Mono MOnday

4 M

Apologies to those who thought there might be some crispy colour shots of the brine this foggy Monday morning. Instead, I have digressed down a monochrome mental maze with Metal and Meaning on my mind.

Michael Angelo Batio at the weekend Guitar Show. I have no metal in my collection but was blown away by his craft, creativity and inspiring words in between songs, BIG THANKS and to the Guitar Brothers for putting on the show. Tim Gaze update to follow.

Meaning is what you make of it?

I heart carbo? 

Shot by my mate Tony after the saturday Guitar Show. On the way to the pub, they were giving out free potato chips (H!). I initially declined due to watching carbohydrates taking over my girth, but The Guitarist talked me into it. And, no kidding, this was the first chip I pulled out of the pak. No, my nails are only long on one hand - for guitaring.

Yesterday

Yesterday I saw this guy get a nice barrel while I was waiting for my mates to show up for a surf. While I was setting up my tripod high up away from the surging tide that was bursting up the lakemouth so hard you could have ridden the wave upstream.

I love the light and shade and the way this guy's finger tips are just trailing the surface. Was it a left or a right?

Sepia Stoke

After 35 years, I usually have a clear idea of how an image will look before I click the exposure button on the camera. But sometimes I even surprise myself. I love this shot for it's balance, harmony and evocation of old skool stoke. Thank you random surfer.

Kerbside Kleanup

Every couple of years, the authorities in Brinetopia declare "Kerbside Kleanup". It's a great opportunity to recycle, scrounge or re-aquaint oneself with the flotsam and jetsom that modern living attracts.  There is magic in the air. No sooner do you throw that old pile of wood you were saving for that project onto the kerbside, then somebody drives past and swoops it up.

Sweet recycling at the grass roots level - until a declared date when workers arrive and take away the stuff that nobody wants. And so while cleaning out an old wooden cupboard, I came across an A6 diary that my bank used to provide (for free) dated 1987 - when I rented a place right on the beach and rode a casual 10 minutes to work on my 5 speed mountain bike.

The diary had daily notes of the surf conditions back in the day. For this week in October 1987 the diary indicated:
"Excellent surf my place. Super glassy. Surfed The Pocket and Maroochy Pipeline. Nikonos of Richard Hughes. Sunny. Shares sliding. Bad storms - Uncle Ron loses roof. Impeccable surf at Sunshine Beach. Tape tapes of 60's for BBQ. Big night. Seedy. Rain Thunder. Quiet day. Black day stocks crashing."

Jaca-moff

The days are now longer than the nights and already we have had the first thunderstorms of the season as the jacaranda trees grow their annual veil of purple. I drag a sharp object across my face to remove yesterday's bristles and enclose my ten toes away from the light and any opportunity of getting wet, yet smile as I recall that session at Moffatt's.

Granite Grinder

Time Thief

Sometimes I feel like a time thief. Trapping moments in my little box.
Stealing a 5ooth of a second here, a 10th of a second there. A few decades ago and a few days ago. Which is which?

Rollin in the Brine

Finally I got to rest the longboard and the bike

And roll around in the brine on the quad again (it's been a while)

As we get a bit of this (been a while there too)

Air Crafts

However you fly, have a great weekend.

Simply Living

Mono Mateship

Caught up with a few old mates yesterday.

The waves were small, but we had a barrel of fun.

Global Warming

Winter ended early and spring has delivered its annual bounty of beauty. Time to get outside and ride.

Another Reo

Backhand to boot in the land of unexploded military shells.

Ignoring Excellence

Ignoring excellence.
In the quest for perfection.
Same guy. Same spot.
42 seconds apart.

Splash

A splash of colour on an otherwise bleak day. Hope you are all safe and dry despite the earthquakes, wild winds and floods of the last 48 hours.

F1_11 @ F11

How many of us will be able to say that 500000 people came out on an overcast night to see our retirement farewell? After 40 years of service, the Aussie airforce has traded its fleet of F1-11 fighters for something way more shiney and way more expensive. And a big crowd rolled up for the show last night.
I shot a 54 second timelapse of this hardy old aircraft as it did a U turn above us while doing a"dump and burn". I wasn't worrying about reciprocity failure or hyperfocal distance. I was thinking that this was the end of an era, that started analogue in 1970 and Vietnam. I wanted to clap and cheer.  Not for its killing capacity, for it was a weapon of mass destruction. But its testament to efficient industrial design and longevity in this digital era of inbuilt obsolescence and turnover based profits. And then I pondered, even if you can move at the speed of sound, even if you're the shiniest in the pack, eventually your day will be over. This post is dedicated to our old mate Greg who left us unexpectedly last week. RIP mate.

Friday Night

"Friday night last orders at the pub,

Get in the car and drive to the club,

There's a massive crowd outside so we get in to the queue

It's quarter past 11 now we won't get in till quarter to two."

