Category Archives: Photos

Floriade NightFest 2011

Posted on October 5, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| 2 Comments

The Floriade Festival has been running annually now since 1988, and is now something of a Canberra institution, with visitors coming from all over Australia (and beyond) to view the massed plantings of spring blooms. Echoes of old pagan celebrations of the Rites of Spring.

Bird cages and ferris wheel, Floriade 2011

The park in which it is held is normally locked up overnight, but for a few nights each year they open it up for (paying) visitors. Flowers, coloured lights, stalls, street theatre and performances – sounds like the makings of a photo opportunity.

Tulips, Floriade 2011 NightFest

As a long-time Canberra resident I’ve attended a number of times over the years, and taken lots of the standard ‘pretty tulip’ photos (see these from 2009 for example), playing a little with flash and under-exposed backgrounds at times.

Floriade NightFest 2011

This year I wanted to see how far I could go taking handheld photos in the sometimes poor light. The idea was to stretch both the low-light high ISO low-noise abilities of the 5DII, and to test the wide aperture image quality of the 50mm f/1.2 lens (though I also used the 16-35 and 70-200 f/2.8 lenses at times.

"Light Storm" installation, Floriade 2011 NightFest

All up, with some video and a few series of time lapse shots, I came home with 18GB of image data! Not surprisingly, many of the images shot at f/1.2 don’t have sharp focus on the subject, and the very strong contrasts between the dark night and the coloured spotlights was a challenge, but I think there’s a few ‘keepers’ amongst them.

[Update!]I’ve now put together a short (4 1/2 minute) video compilation with some of the time lapse sequences, a little video and still photos from the Floriade NightFest. Music (JJ leaves LA) by Daniel Lanois. This video was all done in Adobe After Effects – the surface of which I’m still just starting to scratch. Seen enough to know however that it’s easier to put a quick slideshow together with ‘Ken Burns effect‘ (pan and zoom) using Windows Movie Maker! But the range of effects and editing features possible in After Effects is quite amazing. Anyway, here’s the video – click below to see it. Any comments (as always) very welcome!

The full set of photos from this night, including some taken beside the lake before the Nightfest gates opened) can be seen on the main Jokar web site in this folder.

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Posted in Flowers, Human landscapes, Night photography, Plants

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Backstage dancers and photo ethics

Posted on September 24, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| Leave a comment
Balinese dancers backstage at Amed

Balinese dancers backstage at Amed

I’m really happy with this photo of six young Balinese dancers waiting backstage before their Baris and Legong dance performances, with their teacher/chaperone beside them. I think what I like is the combination of the warm light and colours, the serious composed faces of the dancers, and the way the middle four look at you straight down the lens.

It wasn’t a great situation for photography, with dim low-wattage incandescent lighting. I went up to 1600 ISO on my 5D Mk11, shooting RAW (of course!) and opened up to f/3.5, and even then I needed a 0.4 second exposure to get enough light to the camera sensor! The camera lay beside me balanced on a table as I had no tripod with me at the time. All of this explains the overall softness and the motion blur of the girl on the right hand side.

But this photo is not actually one photo, but a composite of five separate images put together in Photoshop. In reality, at no time was more than one of the dancers looking towards the camera. I chose the best image of each of the subjects, put them into individual layers one Photoshop image (658MB!), and selectively removed parts of each image with layer masks until just the bits I wanted showed through. You can see this in this screenshot from the Photoshop layers pane.

Amed dancers Photoshop snipSo, I do like the image – but for me it’s raised a couple of dilemmas about ‘photographic ethics’.

Dilemma #1 – Five decisive moments in a single image?

The photo looks like it has simply captured a single moment in time – but in fact it’s an amalgam of five distinct moments, presented as if it was one. So it’s a record of an instant in time that never actually occurred, presented on my web site as if it depicts reality, without any disclosure or explanation.

In this case I don’t suggest it’s a significant manipulation of reality, or a serious deceit. No-ones’s going to be tricked in any serious way – but in a small way the viewer is nonetheless deceived. As the software tools for digital manipulation improve, it’s becoming easy to do this kind of thing without anyone knowing. Should ‘The Ethical Photographer’ always disclose when this kind of manipulation is done?

