Sunday Morning

9am Sunday morning. The air is still the gales of yesterday subsiding to a cool, gentle sigh. Rain has cooled the ground, houses, the trees. From the high twenties we are now in the high teens, a drop of ten degrees. It is a welcome change. 

Today I head to the State Library of Victoria to undertake research into my next subject for my December Pro Photo feature, Australian photographer, Max Pam. Now in his sixties Max has an impressive body of work behind him. I am going to enjoy this project.

I have also started a novel and am halfway through another non-fiction book. The creativity is flowing.

This photo, below, is of the Yarra River at Southgate. It was taken on a Sunday around noon. Such a beautiful city.

.

Melbourne Rain

One of the few wet days we have had this year. This photo was captured whilst sheltering from the rain on the steps of the Shrine of Remembrance in the city's botanical gardens. One moment the sun was shining and the next the sky had darkened and down came the rain in great pellets splashing on the ground before me. I raced up the steps keen to keep the rain off my new Olympus super zoom lens. I huddled against the stone wall as the rain was whipped up the steps by a cold southerly. And then the wind paused allowing me to take this shot.

Today there are spring showers. The sun shines through grey clouds and rain glistens on freshly washed leaves. Petals fall from newly budded flowers and there is jasmine lying on the ground. The scent of spring is in the air.

Ed Burtynsky Done and Dusted

Uranium Tailings No. 7,
Elliot Lake, Ontario 1995

It is a fantastic feeling when an article is finished, scrupulously polished, checked and re-checked and then "sent".  My interviews with Burtynsky, an extremely gracious and generous man, were entertaining and incredibly insightful. Listening to him talk about his work gave me a greater understanding of its messages, and of its artistic beauty. 

When photographs of open pit mines and the detritus of a resource dependent world become abstract works of art the gap between photography as a science and photography as art is truly bridged.

I post here a photograph taken by Edward Burtynsky in Ontario in 1995 of the uranium mining tailings.  And I thank Ed for sharing this, and his other works, with us.  

Look for my story - Edward Burtynsky - Redefining the Landscape - in the October issue of Pro Photo.