veterinary scientist with a love of film photography, asian music and vedanta
My last day at Gowrie Junction, where I have been living for two months. I have just packed my espresso machine.
Each time I have made a coffee here I've been tapping out the grounds on the fence-post just outside my kitchen door. That's two months worth of coffee on the ground there. Also of note is the dusty distance. Another load of good South Australian topsoil is making its way across eastern Australia today.I have lived and worked here in Toowoomba for a little over two years. In a few days I leave for Townsville - a transfer, doing fairly similar work. At a send-off lunch on Wednesday, one of my work-mates, Peter Fraser, recited this poem that he had written for me. i am honoured and touched by it....
"On the road again"
They say he's on the road again,
He's heading Townsville's way.
They need a vet up North it's said
So here he could not stay.
© Peter Fraser 2009
----------------------------------------- Thank you Fraze for this bit of "bush poetry". I will miss my Toowoomba friends....Comments [3]
(btw if you need towing done in Toowoomba, I recommend Tezza's Towing ph - 0417 612 994)
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I find things when I move house that I didn't know I had. Here we have two rolls of Agfa Isopan film, 620 size (no longer made but similar to 120) - expiry date January 1975; and a big old roll of "regular Pan" film, expiry date January 1944.
Buried treasure indeed.... aaarrrrrhhhh...
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I have set myself the task of finishing my packing this weekend. I have just finished packing my records. As I have no way to play them at the moment I have to question the sanity of keeping them at all but... well there are some real gems in there. Things are mostly under control. The one thing I really have trouble with is my old Kombi (VW bus) which has been sitting in my yard some time and currently doesn't start (or drive for that matter - it needs a new gear-box). Shoul I call one of the 2 people who have expressed interest in buying it, or should I get it towed to my next address....?
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I visited my friend Gary this weekend and he dug out an old box of glass plate negatives and asked me if I could do anything with them. He knows little about them. I suspect they are from the Tweed region of Northern NSW, though they may be from Qld - each one is wrapped in old police paperwork of Qld origin. They appear to be about 100 years old. The condition in general is poor but there are images on them and I plan to scan some of them and see what I can find.
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This is a word-cloud of the most frequent words I have used on my Twitter to date. It's called a wordle....
http://www.wordle.net/
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A review of the new Fuji/Cosina Voigtländer Bessa 6x7 camera which makes me want one. It shoots in 6x6 and 6x7 formats, folds up to fit in a rather large pocket, and has a remarkably fine looking Fujinon/Voigtländer lens.
With 120 film I shoot a lot of 6x6 and 6x9 - both have their merits. The 6x9 is a typical traditional 2:3 aspect ratio with no surprises - useful pretty much everywhere. The 6x6 square image lends a special quality to a lot of situationn - beautiful for portraiture and somehow giving a new vision to familiar scenes often by opening up the vertical. Composition ina square is different too, and breaks the old rules I learnt to see in a rectangle.
The 6x7 aspect attracts me and I often find I crop images to that ratio. It is a gentle rectangle with composition qualities rather like the square. An interesting hybrid. This camera is a very tempting little unit.
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I process a lot of black and white film in my kitchen. Among the dishwashing brushes and detergent sits a measuring cylinder of the pre-soak water I just poured off from the tank of Rollei R3 8x10 sheets. Each film makes a different colour. Efke is hot pink, T-Max a rich blue. Just beyond the jug of stop bath is a container of honey, crystallised from the cold weather of late. Kitchen jugs, chap but effective, are reserved for photo-chemicals, a mobile phone for a timer, newspaper spread on the bench to prevent stains.
The developing tank, a Jobo ($20 on eBay), turns on an old Cibachrome electric roller unit ($5 at the Brisbane Cameraholics market), next to the dish-drainer. This is how I process films on the cheap....
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I just got back from a 9 day trip. I spent a lot of the time "Out West" - in Western Queensland - mostly in Welford National Park, which is near Jundah. It was a work trip and I was pretty busy doing work things and driving around so I didn't have as much time for photography as I would have liked. It seemed that whenever I was busy working the light was perfect, but when I got out my camera gear and headed out into the desert it would become overcast and dull.
I have been to this dune before. on that occassion it was nearly sunset, and I barely had time to set up my 4x5 camera and shoot a couple of sheets of film when the light failed altogether. This time it was just plain cloudy. I set up the 4x5 and waited around a long time for the light to come. It never did, so I shot this digital frame then took off. A few minutes down the track the sun came out and lit up the red sand like flame. I turned around and headed back to the dune, where I managed to get one 4x5 frame shot before the light failed again.
Later the same day I went down to the bank of the Barcoo River to await the sunset. Two nights previously, as the sun set, the eastern sky was reflected in pinks and blues in the river. At that time I only had a 35mm camera with me so I took some shots and determined to be back there when I could with a larger format camera. Here was my chance. I waited about an hour, being eaten alive by midges and most likely contracting Ross River fever or Barcoo rot... but the sun set quietly without any show of colour. Too many clouds it would seem.
Thus ended what was to be the only day I got during the trip to get much photography done. It left me with a longing to get back out there again... soon...
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