Photography | Semantically driven

The colour orange

May 15, 2013 by Jen 3 Comments

Last month I concentrated on taking photos with the theme of orange. Below are the results. I’d chosen orange with a view to taking lots of autumn leaf shots but only ended up with one decent photo to use.

I’m loving how this colour photo project is making me see things. I think any photography project makes you look at things a bit differently around you.

You know when you’re on the lookout for something, you all of a sudden see lots of them? Say if you’re researching a type of car to buy, you all of a sudden see heaps of them on the road, where you never noticed them before.

I wonder if I would have looked twice at the graffiti below if it wasn’t mostly orange?

I wonder if I would have seen that lone brick on the beach if it wasn’t mostly orange?

Check out last month’s colour red.

Filed Under: Photography

The Anzac Day march

April 28, 2013 by Jen 2 Comments

My son is part of his local scout group and every year they get the opportunity to take part in the Anzac Day march. JJ wasn’t going to do it but then decided that he would. I’m so glad he did.

We got hold of his great-great uncle’s medals so he could wear them on the day. Uncle Alf was in the army in Papua New Guinea in World War II and JJ got to hold a banner for the 2nd/14th Australian Field Regiment, also part of World War II. I don’t know what unit Uncle Alf was in.

We had to get there at 8am, so we didn’t go to the dawn service this year like we did last year as we had plans for afterwards and it would have made a very long day.

After a while they line up in the order they’re going to march in. As his scout group was holding the 2nd World War signs, they were towards the front of the march. Unfortunately there were no soldiers left from their regiments to march with them. Uncle Alf died about 14 years ago and he was in his early 80s, and when you consider that the 2nd World War ended nearly 70 years ago, there wouldn’t be too many of them left.

Finally at around 9.30 they started marching. It’s about a 1.5km march – not too long for young legs, or the older ones. I walked more or less alongside so I could take photos.

I got a real buzz from being there and watching my son march. I could tell that he was really getting into it and I was really proud of him. The ladies below caught my eye and I couldn’t resist taking a photo of them.

As I’d never been to a march before it was great to see so many people go along and support the participants and clap as people walked past. I think this helped JJ feel a large amount of pride at participating.

Then before we knew it, his part of the march was over and the SES volunteers collected their signs.

Then he plopped down on the ground as though he’d run a marathon.

Here’s a close-up of the medals. As far as I can tell they’re service medals. They’re pretty heavy and they didn’t fall off. I was so worried that he’d somehow lose them.

The smile on his face sums up how he felt about the whole experience.

We walked back towards the start and the march was still going so we got to see more recent soldiers from Vietnam, Afghanistan, East Timor etc before we ducked across the road to head home.

Filed Under: Parenting, Photography Tagged With: JJ

Mourning

April 15, 2013 by Jen Leave a Comment

I think yesterday was probably the last day I’ll stroll along the beach wearing summer clothes. It was an unseasonably warm autumn day.

I will miss summer but I do love the change of seasons.

The lad put his bathers on, but didn’t go into the water to get them all wet. See his short hair? It hasn’t been short for a while. That itchy head he’s been complaining of for the last week resulted in this haircut because of nits. I found them on Saturday as I was trying to prepare for a dinner party.

So I had an unscheduled extra load on my day of washing, cutting and combing hair, and making beds. I’d caught it early so there weren’t too many bugs to comb out. But my head’s been itchy ever since.

I’m so glad we get a guest dog staying over every now and then. I really really miss having a dog around the place ever since Monty died. I dreamed about her the other night.

She was lying on the floor and I walked up to her. She started talking to me. I can’t remember what she said but just the fact that she talked to me, and that she appeared a lot younger than my last memories of her.

I woke shortly afterwards and cried. I had to get up just to calm down a bit. I hadn’t expected grief to hit me unawares in my sleep like that. It’s also a bit weird getting used to talking about her in the past tense.

Filed Under: Journal, Parenting, Photography Tagged With: dog, JJ, monty

See how they swim

April 6, 2013 by Jen 1 Comment

I always get a kick from seeing dolphins swim in the water. The sight never fails to make me feel good, and I’m even more happy when I can capture some photos.

Dolphins are natural surfers.

And it appears as thought they get enjoyment from surfing some waves.

And when you get a photo of them jumping out of the waves? What a sight.

Fantastic. Love it.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: dolphins, swimming, waves

My latest photography project

April 2, 2013 by Jen 4 Comments

The colour red - a photography experiment

When I finished my second annual photo a day project at the end of last year I was relieved to have a break from the discipline of a photo a day.

But it didn’t take long to start missing it.

However, I didn’t want to take another photo a day. I still wanted a project, just not a daily one, so the colour project was born.

In the month of March it was the colour red.

I feel I still have some refining to do. There were 31 days in March and I only got seven photos out of it.

I didn’t want to just grab the camera and take photos of red things for the hell of it. It happened more organically than that. I would see something red and take a photo.

But I think a combination of the two would work quite well.

So for April we’ll see how the colour orange works. It’s autumn here so I’m seeing a photo shoot in the Adelaide Hills on one of my weekends.

Filed Under: Photography

That’s nature for you

March 13, 2013 by Jen 4 Comments

When we were in Kangaroo Island down at Admiral’s Arch in Flinders Chase National Park there were heaps of seals. They were quite entertaining for various reasons.

I started photographing this baby seal.

Then I saw that it was making its way to a larger seal. Mum perhaps?

It makes it to mum, but she’s not really interested.

Mum turns around and tells the little one to go away. Perhaps she’s not its mum?

Baby seal is not to be deterred. Mum is not going to budge.

It does appear from these photos that they did indeed connect and it was all happy family, but it wasn’t. You can’t see what was really going on in these photos. The adult seal was not having a bar of the baby.

Was the baby hers? I don’t know.

That’s nature for you.

Linking up with Trish for Wordless Wednesday. She’s got baby meerkats over there.

Filed Under: Photography

Preying

January 30, 2013 by Jen 9 Comments

We recently spent some time in Kangaroo Island and there’s an excellent Birds of Prey demonstration not that far from Seal Bay. As the lad is really into birds at the moment we went along to enjoy.

See more photos from Kangaroo Island and birds of prey.

Linking in with Trish’s lizards for Wordless Wednesday.

Filed Under: Photography