Wild flowers

"Where the path meets... I'll always take the one with the wild flowers."

Quote from this movie I was watching last night...

Homage to Eugene Atget

Self promotion update Nov 2012:  My winning entry is the one above... taken with a Samsung Galaxy 2 and edited with an Android app called OldPhoto. This is the main archway at the NSW Art Gallery; inspired by Eugene Atget's penchant for recording everyday life in the Old Paris, its people & architecture. Thanks for the NSW Art Gallery staff for the prize - a photobook about Eugene Atget; now a much treasured memento.

"Atget Instagram competition - Winner announced

Congratulations to Garry Trinh (@garrytrinh), winner of the Atget Instagram competition! Garry has won a night at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, a Eugene Atget merchandise pack and a gift card for the Gallery restaurant.

The five runners up are:

@g1212, @angewichmann, @hayleswhales, @picturette, @jayashkal [that's me!]

Highly commended:

@occular, @sarahjeanz, @callum_1999, @vanessahatfield, @pcn059, @monochrome42, @aquilochan

Of the winning works, Judy Annear, senior curator photographs and competition judge, said:

Of the 13 finalists, it was very hard to choose the winner and 5 runners up. It was clear in shortlisting from the 1,600 entries that many participants had really thought about what they were doing. The consideration that went into the technical aspects, location, meaning, and how all of these might relate to the parameters of the Atget competition, as well as the inspiration gained from looking at Atget’s photographs, was in many cases considerable. Hence a third category of highly commended.

In all cases Sydney’s charm is revealed as mysterious, the streets enigmatic, the gardens a little melancholy, passersby engaged in their private worlds. Familiar environments become haunting as the everyday comes into focus.

The winner is commended for the depiction of an ordinary street where the intersection of human and natural environments gives the viewer the frisson of the uncanny."

Victoria Park, Parramatta Road [Glebe Photowalk/Instameet 2012]

Before Instagram [taken with a Samsung Galaxy II]

After Instagram edit

Ode to the last day of autumn 2012 [#lookingup]

'When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.  When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.'  ~ Ansel Adams

It's another end to something... and this time it is autumn of 2012. Obviously one can't record the whole season how much one would try... one can only attempt to record those  fleeting moments. In this case, I tried 'quoting' the end of autumn 2012 in between lunch. The weather is sunny, not too cold & the shapes, shades & colourss provided by nature are spectacular. Please enjoy...

#lookingup #autumn on Instagram. Taken by my trusted iPhone4 & edited with Instagram [@jayashkal]

Daniel Suelo on 'damned if I do and damned if I don't'

"A seed falls to the ground and dies, hiding in the soil. It grows up into a plant that flowers in fluorescent color, attracting bees and hummingbirds and humans. Condemn it for hiding. Then condemn it for blooming. Condemn it for wilting. Then it might produce fruit. What condemnation then? Are we resentful because the plant knows only to follow its own nature, both hiding and blooming in glory and bearing more seeds? I don't know how any of it works, it just does, and it's beautiful and I'll enjoy it, whether or not people like to crush plants under their feet."

Daniel Suelo

Flowers...

As an amateur photographer, flowers are the most easiest to photograph as well as the most rewarding. It doesn't take too much effort to capture the beauty of a flower... it is already there. Just a matter of timing... great light, nice angle. Nature has already set the scene for you... the colours, the scent... alll it takes is a pair of steady hands.

"When you lose someone, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw."

- Jodi Picoult, House Rules

Joy

Reading this today (on Boxing Day):

"We do not live to eat & make money.

We eat & make money to be able to enjoy life.

That is what life means & what life is for.

And joy, is after all, the end of life."

- George Mallory on the sheer joy of climbing Mt Everest.