I guess the photo above is a bit of a weird opening to a post, but it’ll make sense if you read the rest of this entry. I’m having a break from writing massive trip reports for at least a day or so and instead, I thought I’d throw in a totally random entry of babbling to change the pace of this place a little.
By the way, before I even start, I was walking through the city the other day and I noticed two blokes in separate, open top sports cars driving along. One was in a Porsche and the other was in something that was very shiny, which is the extent of my car knowledge.
What I found interesting is these blokes looked almost identical. Late 40’s, shaved heads and both sporting the biggest scowls on their faces you could ever imagine. I wondered why they both looked so miserable? Were they pondering a Ponzi? Bitter at going bald so young? Maybe feeling defeated, as all those years ago, they’d been dealt a short sausage? Money can be thrown at most things, but no matter how much you’ve got, you can’t do much if you’ve been issued a cashew in your trousers. Oh the humility.
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Anyway, moving on and let’s have a look at the previous photo as it includes a couple of classic items. First of all there’s the original Public Image Ltd album ‘Metal Box’ sitting slightly worn, but the vinyl inside is still immaculate. By the way, don’t think too hard about this as it means nothing to this overall blog entry.
Next to it is a book that was released in 1976. It’s called (if you’re legally blind) ‘Everest: The Hard Way by Chris Bonnington. It tells the story of the first ascent of the south west face by a British team led by Bonnington in 1975. I was pretty young when I read it and it’s a riveting story of when an Everest ascent still had an unknown quality.
What was amazing were these absolutely mind blowing photos taken on the summit in what looks like late afternoon and the tops of hundreds of clouds sit below the climbers. The photos were widely shown in British newspapers and unfortunately the book only contains a few, but they’re truly shots taken above cloud level.
What does this all mean? Well, don’t panic as I’m getting to that. There’s a paragraph written by another legendary climber, Doug Scott, in relation to the photos that were taken, which I’ve always remembered. He says,
“…Speaking now for myself, there comes also the saddening realization that the view from the top of Everest which I now have in my mind’s eye is very possibly no longer the magnificent pure naked wholly coloured vision of the moment, but consequently wholly coloured by the slides I then took and have seen so many times since.”
Regarding photos, it’s an interesting thought, which I’ve always wondered about since I read this book all those years ago. I’ve had my share of great landscapes to photograph (mind you, I didn’t say successfully!) and yet a lot of the time I don’t remember the actual moment and vision I saw, but rather what’s confined to the pictures.
Does the photo help jog the memory you may ask? Well, not really, as what I see and remember is now confined to the dimensions of the photograph and not the entire vision of the moment that my eyes saw. I have my own ‘Doug Scott Everest problem’ and that’s the view at sunset from Mt Kosciuszko earlier this year. After a day of walking up, Mk and I reached the summit at the end of the day and it was quite dark, until suddenly the setting sun appeared above a large bank of clouds, which sat hundreds of metres below us. This was the result.
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The sky continued to get redder and redder, until the sun sat as if above an enormous blanket of cloud. It was quite mind blowing and in a way I wish I’d put the cameras down and sat to take in what we were seeing, instead of trying to record it via photograph. I was looking through the viewfinder and checking settings, when instead I should have just mellowed out and let my mind absorb the moment. Now, I’m feeling a bit like Doug Scott, as all I really remember is what’s on the photographs and if I shut my eyes to think about the moment I don’t really see anything different at all.
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Oh well, that’s the problem trying to record everything by photograph I suppose and I wonder if I’m the only one with this ‘missing memory’ due to a set of pictures problem? While I ponder I might as well add a few more of the blazing sunset that just wouldn’t stop.
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That’s my first photography conundrum done and now I have another. Does anyone delete photos that didn’t work out? I keep everything even if they’re dud pictures for a couple of reasons. I wonder in a hundred years time how historians will view the day to day, photographic view of the world when most pictures are locked away on hard drives and discs. I don’t print any digital photos even though I keep saying to myself I should.
