SALA-South Australian Living Artists Festival at ECC

Last Friday night,(1/8/14) saw the opening of the SALA exhibition at Edwardstown Community Church.
There were six artists represented as per my earlier post on this annual arts event in Adelaide.
Our Friday night opening event was very well attended and again on Sunday afternoon.The cold weather seemed to have taken its toll on attendance this past  monday night.
We now have this next Sunday and Monday available for those who have not yet attended.
Below are some pics from the exhibition.

SALA-South Australian Living Artists Festival

The annual SALA event kicks off in Adelaide soon.

Here is a link to the SALA website so you can learn all about it.

 http://www.salainc.com.au/

A group of us from Edwardstown Community Church "Create" group are participating for the first time this year.

Below is the programme.

It is planned that I will be giving a talk, I think on our opening night Friday 1/8/14. 6-9pm.

If you have followed or come across my blog at any time I would love to see you there.

I would especially like to meet anyone whose wedding I have captured in the past.

Below is a copy of our groups open invitation.

There will be art and photographs for sale.

I will have a mixture of photography from  my 43 years in photography. I am have printed some already but having trouble working out what to include.

I am planning to have some postcards for sale or order as well.

My Ideal Digital Camera

In looking at some of the top end Digital Slr's and even the enthusiast models I have become less and less impressed with the technology overload.
The other day I met a camera enthusiast who has not been in photography all that long but has some top end Canon Digital equipment.

He was looking  for some basic instruction but was obviously caught up in the technology overload and was showing me all the settings he had his camera on and what he would do to take a basic portrait.

I must confess I was terrified of the world he had immersed himself in.

The menu on his camera was so much more elaborate than my  "lower end" Canon camera.

And he was an amateur enthusiast.

It put me off buying a higher end full frame slr.

There was a time with film cameras when you had a minimum of things to select and think about on your camera and when taking photographs.

1. Film type, Daylight or tungsten  and Iso of film? Colour or Black and white, negative or transparency?

120mm,220mm,35mm.5x4.

2. Camera type. 35mm ragefinder,35mm SLR, medium format SLR or TLR.(6x6,6x4.5,6x7,6x8,6x9)

3.Shutter speed.

4. Aperture

5. Lens type.

6. Flash or available light?

7. Tripod or hand held?

8. Was I producing prints or slides? Enlargements or standard prints.

9. Metering mode.

Any processing and printing and correction of faulty exposures was done by the film lab.

Now all of those things are in reality incorporated in one way or another in the digital realm.

But throw in.

Raw or Jpeg?

High Dynamic range.

Picture styles.

Various flash settings and adjustments.

In camera editing.

White balance.

GPS

WiFi

Full frame or APSc

Image stabilisation

Auto focus or manual focus

Focus selection points

Flash cards

Tethered or un-tethered shooting

Remote control

Slave shooting using on and off camera flash

Photoshop, Lightroom etc.

in camera special effects.

And the list goes on.

The closest I have come to my ideal digital camera was I think the first one I purchased.

The pentax *istD.

It had some basic digital adjusting to do but was effectively a digital version of the Pentax MZS which was the final flagship Pentax SLR film camera.

You could run with the default settings and produce some great pics.

The menu was no where near as confusing as the current crop of digital cameras.

6 mega pixels but still produced a very good picture.

Using it was more like the experience of using a film slr.

In addition it was compatible with my large collection of Pentax lenses.

I still have the camera.

It sufferred at my hands once from having coca cola spilt over it.

It did get it fixed.

There is a lot to be said for cameras that are sealed against such things.

Thankfully this camera is now fully functioning again.

I am being drawn back more and more to shooting film.

It may be more costly per shot but that will help curb the addiction of firing off digital salvos when ever I have a camera in hand and that is often.

It will also cut down on many hours spent "playing" on a computer.

The results will more than likely be purer and better.

So watch this space for some film shooting results in the future but not very often.

There are apparently a lot of photographers returning to film.

http://www.slrlounge.com/9-film-shooting-wedding-photographers-you-should-follow

The author with wedding couple Tidbinbilla ACT. Pentax *istD.Cropped from landscape original.2006.

Sydney Harbour Ferry Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Waiting for the Punt (Ferry) Pentax*istD

S.W.Jackson-Early Australian Bird Photographer and Naturalist

I love collecting old photos and in particular like reading about and looking up information about photographers from a bygone era.
Especially Wildlife and Bird Photographers.
One person I have come across was S.W. Jackson.
I discovered him in a book by Bernard O'Reilly.
O'reilly wrote 3 Australian books.
"Green Mountains"
"Cullenbenbong"
and "Over the Hills".
They are classic Australian Stories.
"Green Mountains" is an account of a lost Aircraft ( a Stimson) in the rainforests of Queensland.
Bernard O'Reilly found the wreck and their were two survivors.
"Green Mountains" is an Australian classic and a true story.

Below is an extract from "Over the Hills" about how photographers like S.W., Jackson from the wet plate days went about their business.Bernard O'Reilly is telling about his experience as a young assistant to the photographer. The process is a far cry from our snapping away with a digital camera.

And here is are links to wikipedia about S W Jackson and also some of his work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_William_Jackson

http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.pic-an11545585

Follow some of the suggested links in wikkipedia and you will uncover lots of interesting information about our photographic history and the inter action between different practicioners.

More Vintage Photography

I still continue to add to my collection of vintage black and white photography.
Here are a few examples.
Photography has long been a popular pastime for families.
I do not know the author of some of these so I trust copyright has long since expired.
These are from the collection of the late Joe Brooks courtesy of Phil Brooks.
Some would have been taken by Joe on a box brownie or a folding Kodak.

Soldiers' entertainment in war time

I would love to know details of this

Portable gramaphone player at a butcher's picnic at Semaphore Beach South Australia 1940's

Early postcard of Adelaide South Australia

We think pioneer hut on Murray River.Made from Hessian and Iron.

Thebarton Primary School class.Grade 3 ,1930.

The Family Photo Historian.

Are you your family's photo historian?
At this point in time I think I certainly fill that role.
Not something I deliberately set out to do but just happenned as I am and was a passionate photographer.
I have always wanted to document events.
Family occasions
Weddings
Sports
Funerals
Holidays
Vehicles
Babies
Pets
Birthdays
Baptisms
Sermons
The list of human events in families is endless of course.
I have done this for many years with still photography,movie film and video,film and digital,audio recording(cassettes,reel to reel,digital).
Of course before that my father,father in law and uncles did the same with the technology of their  day.
I have recently been going through all my film collection of negative and prints to put together a farewell album for one of my wife's employers spanning more than 25 years.
I am staggered at the extent of the collection.
When you are a blogger with a collection like that your blogging topics and potential articles are endless.
It has been and still is an emotional experience reviewing my collection.
Many loved ones have passed on.
Sadly there are also relationship breakdowns that tug at the heartstrings.
Many of my wedding customers from past years have also experienced both joys and heartaches.
With the accessibility of today's amazing technology many of the younger ones are now doing similar things.
I guess it means I have plenty to do in my old age and some of the collection, as it ages, becomes useful to others.
It's not a high paying job but can become a labor of love.