Dilemma #2 – Candid camera

The second (and perhaps more serious) ethical issue is that this photo (or more correctly, this series of photos) was taken without asking permission first, and without the knowledge of the subjects that their pictures were being taken. The camera lay beside me on the table, facing backwards towards the young dancers sitting on the bench. I was facing in the opposite direction, shooting blind as it were, pressing the shutter button without looking through the viewfinder to frame the shots. They would have had no idea of what I was doing – and, at the time I wasn’t entirely sure either!.

Normally, whether at home in Australia or travelling elsewhere, I make it a rule to ask permission before taking someone’s portrait – unless they are in a public situation, part of a crowd or performing in some way. In Indonesia, one of the first expressions I learnt in Bahasa was: “Boleh saya memfoto Anda?” On this occasion, they were performers – but they weren’t engaged in performance at the time I took the photos. Does that make it unethical? Does the fact that I took the photos covertly make it wrong? What about the fact that they were children?

I haven’t lost any sleep over these dilemmas, but I think it is worth considering what ‘The Ethical Photographer’ would have done in the situation. What do you think? Post a comment below and let me know, eh?

The full set of photos from this night (and other photos taken in and around Amed in eastern Bali) can be seen on the main Jokar web site in this folder.

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Posted in Bali, Photos

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Snow camping on the Ramsheads

Posted on September 12, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| Leave a comment

Two weeks ago I had a few days camping in the snow up on the Ramshead Range (between the top of the Crackenback chair at Thredbo and Mt Kosciuszko). Setting out from the top of the chairlift, the wind was blowing across the snow from the west at 60km/hr, so we (friends Colin, Barry and I) decided not to trudge into it on our snowshoes for too long, and agreed to make camp on the leeward side of a biggish granite-bouldered hill. An hour of snow-shovelling later we had a nice flat platform on which to erect our tents, and some protection from the icy wind.

Ramshead camp site

That was our base for two nights, and during the day we explored around the south side of the North Ramshead, and I got into some nice light, views and photos in the early morning. It was unfortunately too cold and blowy for me to attempt the time lapse star trail photos I had intended to make, and we spent quite a bit of time “loitering within tent”.

Ramshead sunrise

The full set of photos from this trip can be seen on the main Jokar web site in this folder.

Anyway, despite the windy conditions, it was a lot of fun, and it was a whole lot more clement than our previous outing. Back in August 2008 we (plus Rob) ‘enjoyed’ winds gusting at 130km, and had 90mm of precipitation thrown at us in the form of sleety snow during the second night. On that occasion the tents blew flat and leaked badly, and hypothermia was a real option. Got some nice photos  before the storm hit however, including this one of Little Red Riding Rob descending to the red-painted Cootapatamba Hut.

Little Red Riding Rob

A couple of gear notes:

  1. my Salewa ‘Sierra Leone‘ tent is sold as a “four-season tent”, but really it’s just a comfortable fair weather model, and not very sturdy in strong wind. Next time I’ll be looking for a “five-season tent”.
  2. I doubt that there is any sleeping mat more comfortable or more warm than the Exped DownMat 7. It can be a bit slow to inflate using the carrying sack as a pump, but it’s otherwise just a brilliant piece of lightweight luxury.

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Posted in Photos, Wild landscapes

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Karen and John have breakfast

Posted on September 10, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| Leave a comment

80 minutes of our Saturday relaxed morning breakfast ritual compressed down into 2 minutes of frenzied action, with some gentle (Creative Commons-licensed) guitar from Kevin MacLeod.

After the “11 days, 33 meals” project, you’re probably thinking I’ve got a fixation about mealtimes. You’re probably right!

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, the time lapse video was made with:

  • Canon 5D Mk II set to fine small JPG (2784 x 1856 pixels), aperture priority (f/11), 400 ISO 
  • Canon TC80-N3 intervalometer, set to take one exposure every 5 seconds (942 images in total)
  • After Effects 5.5 to compile the slideshow
  • Premiere Pro 5.5 to edit video, add opening and closing title

I know almost nothing about the two Adobe products, and I am finding  the technology VERY confusing (why can’t they be simple like Photoshop?!) But I’m determined to persevere (I’ve found some really useful tutorial videos at the Adobe TV and Creative Cow web sites)

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Posted in Food, Video

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Convoy of No Congruence

Posted on September 7, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| 1 Comment
Who's to blame for global warming?