A lot of the times I find some sort of flaw in the pictures I take and think I’ll print some photos when I take better ones. Somehow that day doesn’t seem to come. With a digital photo an unflattering one can be deleted from the camera and be lost forever, but I sometimes think there might be something on that deleted photo, which might mean something to someone in a hundred years time. I’m drawing a long bow here, but that’s the way it goes when I start thinking about this and now I can return to the first photo taken in this blog entry.
I was in the driveway early in the morning and noticed a great looking sunrise. Even though the blight of suburbia was all around me in relation to telephone poles and wires, I thought I should snap a quick photo. As I did so, a bird landed on the wires in the centre of the picture. I imagined a zoomed photo of the bird with the great light behind would make a pretty good image. I zoomed and clicked at the same moment the bird took off. This is the result.
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As you can see the photo of what it was meant to show is a complete dud. In some perverse way I kind of like it though and it’s something I couldn’t remotely attempt to replicate. A moving bird in the side of the frame? In some way this should be binned, but this is the type of stuff I keep. Who else does this I wonder?
It doesn’t always include things in nature as the next photo shows. Being a bit of an old cycling fan I was pretty happy to see Cadel Evans win this years Tour de France. All those late nights staying up over the years hoping he might win, seemed to be worthwhile now and I really didn’t think he would ever get it done.
He returned to Melbourne briefly and a sort of victory ride to Federation Square in Melbourne was organised. Being a city worker I thought I should slip up there at lunchtime to have a look. In fact, it was a little crazy regarding the size of the crowd and one would have had to get there a few hours earlier to get close to the barriers. My height gave me a bit of a view, but as he rode by I just stuck my camera up in the air and clicked a shot with the thought I may have got it right in regards to timing. In the end I clicked a second too soon as the photo shows.
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Well, I sort of captured him, although you do have to initially scan your eyes across the picture to find him at the far left. It’s a stuffed photo, but again I kind of like it as it reminds me of the difficulty I was going through to take it. What’s weird though is looking at other things in the picture, such as the left hand with red nail polish and black sleeve to the right of centre. It looks like a big hand, but who does it belong to? None of the heads in the photo own it and it’s assumed the person should have a bit of height to them owing to the size of the mitt. No idea, unless they were lying on the ground?!
That’s my final thoughts on this photo business. One is if I’m presented with a spectacular view that may be only momentary, I’ve got to get my eye out of the viewfinder and just look at the scene instead and the other is keeping old stuffed photos is fun. I kind of like looking at the failures and they still give me a chuckle like the next couple.
I was trying to capture a blue Superb Fairywren, which if anyone has tried to take a photo of then they know they absolutely zip about. They’re in one spot and in a flash they’ve moved and it’s hard to see the actual movement. They’re there and next second they’re in a different spot and I end up wondering how they did it. Anyway, I was trying to photograph the one below.
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Okay, I was behind him with the camera zoomed right out and the photo wasn’t much chop. I could tell he was about to move side on though and I was ready to capture him properly. I waited a second as he turned side on and I snapped and this was the result.
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Yep, his speed was way too quick for me and I now have a photo of some empty ground, which means nothing unless it’s accompanied with the initial picture. It’s another dud, but I find it quite humorous and I’ve kept it as it’s my example of how quick the Fairywren is. How could I delete it now?
This is just touching the surface of my ‘failed’ photos, but that’s it for me and I wonder how many other picture conundrums exist out there? I’m back to another trip report later in the week…
You put so much thought into your pictures! I confess that I delete duds pretty frequently. But I don't put as much thought into photography as the more photo-focused folks.
I love to read about Everest. Never want to actually hike it, but I love books about the process!
Greg, I'll keep my comments focused on the deletion of unworthy photos.