Lily Allen from Friday Night

Ruby Tuesday

"Don't question why she needs to be so free

She'll tell you it's the only way to be

She just can't be chained

To a life where nothing's gained

And nothing's lost

At such a cost"

"There's no time to lose, I heard her say

Catch your dreams before they slip away

Dying all the time

Lose your dreams 

And you will lose your mind

Ain't life unkind?"

from Ruby Tuesday Jagger/Richard(s)

Last Saturday

Extract from my journal or rather notebook with random ramblings, doodles and scribblings:
Saturday 21 August 2010

I’m sitting in the sun out on our back deck looking north at the little creek that flows down to the sea. It’s got a good bit of water flushing out the weeds after a few days of bleak, cold rain. I’m reading a big heavy book called Studio -  Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity and trying to recover from a nasty throat, ear, nose, sinus bug thing. 

Board courtesy "H"'and Vita

After reading a post in the Fotos in Noosa website earlier today, I’ve decided to revisit this book and what I call “the curse of creativity” – the trials and tribulations of being creative despite the costs in time, money, relationships, missed opportunities for other activity and worst of all creative blocks. This big glossy coffee table book covers it all by visiting 20 painters from all over the country showing their studios, how they start a project and deal with creative blocks. In the introduction, John McDonald suggests:

“There are as many ways too get started as there are paintings. In most cases, the primary need is to defile that daunting expanse of blank canvas. One applies a backing colour, scribbles or daubs something almost at random – simply to destroy that whiteness which presents itself as more perfect than anything the artist may choose to paint on it.”

Studio -  Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity

The winter sun on my sorry bones feels good - not too hot and nourishing. My wife brings out yet more medicine – my body wants caffeine but my nose votes for medicine. I look up at the foul looking measuring cup that even my weakened senses can smell and I smile. Out of the periphery of my vision I spot a tree branch that wasn’t there yesterday. In fact it’s an owl-like bird called a Tawny Frogmouth. In 16 years this makes only the second sighting of this species. “A good omen, I hope,” she says as I swig down the concoction that resembles mud diluted with poisonous berries.

All over Australia right now, adults are strolling into electoral booths and running the gauntlet of zealous folk keen to jam political manifestos or "How to Vote" cards into our hands. But not us. Vote early and vote often, some wag will say somewhere in the country. Elsewhere somebody will retell the scandal where dead people were registered to vote and resulted in some electors voting often. No, we are on holidays, so we organised postal votes. And what a chore voting was trying to deliniate between the two major parties and the other 45 aspirants for our Senate – One Australia, One Nation, Family First, Socialist Alliance, a Sex Party and two fishing parties besides all of the random independents. Sadly, the old Party to Expose the Petrov Conspiracy and the Nigel Free Marijuana Party seem to have given the election game away. No doubt retired or in rehab. Maybe the visit from the Tawny Frogmouth is an omen that the Green Party will get more votes than usual in our National Election today?

I leave my art book and the sunshine and chase down a tripod and the biggest lens I own. The house is cold and dark. I fire off a few photos of our feathered visitor. The light is too contrasty on this beautiful still cloudless winter day so I add flash. The session gets into its own rhythm and momentum and eventually I stop. I'm only after one or two keepers, but I have shot 39 photos. My large format photography mates would be horrified, but this isn’t film, that hard. cruel and expensive medium. I return to my art book and chew over the thoughts of Robin Wallace-Crabbe:

“I’ll pick up something and begin in an empty-headed way. If I over-rehearse a series of possibilities they tend to become rather shallow or silly. On the other hand once I’ve got started on a series of paintings the imaginings I take into the studio from outside, often become more complete and plausible – and makeable.”

Studio -  Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity

A butcher bird swoops onto the old wooden railing, oblivious to the fact that I have painted it 11 times before The Aesthete was happy with the hue (Larkspur Blue, I recall). The bird freaks me out a little – or is that the medicine kicking in? I have mates who believe that when they die they will come back as a butcher bird or a crow or something else. Maybe the Tawny Frogmouth is my old Dad or one of my departed brine brothers. I momentarily contemplate whether I should ring my Mum and ask her about this, after all she had a pet magpie that could talk. No, I think my Dad said he wanted to come back as a sea eagle. No phone call.

The small chinese wind chime that Richard and Suzy gave us before they left the neighbourhood tinkles while a water dragon lizard chases something across the tin roof above us. Most of the old crew have left the neighbourhood for bigger mortgages in better houses on greener pastures. Apart from the guy across the road who works in the mines, we are the street’s longest residents. As I ponder this, a newish green Ford Falcon pulls up in the street below and a young bloke gets out and wanders down to the dirty great Moreton Bay fig beside our property and relieves himself. He doesn’t know that there’s 400mm of lens less that 30 meters away.