Who's to blame for global warming?

A couple of weeks ago a series of protest convoys came to Canberra from all over Australia to air their grievances with the current government, and to demand that a ‘double dissolution’ election be held immediately. (This happens to be currently quite impossible under the Australian Constitution, but they were too angry to be deterred by this annoying little fact!) They dubbed it the “Convoy of No Confidence”

According to their advance publicity there was said to be around 9,000 people coming in trucks, campervans, 4WDs, buses and assorted other conveyances. The National Capital would be brought to a standstill by a massive blockade. In the end there was (by my estimate) about 300 or so. They made up for their small contingent by their passion, their sincerity – and their hysteria. Alan Jones and Tony Abbott were there to spur them on, with Jones even telling the crowd that a 2-kilometre long convoy of protest trucks had been prevented from entering Canberra by the Federal Police (which was simply untrue).

And what a rag-tag collection of anti-this and anti-that causes they espoused! The proposed tax on carbon pollution, asylum seekers, changes to quarantine laws, the cost of living, government godlessness, treatment of fathers in the family law system, communism, we even had the Citizens’ Electoral Council still warning us that Prince Phillip and the WWF are plotting for global domination. One guy held his placard aloft to say “People with blood in their eyes, and all she wants to do is dance… dance… dance… and make romance! (not sure what that one was about, actually).

Over all, I found it to be quite a sad assembly of the disgruntled, the disillusioned, the disturbed, the disenfranchised – and a few of the discombobulated as well. But it was a marvellous photo opportunity.

The full set of photos from the ‘Convoy of No Consequence’ can be seen on the main Jokar Web site in this folder.

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Posted in General, Photojournalism, Photos

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Repetition of form

Posted on September 6, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| Leave a comment

There are a number of things I like about this image – some of which really only have meaning to me. I’ve found out that you’ve got to be careful about why you particularly like one of your photos, because often it’s due to your own connections with it, rather than any factor accessible to other viewers. You remember the circumstance in which it was taken, some happy memories or perhaps some obstacles that had to be overcome in order to capture the shot. So it can be the packaging around the images, rather the intrinsic merits of the image itself, that you enjoy when you look at it.

Anyway, what do I like about this shot? Well I like the solid blocks of primary colour, and I like the perspective, looking down and out across the image to the water below. But mostly it’s the repetition of form in it, there’s something pleasing to the eye about seeing shapes and/or colours repeated within the frame. In this photo it’s the water in the pool and in the ocean, the parallel lines of the tree trunks, the array of deck chairs beside the pool – and of course the red-trousered precision swimming team in the pool itself.

In fact (yes, you guessed already), there was only one guy in the water, but I thought he’d look better as a whole Esther Williams/Busby Berkeley synchronised swimming troope. So Photoshop came into play to achieve this, and while I was at it I extended the pool a couple of metres to give him/them some more room to swim in. It ended up relatively seamless, which is another thing I like about the image.

And the main thing I like? It was taken from the balcony of our room at Bannisters at Mollymook on the NSW south coast, on the morning after Karen and I got married. And that’s a perfect example of a ‘personal’ reason for liking a particular photo…

This photo is also featured on the main Jokar photography web site. Go to the Human Landscapes gallery to see other photos in this collection.

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Posted in General, Human landscapes, Photos

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11 days, 33 meals

Posted on September 1, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| 1 Comment

I really like the ‘photographic discipline’ of doing project work  – whether it’s commissioned work or self-assigned. A project obliges you to focus (pun intended) on achieving some pre-defined outcome – rather just firing off images in a sometimes random, opportunistic way (which tends to be my normal mode of operation!)

And, to achieve an outcome, you’ve got to think about it first, to come up with a plan about –

  • about how to proceed in a technical sense,
  • about how to stay on topic during the project, and
  • about how the series of images created for the project will relate to each other and contribute to making up the whole.

A few years ago (well, 2005) I set about recording a week of my life around the cycle of daily meals. The idea was not to just do food photography (though that was part of the concept), but to record the social circumstances around each meal, and so produce a documentary slice of my life through the period that the project was running.