I upload all of my photos to Flickr ($24.00/yr US for unlimited storage.) Some are duds as you say, but the way I look at it — it's part of my history, my journey. No one else may ever see what I saw, but that's okay. I want to be reminded when I'm in my 70s and in a nursing home (will the Internet still be around then?)
Sight is my favorite sense. I'd rather be deaf than blind, and I think I even get more pleasure from sight than taste. I've always thought I had a crappy memory, and I've been into photography and in the habit of that type of 'memory preservation' since a young age. I agree that a photograph is going to alter your recollection of a memory, and perhaps gives us false memories, but without them I am not sure what I'd personally remember. Recently my mom was talking about something we once did on a vacation in Mexico from when I was just 17, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I had no photographic evidence of the place she mentioned, and I just don't remember it. So I really rely on photographs to remember that I once did cool stuff, and though photographs will evoke emotion, they don't usually bring back the feeling of the moment unless I honestly can remember it.
Lisa, I guess I think too much about the photos, but then again I probably think too much about a lot of things! This may explain why I'm awake at 4am!
Yeah, I'll never go to Everest myself, but I do like to read mountaineering books 🙂
Nancy, I've started to use the unlimited Flickr method as well although I still don't upload everything I take. I should follow your lead! I always upload pictures I think other people may want to see rather than as a storage method. Mm… I might rethink this 🙂
Well, I hope the internet will be around when I'm 70 as I'll be relying on it! I'm hoping I'm not in a nursing home at 70 though as I'll be too young 🙂 My dad only went into nursing this year and he's 89. I'm hoping to use his timeline!
Sonja, I do agree with you about sight! My father is blind and he keeps dreaming of green fields and blue skies which would be hard to take considering he wakes up and sees nothing at all.
It's true with childhood photos in that many of the pictures with me in them, are of scenes I have absolutely no memory of!
Most of this blog entry was just me ticking over thoughts in my head in regards to photography as I'm not suddenly going to stop 🙂 I carry a camera everywhere and there's not many days when I don't take a photo of something. It's just that sometimes when I remember the moment it's confined to the dimensions of a photograph and not the overall scene which I saw at the time. Who knows? I think about way too much stuff at times 🙂
Greg, some interesting points (and I have that same Bonington edition, but not the PIL – envious!). (Is it any good?).
I have often had the same queasy sensation that I should be "looking" and not sizing up a shot. Nothing disturbs me like the way, for example, busloads of Japanese tourists will pull out the camera and start snapping as soon as they exit the bus…and before jumping back on that bus. I do think that, ideally, a human travelling through a new environment should try to absorb the essence of the place rather than immediately start photographing – or worse, just moving through. However…
I rationalise my photo thing in this way. Firstly, a walker is already in far more intimate contact with his/her surroundings than many tourists (and I'm not trying to sound disparaging – we are all tourists). As Edward Abbey said, "The only way to really SEE a place is on foot" (or similar). Also, the more you get into photography, the more automatic the process of looking becomes. And this can be a good thing. We're all, as hiker-photographers, trying to improve. And the process really forces you to LOOK at a place. I have noticed that I now NOTICE a lot more detail in my local surroundings on my daily walks as I try to "see" it photographically. When I'm sizing up a shot, I'm thinking about the light, position of the sun, the time I have left before it disappears or gets too bright, shadow, reflections, foreground, background, position of details, horizon, etc. And I'm thinking, "What am I trying to SHOW here?" In other words, the act of being a "conscious photographer" (even when not carrying a camera) positions me consciously in my landscape, and makes me "see" it more…
Does that make any sense? Anyway, there are many ways to "see", aren't there?
Finally, I must confess to being a rabid deleter. My goal is to get brave enough to delete-as-I-go. And to reach the point where I only take, say, three shots of a scene rather than 30. For me deletion is one of the keys of photography (and I'm just a relative beginner). But it's like writing in a sense. Much of the hard work is in the editing. Michael Crichton (whom I've never read): "I'm not much of a writer, but I'm an excellent RE-writer." I am always trying to "edit" my whole life! I wish I could delete large portions of it!
