Why do we do it every year?

The Queen’s Birthday long weekend is celebrated, in Victoria, over the second weekend of June and for all but one of the last 17(?) years I have been heading to the little Bellarine Penninsula town of Portarlington to attend the National Celtic Festival. I am not Irish, Scottish or Welsh, though my ancestry has strong Irish leanings, however we are talking four generations back, if not further, and nobody in my family has a musical bent.

I only attended my first festival because my boyfriend at the time was a roadie for one of the bands, yet I find myself returning year after year. It is permanently marked on my calendar. I organise my Saturday work shift months in advance so that I am free that weekend and I have been a volunteer for a number of years now.

I’m not the only one who returns to this festival every year. There are dozens of us who, even if it is just for one day, make the annual pilgrimage to Portarlington.

Why do I do it? Why do we do it? Why does this festival have such meaning to so many people?

As I edited a selection of the 1500 photos I took over the weekend (I’m a volunteer and an official photographer) the meaning of the festival became clear.

It means friendship.

It means dancing.

It means fun.

It means music.

It means singing.

It means sore feet and losing your voice.

It means learning that you can attend a festival on your own and not be alone.

It means magical moments such as watching strangers lose themselves in movement.

It means a room full of people of all ages and abilities dancing a jig or a reel with joyous abandon.

It means men in kilts and women in hand knitted beanies.

It means fiddles and bagpipes and guitars and flutes and harps and pianos and banjos…..

It means seeing four generations of the one family enjoying a weekend together.

It means finding your ‘tribe’.

It means hearing ‘Whiskey in the jar’ a dozen times and loving every rendition.

It means discovering new artists from Australia and overseas and becoming fans for life.

It means seeing cultures that seem to have no connection come together in music and love.

It means seeing the same faces from last year and being so delighted that they are there again.

It means having bands you know stop their set mid-song to have you take their photo.

It means watching craftsmen in action, passing on their knowledge of the old arts.

It means watching young musicians flourish and develop.

It means witnessing a room of adults sit in silent weeping as a gifted singer/story-teller hypnotises them with words.

It means knowing that we have history and traditions and stories and songs that mean something.

It means that I will be back there again next June.

 

 

The bucket list you didn’t know you had.

I ticked something off my non-existent bucket list yesterday. It was quite the achievement. Something I had not really considered to be a thing I would ever do. Something that I hadn’t even thought was an item to mark off as ‘completed’ in my list of things to say I had done in my life.

However there I stood, in the magnificent waters of  a secluded beach at Torquay, on a truly perfect summers day, without a shred of clothing proudly proclaiming to my equally naked friend that I could tick ‘that’ off my bucket list.

I don’t have a bucket list!

What’s with this bucket list? Do we have Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro (Oooops!!!! It’s actually Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) and the American film industry to thank for the requirement of a bucket list? It was a lovely movie gentlemen, but now people find themselves having to think of things they need to achieve before they die and tick them off a list.

Imagine the horror as you take your final breath, knowing that you didn’t do the things on your list. OMG!! Especially if you had that list written down and it was stuck on the fridge door with a Mickey Mouse magnet. Family members would see your list and KNOW that you did nothing with your life. Let’s ignore the fact that you lived and had a life……..but you didn’t complete your list!!!!

How about just living your life to the full and experiencing the opportunities that are presented to you? That’s what I am doing.

You don’t need a list.

I’m sure the starving in Africa don’t have a list. I can’t imagine the farmer in the rice paddy of Vietnam has a list nor the Amish woman in North America or the bloke living under the bridge in Melbourne.

Life is not about lists. Life is about living and yesterday I felt incredibly alive.

I have no idea how many of you have done it, and I am definitely not telling anyone that you should or shouldn’t do it, but I cannot even touch on the emotions I felt as I took the last item of clothing off and bared my imperfect self to the elements.

Yesterday was a sterling summer beach day. Low 20’s, clear skies, gentle breeze and clear blue waters. The stretch of beach that has been the designated nude beach for decades is magnificent. The sands were not crowded and the vibe I sensed was wonderfully calm. Many people had brought their dogs which only added to the sense of normality. The only difference on this beach was that the people swimming, throwing balls for their dogs to chase, walking or laying on their towels on the glorious sunshine was the absence of fabric.

Also absent was the self-consciousness. This was a space where men and women accepted themselves and their perfect imperfections.  Hallelujah!

So I took all my clothes off and walked alone to the water and I laughed and cried at the wonder of it all.

