Art and Practice
One of the biggest surprises I had when I went to the USA in 2015 was a trip to a ghost town. For part of the trip we went to Lake Tahoe and on the way back we took a detour through the ghost town Bodie, and I thought it would be nice to look back at the photos from that trip for Silent Sunday.
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The weather has been horrible for getting out to take photos. Not really wanting to get out hasn’t helped. Today it seemed like a good idea to try reposting something from the past. Remembering the Weekend Wanderings posts, I thought I would repost one from the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement.
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As you may have guessed I’m interstate at the moment. A friend and I have travellled to the coast of NSW to take some photos. Not sure we are going to get what we want, but it is lovely to get away. We are spending a couple of nights in a magical little town called Central Tilba, and I thought it would be fun to do a Weekend Wanderings post about it.
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This is a place that has been a big part of my photographic journey. Recently I was going through some of my older folders to find an image. I came across these.
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Things have been changing around here. I haven’t been able to get out as much as I would like to take photos, and when I do what I get is very different. I might need to rethink these posts and perhaps start posting something different on the weekends. I didn’t want to go another whole weekend without doing a Weekend Wandering post, so I thought I would do a repost and start working on something new for the weekends. Today I have some photos that I took 2 years ago. I hope you enjoy either seeing them again, or seeing them for the first time.
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When you look on the internet you see images everywhere. There are millions and millions of them. They are all great and that then creates the problem of how to make yours stand out. I don’t know the answer to that, or what you can do about it, but what I love to do is try adding mood to my images.
This is an old Church in the small country town of Woomelang. I go up there a lot and I first started taking photos of this Church about 20 years ago, and the last time I did was back in August. When I was there last, a few weeks ago, this Church was gone. The building had been sold and it was taken apart to be shipped somewhere else. Now there is one less thing to take photos of up there.
This photo was actually taken early in 2014. I wanted to do something more with one image to show it in a new light and as a thank you to it for being a fantastic subject all these years. It is my farewell to the building.
The original image had a horrible sky. It was taken very early in the morning and to say it was boring is an understatement. The first thing I had to do was replace it. I found a sky that I had taken up there once before. It was also done in early morning, so perfect really.
Cloudy skies are great for adding mood to an image. It is so important, I think, for fine art photographers to collect certain things, and one of those is skies. I have collected around 300 different ones so far, and I continue to collect them.
This image would not have had the same impact if the sky was boring. We know that clouds give us a feeling of morose or something like that. There is something about cloudy days that effects us all. When you see images with that cloudy sky then those feelings come to you. I like the way it helps to demand a response from the viewer.
Just because you take an image under certain circumstances, doesn’t mean you have to settle for it. You can change whatever you like in the image to get what you want. Of course you have to know how, and if you don’t there is nothing to stop you from learning.
Think about what you wish you could do with your images.
Today it has been really hot here. To say that our visit to Swan Hill and the Pioneer Settlement was silly is an understatement. Really not a great place to be when it is so hot. I did take some photos, but I don’t know if they will be any good. I did get one that I couldn’t wait to process.
This was in one of the shops, I think it was the stock and station agents, but to be honest, I can’t really remember. The interior was quite dark and all you could see was the light on the desk. I really like the way the camera saw it.
When I got home and started to play with it I wanted to keep that low light and tried to emphasis it a bit more. I also wanted a more sepia look to it, without it being a true sepia image. It is still colour, but has that tone. I tried to make it look like a memory, perhaps a moment gone.
Swan Hill wasn’t really successful for us, but I should have known better. I grew up around the area and I know what the heat is like. There will be other visits I’m sure, perhaps in the winter.
It is week 2 of Robyn’s challenge the One Four Challenge and I thought I would put it over here on this blog this week. I am looking forward to seeing what I come up with each week for it.
This week I tried to give the image a vintage feel. I have made it sepia and put some textures over the top. It hasn’t all worked out the way I had hoped but I don’t mind it. I love textures and like the way they can transform an image. Though they have to be used sparingly, not good to use them too much. They are great for making images look vintage.
There are details on Robyn’s blog Captivate Me about doing this challenge, and if you want to see other great entries then go to ONE FOUR CHALLENGE – NOV WK 2.
If you want to see my first weeks entry into the challenge then please go there, Quiet Thursdays – Robyn’s One Four Challenge.
