blue-grey variations

I seem to be gravitating towards blues and greys today.  Here’s a selection.

agapanthus

spoonbills and stilts
Lake Lanier
80 Mile Beach

Manly Corso, Sydney

public art and decoration

Public art serves a high purpose. It can be fun, the spark for conversation, a cause for quiet reflection or all of the above. Sometimes it’s a decorative feature hidden away waiting to be noticed. Sometimes it’s loud and huge in an in-your-face way. It’s always a matter of individual taste and opinion.

Forever Marilyn – Seward Johnson

This larger than life statue was temporarily located on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago in 2011-2012.  It is currently living in Palm Springs, California. As a piece of public art ‘she’ did her job well, attracting both praise and criticism.

Joshua Reynolds’ words

Above the entrance of the Franklin Building at 720 South Dearborn Street in the Printers Row district of Chicago is this quotation by 18th century English artist Joshua Reynolds.  The building was designed in 1912 at the height of the art nouveau period.

The quotation also appears across the entrance of the perhaps more famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London in a very different style.

Unicyclist – South Bank in Brisbane – suspended work – artist unknown

Search – bronze – 1975 – J Seward Johnson Jr (the same Seward Johnson responsible for Marilyn) in Devonian Harbour Park, Vancouver.

Now that I look at this again, I guess the man sitting next to the sculpture was possibly searching too. 🙂

Bike rack – Chicago

Paint tube on light pole – Bayamo, Cuba – an town where many artists live

landscapes

Today the play is with landscapes. I particularly like the effect on the Glasshouse Mountains panorama. It feels like film stock from the 70s or earlier.

Glasshouse Mountains, S E Queensland

Cable Beach, Western Australia – surf and sand grasses

British Columbia, Canada  – sun and snow

pop effects on photographs

The thing I’m loving most about turning photographs into different images is that even the most imperfect, long-distance, sometimes out-of-focus photograph has the potential to become something quite visually pleasing.

boy on bike on beach

galahs at Julia Creek

sunset photographs

Like most people who own a camera, I’m a sucker for sunsets.  More image play from original photos.

80 Mile Beach sunset (Western Australia)

80 Mile Beach grasses at sunset

Halong Bay sunset – Vietnam

Cable Beach grasses at sunset

Derby Wharf sunset

morning visitor – a white-faced heron

Through the window in my office, I have a good view of the garden and am able to see occasional visitors of note.

This morning it was this white-faced heron.  Because the glare was right behind him, all I was getting on the screen was a silhouette. It took a great deal of pushing the exposure and some other tweaks to get this image happening.

And then the bird flew next door. A different angle and different light meant an easier transition to an image that did the heron a little more justice, despite the longer distance.

floral forms

Street flowers – Sydney

purple spray

Sturt’s Desert Pea

Pandanus – Darwin shore

photographic homage to Chicago

Speaking of big cities, in my view, Chicago takes the cake (if you discount the weather in and around winter time, and the wind) for one of the most interesting urban spaces on the planet.

urban landscapes

I have always loved big cities. You can get lost in them because of their size or you can get lost in them by being drawn into small pockets of the place that delight with amazing food choices or reveal stories of people who live or have lived in the place. You can wonder at the why of their establishment whether on historic river routes, strategic trade or defence sites or just by chance discoveries.

Taking photographs in cities can be tricky if you’re focusing on the decoration detail of a building or attempting to capture the large scale of a street scape. It is never dull.

Here is a selection of cityscapes (with additives via Grungetastic).

Seattle

Tokyo

Salt Lake City

Prague

Vancouver 

new visuals from photographs

Emerald Beach morning

heliotrope

lilypily

black-winged stilts

fishing – 80 Mile Beach WA

Harvest at Newrybar

We’ve been away for a few days staying at Emerald Beach on the northern New South Wales coast.

We followed up a recommendation to stop in Newrybar on our way home to visit the cafe and delicatessen there.  This small village is just off the Pacific Motorway on the old Pacific Highway.

We shared some starters for a light lunch rather than selecting from the main menu. After a most delicious repast which included a flavoursome terrine on the charcuterie plate and amazing anchovies served from the tin, we walked over to the delicatessen to wonder at their displays of quality local and imported food items.

Here’s the Facebook page of Harvest Cafe in case you’re interested or in the district sometime soon.

Thanks Marg S for the tip!

floral forms

These flower shots lent themselves to more pretty treatment than the gumnuts that called for more robust colours and a bit more ‘grunt’.

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