The working title was “7 days, 21 meals” but I found I was enjoying it enough, and still finding enough new angles to the project, to continue for another few days. So it became “11 days, 33 meals“. It was a busy and interesting time, with travel, work, visitors and meals out, and the project managed to capture a block of my life in a documentary way – albeit constructed around the culinary events of the 11 days!


You can see the results here, or view the selected 33 images in the short video above. I also printed the full set of images onto one large sheet of continuous photo paper, with a column for each day and a row for each of each day’s three main meals.

11 days 33 meals montage (printed 1.76 metres wide!)

After 11 days I decided I’d had enough of this project, and it was time to stop. I didn’t want to become obsessive about it – or to keep delaying my meals until the photo had been taken!

But there’s a growing body of ‘obsessive photo projects’ available on the web, from people who don’t want (or don’t know how!) to stop. Jonathan Kelller Keller has put together a list of many of them on his website. And he is no stranger to the genre himself, having conducted a remarkable daily self-portrait project for just about every day since 1998. He’s aligned the images in Adobe After Effects and put them together into a video in which you can watch him age 13 years over the course of 1 minute and 44 seconds. He has no plans to end the project which he says now has a life independent of his own.

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Posted in Food, Photos, Video

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Cremation and serendipity

Posted on August 23, 2011 by John Boyd Macdonald| Leave a comment

Sometimes an image works out because you planned it that way. Perhaps you set out to go somewhere particular to take a specific image that you had pre-visualised, and you knew in advance pretty much just what the finished picture would look like. You’d chosen the lens and the focal length, knew just what aperture you’d need for the desired depth-of-field, and even had a plan drawn up for the precise lighting gear and light modifiers you’d need. And when it works out just as you planned it, you get a nice warm feeling.

But for me that’s actually quite unusual… and many – perhaps most – of my favourite images have come from a spur-of-the-moment situation, a quick or casual capture of a scene, even an accidental image. And often I have no idea at the time that I have managed to record some compelling image until I look at afterwards in post-processing. I wish I could say that every decent image was planned, but it’s just not true. Often as not it’s serendipity that’s responsible.

This image is an example of that. We’d been invited by a friend to attend a family cremation ceremony in a village just near Bangli, Bali. The Balinese put great effort into every aspect of cremation, because they believe that this is when the soul is liberated from the confines of the physical body, and it’s got to be done right or the soul may not be properly released, with all sorts of potential consequences. It can be hugely expensive too, with poor people borrowing large  sums of money to pay for the ceremonies, even mortgaging their houses to fund it all. Consequently it’s common for villages to pool their resources and hold a mass cremation, with the bodies being buried for a time until several families can share the costs, or until a wealthy family is holding a cremation.

When we arrived on our little motorbike and had changed into ‘appropriate’ clothing for the occasion, we found that about eight bodies were to be cremated, including one of a highly respected (and wealthy) village elder. We were the only non-Balinese there, but we were made very welcome, and encouraged to take photos (as many of the locals were doing also). After a  deal of ceremony, preparation and presentation offerings, gamelan music and wayang kulit shadow puppetry, there is a countdown and then all of the cremation fires are lit simultaneously, and there is a great flurry of confused activity, smoke, heat and noise.

As a photographer it was hard to know how to try and capture such a scene, as there was so much happening at once – and the flames and smoke presented a challenge to getting a well-exposed image. I had been concentrating on photographing the large bull sarcophagus in which the village elder was being cremated, when this lady ran over to one of the smaller biers to throw some special small offerings into the flames. The photo was taken as she returned to rejoin the other onlookers. 1/320 second exposure? Aperture at f/7.1? Just an accident, it’s lucky that it’s even sort-of in focus!

One thing that I find interesting about the image, and which most viewers misinterpret when they see it, is the strained, even distraught, look on the lady’s face. It is not a face of grief as it may appear. Cremations in Bali are usually joyous occasions, where the liberation of the soul is celebrated. She was not in the throes of mourning – she was just wincing because of the smoke…

You can see more images from this ceremony here, or a selection of other Indonesian photos here.

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Posted in Bali, Photos

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