Sorry this is so long. Feel free to delete it!
Hey Goat, this is a great reply so it's staying! You have the book as well? You must have some pretty good books yourself plus good taste 🙂
The PIL box is a pretty good album although I was so worried about wrecking the discs in the tin I bought the normal record in the sleeve as well and played that! I do remember listening to it at night in the early '80's with headphones on thinking, 'Wow, this is pretty unsettling music". It seemed really original back then with every song driven by Jah Wobble's bass. 'Death Disco' for example..
Oh yeah, the walking stuff. I do wonder about that tourist thing where the person just stands stiffly in front of an attraction and gets photographed. Do they have a hundred photos of the same pose in front of a hundred different attractions?! Count me out on the slide night as I'll be struggling to stay awake 🙂
It's a good point about really looking at a place whilst walking for something to photograph. I've graduated to looking for 'detail' as well which is why I'm always staring at the ground hoping to find an unusual leaf or rock etc. I remember reading about a photographer (no idea who!) that the hallmark of a good photographer is seeing something in an overall scene that other people are not seeing. I'm going for that approach, but it can be hard work! Sometimes I think I could cover more ground in a day walking, but I get caught up stopping and pondering over something to photograph. I can really dick around at times looking and thinking how it might look.
Since really getting into the blog I've found I'll take some 'stock' photos of the landscape to show it which I probably wouldn't have taken a few years back. I think if I write about a walk I can't just have 20 close up macro photos, so I try to mix it up a bit with the blog in mind. It sometimes works and thank god for digital is all I can say 🙂 So, you're right about thinking, "what am I trying to show here". It's a good philosophy to have in regards to pictures!
I had a problem with the Lake Tarli Karng walk in that I really wanted to capture how the lake looked, but the photos didn't work out how I imagined they would. It seemed I had the wrong lens, the wrong light and it just hurt my brain until I thought to myself, "Forget about the blog, just enjoy the view you idiot!" It was one of those moments where I was trying to record the scene, but I wasn't absorbing it mentally.
Good work being a champion deleter. Yeah, I have some life moments that have no reason to be remembered 🙂 Deleting is a good skill if you can do it, but I chicken out and keep the bloody lot! A lot of my pictures are RAW format as well, so the files are big and my portable hard drives are 1TB as a minimum for storing them! You must be good at de-cluttering as well if you're a good deleter. I need to get rid of some stuff around the house, but I find it a little mentally challenging to do so 🙂
I think my reply is longer than yours?!
I concur – its DEFINITELY penis envy! either that or they have massive hemorrhoids from their sports suspension 🙂
On the photography side of things, nothing drives me CRAZIER than when the kids are having a great spontaneous moment of fun and Im like 'quick quick, take a photo' and hubby is so busy fiddling around with the aperture/boka/zoom, etc. that the moment has gone, grrrrrr.
He's doing a diploma in photography so Im pretty used to having a lens between us and any gorgeous view *sigh*.
On the subject of deleting outtakes – I have 4 boys…..every single photo is an outtake hahaha because not a single one will look in the same direction at any time OR at least one will be pulling some kind of monster face!
Eloise, I've never thought of that about the cars, but after seeing the latest episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' it might be something else to do with the seat?!
Yes, it pays to take a flawed photo than none at all during a special moment! Not much point going for a perfect shot if the moments left 25 minutes ago! Diploma in photography? He better start a blog, so we can check out his new skills 🙂
Four boys?! You're a masochist!!
Nice post, Greg. Interesting insight into your inner space…but looking fwd to more blog posts in which you fall over.
Thanks Andrew! Don't worry, my inner space can be a little cloudy at times, so there probably won't be too many entries like this one!
Falling over will happen again whether I like it or not! Actually the last good tumble on the George Bass Coastal Walk really rung my bell. It took me half the week to recover from that one…
Thanks for dropping by.