RegularRandom: 5 minutes with beach calligraphy

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RegularRandom, sea-grass, seaweed

It’s a while since I’ve indulged my liking for the graceful lettering the sea leaves behind. Right now my own beach is dense with indiscriminate sea-weed, but two beaches down the leavings are more fastidious and selective, even delicate.

This week my contribution to Desley’s RegularRandom almost manages to match delicacy with delicacy, although not pink with pink! Apologies too – I just reread the rules of the game and I’ve strayed a long way from one object, many angles and different lighting, although I didn’t interfere. Next time …

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with seaweed

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RegularRandom, seaweed

Failure to acknowledge: I’ve been in such a flurry of posting that I failed to acknowledge two photographers who contributed to my “Once was a bridge” post. Annette Gray provided the devotional shots of the planks and bolts that I collaged, and the second photo, showing the bridge without its towering replacement. J provided the shot of the two bridges. Apologies for the oversight, you two.

Sometime the sea goes wild and wrenches up everything it can lay its surges on. Then the tide deposits the uprootings on the beach, swirling them about as it comes and goes. In the light of early morning they become gleaming treasures.

This week Desley’s RegularRandom features a very cute Easter bunny cake photographed from many angles. My contribution is not cute at all, but it glows.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with a whatever-it-is

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black and white, flowers, RegularRandom

My maraudings into my neighbours’ gardens are becoming more daring. I’m no longer content to, at most, lean over the fence. I now move within touching distance of the house, made easier in this case because there is no fence and there is no occupant. The white flowers draw me: their solid inner shape and then their dangling … appurtenances, for want of a better word. They must be some kind of lily, possessing as they do those stamens that drip with brown stain.

The next five photos are all edited, using Snapseed.

Today DJ features a supremely delicate air plant. This is the most delicacy I can manage for a companion.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with an early morning sky

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RegularRandom, sky

Out and about early, I was drawn to look upwards. The morning was warm, and the clouds, as is the nature of clouds, mutable but in no way capricious. There is nothing dramatic about them: they are calming in their changeability. They are part of my meditation as I sit on the bench overlooking the beach and the ocean, an oddly fixed point in my otherwise fluid day.

I can honestly say that, for once, I did not interfere with or rearrange my subject in any way.

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This week DJ’s RegularRandom also features something subtle and evanescent – melting skittles.

Besquared circles: Sculpture Bermagui 2

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circles in squares, Sculpture Bermagui

Since the beginning of March the blogosphere has been awash with an astonishing array of circles (or squares) inside squares. People have been tunneling through their archives and finding the most astonishing array of images. I’ve resisted till now (my archives are not organised or existent enough to tunnel through) but on Thursday Bermagui Headland offered me a lineup of 10 diverse circles – literally a lineup – so obviously it was time for me to join in. I can’t do the one-a-day routine so here they are in a flurry, all at once.

Thanks to Becky for initiating this very productive mania.

Janet Long “Aureole”

Stephen Hogan “Byobu” (inspired by Japanes screen art)

Bob Teasdale “2,3,4” (recycled steel wagon rim and reinforcing rod from Burrinjuck dam wall)

Portia Terlich “Weeping world”

Jordan Tarlinton “The bell tower”

Bob Teasdale “Ball and chain”

Tobias Bennett “Everything is connected”

Chris (Smilie) Magill “Wind works” (detail)

Jordan Tarlinton “23.5 degrees”

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with sponges

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RegularRandom, sponges

A few years ago we spent a lot of time denuding beaches of treasures and trying to name the hundred or so species of shells that appeared along the shoreline at the whim of the sea. That collection included sponges. Last week I spotted them lying on a pile of seaweed for J’s garden. He’s been tidying up and decided, reluctantly, that they needed to go – but not quite, because there they were on the hillside, just waiting for the camera.

I pre-empted Desley’s permission to rearrange my subject, as she did her angel cake. My rearrangement however didn’t involve eating bits of the subject. I extracted the sponges one by one from an untidy pile to take their portraits and then attempted a still life arrangement of the lot when I’d finished.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with hibiscus and morning light

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hibiscus, light, RegularRandom

This post is for Sue, who inspired me to go for light.

One day my first mini-walk was at 7am, considerably later than usual. There was a huge bonus. The sun was above the bank of clouds that seem to be a feature of sunrise lately, falling beautifully on the flowers and leaves of the hibiscus in a neighbour’s front yard. One of my photographic intentions for the year is to make greater use of light, to notice the way it falls as I prowl around, and to capture it as it illuminates small pieces of my world.

I don’t know how much this pairing, taken with a different camera, light falling differently, a few weeks later, demonstrates about the power of light. Not as much shadow? More luminosity? Preferences, anyone?

Linked to DJ’s spectacular RegularRandom, this week sliced fruit as you’ve never seen it before.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with my grandson’s motorbike

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grandson, motorbike, RegularRandom

I don’t always succeed in my role as grandmother to an occasionally testy 14 year old, but I struck absolutely the right note when I went down to shoot his motorbike. He directed me towards the best angles, and stood by, proud in ownership, while I crouched and lent, exploring its intricacies. If you look closely you’ll see signs of his other passion: some days he spent 7 hours in less-than-ideal surf over the Christmas holidays.

This is my contrasting companion to DesleyJane’s beautifully delicate feather in her most recent RegularRandom posting.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes on the verge

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grasses, RegularRandom

My morning habit of a mini-walk at daybreak is easily transportable to the bush block where I spend weekends. After a respectable amount of rain (this was written in early December), the roadside grasses are flourishing and beckoning. Everything is still wet from dew and river-mist: my new sneaker-things are obviously unsuitable footwear, because soon squelching is added to bird song and the faint sound of running water. I walk the length of the reserve where we used to enjoy Saturday night wine, and find plenty to delight me. My flower camera lets me down a bit: I’ve scored a lot of blurs. But I’ve also made discoveries about the nature of grasses and the phases of their unfolding. All the roadside luxuriance boils down to six different species.

The silhouettes against the pinkening sky are dramatic and pleasing, and I have enough good enough grass shots for a post, despite their woggling habits.

This week DJ does miraculous things photographing a pink hydrangea in a way that makes me think “delicate”, not a word I’d usually apply to what I’ve always regarded as a cumbersome flower.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with peeling bark.

Tags

bark, Corymbia maculata, spotted gums

Just below the house where I spend weekends is a grove of handsome trees, spotted gums (aka Corymbia maculata) interspersed with stringy bark. We’ve watched them grow from striplings in the 45 years we’ve known this block. We’ve raked and composted their leaves, slung clotheslines between them, sought mobile reception perched on a mossy bole at that magic spot where, if we’re lucky, two bars appear. Towards the end of last year, late (a privilege of beauty), the spotted gums set about the ravishing business of shedding bark. I take advantage of a non-beach afternoon to capture the process of this shedding

I’ve never actually scrutinised the process before, and I’m interested in the way it happens. First a vertical split. Then a peeling back, a detachment, little pieces breaking away, but not quite completely, like the doors of an advent calendar, to reveal the underflesh. Soon the whole trunk is little doors, sometimes pinned by a tiny knot. Then gradually, and much faster if the wind rises, the bark falls from the tree and it’s up to its fetlocks in bark strips.

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This week as DJ posts a fading rose on RegularRandom, I offer an unveiling into naked white glamour.