Art and Practice
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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Today for Weekend Wanderings, I thought we could look back at another post that was done on my old blog. I am slowly hoping to bring them all here over time, at least the ones that are still relevant. We are going back to Swan Hill and the salt or salinity problems they have around there.
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Previously I’ve spoken about the salt pans up around Swan Hill and in the Mallee, but today I have some more photos to show you. They are ones that I have done more processing too. It is a dilemma images like this. Do we do little to them to show how they really look, or should we process them in an attempt to highlight the problem and the environment.
I did a bit to this. I don’t know if it adds to it or not. I think it turned out darker than I had expected. The colours are very much true to how I think of the Mallee. It is really not a colourful place and everything does seem washed out. In summer it is brown everywhere, or as a friend put it recently, golden. Even the trees seem a bit brown.
I loved what the salt has done to the fence posts. Really shows how destructive it is. While I think it is beautiful, I know it is not natural. I mean the salt pan is a not a naturally occurring phenomenon and we should be sad about this.
The area in the image above was taken near Sealake on the way to Nyah West up in the north of the state of Victoria.
This photo was taken from the road between Nyah West and Chinkapook. It is a quiet road and you can just stop and take photos. We did and that’s when I captured the above image.
Again, I have done more than the basic processing. I really wanted to show the environment a lot more. Bring out the fence and the ground it is surrounded by. It really was that colour too. I guess the algae is still on the ground. It hasn’t been dry for long, you could tell when you walked on it that it was soft and still moist. You do have to be so careful walking on it you can sink into it before you know it.
Sometimes it is better to let a scene talk for itself. While some processing is okay, I think sometimes it is better left alone. I wouldn’t do a lot of processing to these as then the message would be lost. I think they still ask you to think and react to what you are seeing.
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.
