couple of minutes was about as good as it got. When I left, one of these admirers asked me if this was, indeed, the beach where all the penguins landed. Ohhh. Let down. They were there for penguins, and I just happened to be the avant-spectacle entertainment. I needed to get Bruce out of the night air, so wished them good luck and left.


Next morning, I arose a good hour before dawn to get into position in the dark for my normal at-the-beach pre-dawn shoot, where I love to take very long exposure shots in the dark. Having the sensor exposed for several minutes enables it to capture the burgeoning light that it can register, but the eye cannot yet quite see. I had forgotten all about the penguins. I stood there, a rock, immobile for my shoot. While I was waiting for the first light of dawn, they began to waddle past, some about five centimetres from my bare toes, unaware that I was an animate object. This experience of being part of their environment was far more special than the dawn colours I captured (especially as I am having problems with my overly skinny tripod at present). Penguins observed from a cheap fake-wood stage strutting on grass and lit by false lighting just do nothing for me, but penguins nearly treading on my toes in the dark, creatures of nature together as they traverse the sand on their way to the sea, that does it for me completely. The magic of that morning will remain with me for the rest of my life.

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Cradle Mountain 2016 Dec

Cradle Mountain (yet again).
“Na. We’ve done Cradle Mountain,” said a relative visiting from the mainland when discussing options of where to go. I was speechless; utterly dumbfounded. They’ve been there once. I’m not convinced they’ve even walked the Dove Lake circuit, but they claim to have “DONE” Cradle Mountain. What is this “done”?

In the summer we moved here with a six and an eight year old, one of the first things we did was to climb Cradle Mountain (having climbed it as uni students shortly after our marriage). I feel guilty that I’ve only climbed this friendly giant eight times. Apart from anything else, each climb is different – different sky, different clouds, different shadows. New aspects of the overall scene strike you each time you summit. So much depends on the weather or the time of day you are there.

But “Cradle” is so much more than just that mountain. The name encompasses a variety of other wonders, such as the Plateau area, with its masses of tarns and fabulous winter skiing for children (we used to walk up carrying XC skis), the magic of the Ballroom Forest, the drama of the Hanson’s Peak approach, the plethora of hidden tarns in interesting crannies within a kilometre’s radius of the summit, and the lines of ridges emanating from the main massif, each with interesting views into gorges below. The forest at the back of Waldheim (or any other approaches to the high land) is “enchanted”; the forest officially called “enchanted” (the one behind the lodge) is not the only one to harbour a magic spell. Wombats forage here; fungi flourish. In autumn, tiny orange leaves make a wonderful tapestry across the pattern of tree roots that weave across the path.

Ancient trees over a thousand years old still stand as guardians of the wilderness they inhere. And what about the other mountains within cooee of the main attraction? Campbell, Kate, Emmett, Barn, Brewery Knob or Recondite Knob, to name “just” the Abels? In the photo two above, you can see Emmett peeping out behind the cradle part of the Big One, and Barn poking its distinctive head out of the yellow to the right. If Cradle is the only thing you have eyes for, then climb these to get a different view of the only thing your heart can hold.


To say you have “done” Cradle after a single visit is like saying you’ve “done” King Lear or Pride and Prejudice after a single reading. After one, you’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve read Lear at least twenty times (never counted, possibly more … one just keeps reading, and gaining more each time), but I sure haven’t “done” Lear, and I will die before I have “done” Cradle, because she has so much more to offer than a single person can hope to reap, even in a lifetime.

No drama in this spot: just gently, subtle beauty that left us feeling so very calm and peaceful as we sat and stared at it.

Maybe you need high drama: huge pointed peaks and a giddy height if you read the numbers on an altimeter. Although height is, of course, absolute, it is also a relative thing, and a mountain rising hugely from sea level (e.g. Wellington), or from land that is still not very high, can make a far bigger impression than some peer with a greater absolute altitude. But if you do need your peaks to be over 4,000 ms, well, good luck to you. That keeps “my” Cradle from getting too crowded. I am reminded of the story told by our employer in England once, of when he took a man from a nation whose citizens are renowned for wanting everything to be big and bold to the Lake District, and proudly showed him a magnificent lake of subtle and delicate beauty. The man was totally dismissive: “Why Richard,” he bragged, “we have much bigger and better than that back home.” Richard, normally a man who could argue any point, had no answer to that mentality, preserving the story only to laugh at people who thought like that. Thomas Kuhn would say they had reached a paradigm chasm (or ‘revolutionary’ divide), across which there is only partial communication due to the different assumptions each side makes as a foundation to what they think, say or do.

Let us return to this notion of having “done” a mountain, or Tasmania or whatever. As the girl serving us on our way home said, it denotes not a desire to see anything, or to experience anything properly, but rather, to tick a box: “Done Cradle Mountain”; “Done Tasmania” (I’ve heard that one too, from someone who spent a week here). Such ticking apparently earns you bragging rights amongst certain groups of people. Terry Eagleton, literary critic and social commentator of excellence, talked of (in disparaging tones) “the commodification of experience”, whereby marketers had taken up the idea of parcelling and selling experience so people could purchase / consume it. (Commodification is the turning of something that does not normally have a market value into something which is a commodity and can be sold). All of a sudden, your holiday to see Lake St Clair became the “Lake St Clair experience”. Tick. Hapless shopper-zombies were to tour the world, purchasing these “never to be forgotten experiences”, outdoing each other in the outré and adventurous nature of each one. Their lives could not possibly be complete without the X experience, now purchasable for the price of Y (a very big number). Poor shallow, frenetically-gathering experience hunters. Always worrying that the experience they just purchased would not cut it amongst the audience they were trying to impress. Perhaps they accidentally purchased last year’s must-do experience. I’m afraid this blog is failing you, as I have lost track of what is the latest experience you are supposed to have had, and so cannot help you.

But as for me, I will go to places that please me because they are beautiful and have subtleties and complexities that keep me entertained. I will keep visiting favourite haunts because to do so is to renew my acquaintance with places where familiarity means I already know a great deal and am on the watch to renew and strengthen a deep acquaintance. I will mix this up by exploring new places that tempt me by images I have seen or things I have heard of their beauty, but I will not always be chasing new friends, as old ones, ultimately, are more special, just like people.