 

Happy Australia Day!!

I don’t want to get into the political bun-fight that has become part of the Australia Day celebrations, I just want to say Happy Australia Day to everyone.

I love this country. She is a precious jewel that draws people from all over the world to her bosom. Australia is the place they want to live. Australia is the place I always hope to live.

She is beautiful, ugly, lush, barren, comforting and deadly. She is home to so many of the deadliest creatures on the planet as well as the most unique. She has everything. Forests, beautiful beaches and lakes, deserts, mountain ranges and land so flat that you believe the earth could stretch on forever.

Australia is my home.

January 26 is the day we celebrate being Australian.

January 26 is the day I celebrate being an Aussie.

I don’t think about what happened in the decades after the British landed their boats on these golden shores. I think about the opportunities that I and millions of others have enjoyed simply by living in this wonderful country and in my marvellous Melbourne.

Today I wandered parts of Melbourne and saw people of every nationality enjoying and celebrating being Australian. Australian flags adorned prams, hats, faces and bodies everywhere I turned. Today I saw happy Australians and I was one of them.

Happy Australia Day!!!

 

***Technically, I should have written this in past tense as it is now 12:48am January 27, but I’m still awake so I’m still in January 26 mode.   🙂

I’ve paid the deposit!!!

 

OK folks. Big news. I’m going to go to New Zealand in April 2017 for a landscape photography tour of part of the South Island. I am doing it. I paid the deposit this afternoon.

Now I just have to plan the rest of the trip. The flights, the tour of the North Island, the transfers in between everything……… This is going to test my organisational skills no end.

It could also be further proof that I am insane!!! Lol.

My first panorama

 

Hasn’t it been a time of firsts and new discoveries of late?

Well tonight I get to present my first panorama photo. And I’m so very excited!!!

This is a series of seven photos I took on the top of Mt Terrible. I took these shots hand-held, no tripod, very carefully making sure that I had plenty of overlap for the ‘stitching’ process and very carefully making sure that I kept my camera as level as possible while I slowly turned to take each shot.

And then I had to ask someone a big favour. I needed someone with the latest version of Lightroom because the latest version does the ‘stitching’ of the photos with the most ridiculous ease. My version doesn’t do panoramas at all. Another problem was that I wanted the completed panorama sent back to me in a RAW file so that I could do a more thorough edit back in my version of Lightroom. I had no idea if this was a possibility at all.

I was in luck. Not only would this dear man stitch the images together for me, he was able to return a single image in RAW!!!!

And even more luck, the final image didn’t need much editing.

Happy dance.

Look up!!

At the bottom of Victoria Street, just over the Hoddle Street intersection, is a massive art piece. Massive.

One problem with photographing it though. Power lines. And I don’t ‘do’ Photoshop. It would look so awesome as a long exposure, taken from the middle of Victoria Street, with the lights on it and the car lights making trails and leading lines through the shot……but I don’t ‘do’ Photoshop. I can’t ‘do’ Photoshop. I don’t even have Photoshop.

But last night I was a passenger in a car that has a sun-roof!!!! And we were stationary at the lights. My camera bag was in the back seat and I struggled and twisted and grunted and groaned and prayed that the lights would remain red long enough. (How often do you pray for an extended period of red traffic light??!!!)

But I got it!!! Not the shot that I really want, but something to see me through till I can figure out how to achieve the shot I imagine.

My first waterfall

When you’re out in the Australian bush and mountain ranges during late winter you expect to find one thing………water……….and quite a lot of it. This is especially true if the mountains are in snow country.

When you are in mountainous terrain you might also expect to find waterfalls. This is especially true if the mountains are in the snow country. Big hills + melting snow = waterfalls.

Those are my theories anyway.

So when I was off on my little adventure with my mate Dave and his 4WD club I had high hopes of seeing some pretty good waterfall action. After all, we were heading off the beaten track.

I saw one waterfall. ONE. And it was only seconds after mentioning to Dave that the one thing that would make the trip extra special for me was to photograph a waterfall. This was Day One!!

I made him stop for the small waterfall I spotted and I jumped out of the 4WD with camera and tripod. My mind raced with the things I had read and heard about shooting a waterfall. This was my first and I was under the pump time-wise as the other vehicles had continued on and we would be forced to play catch-up.

