Canberra - Enlighten Festival

Last night I went to the Enlighten Festival which is one of Canberra's main autumn events.  As well as films, performances and music, the thing everyone wants to see is the projection of amazing images onto the walls of the iconic buildings here in the parliamentary triangle. When the sky has become dark the images look fantastic. They change every few minutes.  I'm sharing with you here the photos from two hours strolling around the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Questacon, National Library, Old Parliament House (now the Museum of Australian Democracy) and a glimpse of the famous Spiegel Tent from Belgium with cabaret and other performances. The images on the National Gallery reflect the current big exhibition on Toulouse  Lautrec.

This is the lead in event to the One VeryBig Day on Monday 12th celebrating Canberra's centennial. There are heaps of celebrations on this day but also events that run all the year. I am involved in the Centennial Tapestry.

 Click the link at the bottom of the pictures to see them full size and a slideshow.

Canberra - Enlighten Festival, a set on Flickr.

My first Photo Book

For some time I have been considering scanning a lot of my colour slides and making photo books that can be passed down to my cousin's children.  I hate the idea of all my slides going to the tip when I die.  Having been to over 100 countries since 1968 I have a huge collection of images which are indexed and in filing cabinets.  I used to have a small photo library business.

I chose Blurb.com from the many photo book-making websites as I had seen books from there and had very good recommendations.  I had planned to do a small book from my digital photos while I learnt the Book Smart software you download and work with.  But I couldn't wait to do a big book on a trip by schooner I did in Indonesia in 2006.  I spent several days working on the book while the temperatures were around 40 and I had the aircon on!  The book arrived last week and luckily it turned out well and I am very pleased with it.

Find my book here.  Click the Preview to look through it and buy it if you like.  It looks best full screen.

Filomena Reiss runs this cruise every year and this year's is from 16-29th April.  She does not make a profit as she's interested in helping the weavers on the islands.  If you are interested in the itinerary, cost etc. email  Filomena.

Macro Photography

I always like photographing closeup.  Here are a few photos of mainly native Australian flowers I have taken when using film and then scanning.    I still have a wonderful Minolta 100mm macro lens that I loved but I can no longer use it with digital.  As I find the weight of SLR and lenses more than I can easily carry as I'm getting older, I am only using compact cameras and having more trouble getting the really close images that I want. But I will persevere as I know that depth of field with a compact small sensor is actually better than with SLRs.



These 2 photos are of Correa Manii, one of my favourites.

Banksia

Callistemon

To learn more about digital macro I did a one day course recently and photographed weeds closeup along an old river bed - amazing how beautiful the rejects of plants can be!

Pointillism Painting Process

Pointillism is a technique of neo-Impressionist painting using tiny dots of various pure colours, which become blended in the viewer's eye. It was developed by Seurat with the aim of producing a greater degree of luminosity and brilliance of color.  My idea began with this photograph taken near Adaminaby in the Snowy Mountains, NSW.  It was an assignment set in my art class by Michael Winters.
 

I then made a collage (A2 size) from the photograph using tiny torn up pieces of advertising junk mail.  It took many hours to do and was an interpretation especially as junk mail colours were not always what one wanted.
 

Finally I made this acrylic pointillist painting approximately the same size as the collage on a stretched canvas.  The background was first painted with Cadmium Red to warm up the painting.  I then used small brushes, both round and square to make the marks.  I had spots before the eyes!  But looked at from a distance the blending does take place and the colours enhanced.

Design from photographs

This is the first more complex design I have made from photographs using Photoshop. I have used some of the photos from the National Folk Festival from my last post as well as others. I am a very amateur Photoshop worker but have learnt a few things quite well from doing this design.

The idea was to do a design for a tapestry weaving but it is really too complex unless the weaving was huge. My teacher suggested it be divided into four different ones.