I had to think fast and shoot fast and pray to the photography gods that I was getting everything right. I had to quickly choose the best spot, set up the tripod, change the camera settings (ISO, F-stop and shutter speed), set the remote release button snap away and get back in the car. I had less that 5 minutes!!!  Talk about making it tough on a girl!!

But I do think I work best under pressure. Possibly why I love street photography so much. No time to over-think. Just set and shoot.

It was my first waterfall. It was Day One. It was also the ONLY waterfall I got to see in the whole three days.  🙂  Thank goodness I made Dave stop. Thank goodness he did stop.

Where have those last few days gone?

If you’ve begun to think that I had fallen off the face off the earth…………..you would almost be correct. But, no………… I have not fallen off the face of the earth, nor have I fallen victim to another attack by the Black Dog, and sadly, nor have I been kidnapped by the love of my life who has had me locked away for days as we ‘got to know each other’ intimately.

I have been off having fun!!!

I spent Sunday through to to Tuesday evening with a friend and a group of people from his 4WD club exploring a small section of this marvellous country that I live in.

Let me tell you, I can barely wipe the smile off  my face, because I had an absolutely brilliant time. I was a hell of a lot braver than I thought I’d be. We, or should I say my driver and I, negotiated some pretty gnarly terrain and I didn’t squeal once. (At least not in fear and terror) There were some inclines and sections that were described by the lead 4WD’s as being enough to ‘make your sphincter pucker’. Yet I remained as cool as a cucumber. This might have something to do with the fact that I was busy holding on tight to my camera and getting ready to jump out at the first opportunity to take photos.

When I awoke from an exhausted sleep on Wednesday I did discover a few muscles that I had previously been unaware of. Muscles in my legs and torso that I had obviously been using to hold myself upright in the passenger seat as we bounced, rolled and jumped along roads and tracks of every description were loudly complaining about their rude awakening into use. But this was a very small price to pay for the enjoyment of those previous few days.

I just can’t believe that I’ve never been to these places we visited before. I didn’t even know that there was a place called Mt Skene! I know Skenes Creek, which is on the Great Ocean Road, as I have been there many times, but Mt Skene?? And what about Mt Terrible? Sounds like a joke name, but it is a real mountain and it is also the place of some really amazing views.

I now, seriously, have the adventure bug. I want to go out again. My excitement levels are at an all time high because I have adventures coming up. Beechworth in a few weeks, then Tasmania in two months!!!! If I didn’t have to go to work to earn the wages that allow me to get out there into the big, wide world you wouldn’t see me for dust.

No more sitting around watching television for this little black duck. There’s a city, state and country to explore and I intend to explore it………. one way or the other and definitely with camera in hand.   🙂

 

 

Is there such a thing as having too much fun?

I commented on a fellow blogger’s post today with the phrase “Methinks you are having too much fun”, to which she replied “No such thing as too much fun.”

And as soon as I read her reply and sent back another response, I realised that I ‘was’ what I was responding with.

I know……that makes no sense.  I’ll try to make it clearer.

I replied to her reply with “I know!!! But people always want to stop other people from having fun. Why is that?” And as I was writing this to her I realised that my original comment was a typical, subtle way of saying that she should stop having fun. Unintentionally, I was a ‘poo poo head'(her term for fun killer)

Why is that?

What is it in the nature of human beings that insists that we chastise and criticise others for having fun and enjoyment in their lives? Are the majority of us so bloody miserable that we can’t stand to see others making the most of their time and opportunities?

I know that when I sent my original comment I was doing it jokingly, but I could so easily be read as a criticism. I might be more than a little envious of the photography fun that she is having, but I’d never want her to stop having fun. I know for damned sure that I’d be mightily annoyed with anyone who tried to suggest that I stop doing the things that I’m doing which make my world fun and happy. I want to be part of the fun that she is having. I want to lean what she is learning. I also want to have my own fun.

It has been suggested by certain folks who shall remain nameless, that I should spend more time at home doing ‘home’ stuff. I did that. I did that for years. And where did it get me? I had the perfect schedule. I had the tidy home. I had the manicured lawns. I had the empty washing and ironing baskets. I had the job…..the child……the husband. I still ended up as a divorce statistic and I still maintained the regime and I did ok.

But now………..

Now I am exploring my city and my state. Soon I will begin exploring other states. I am meeting incredible people who are creating opportunities for me to grow as a person. My 2016 has been awesome and I’ve got so much coming up I can hardly believe it. Since June I have been away to Portarlington, Nelson Bay and Hopetoun. This weekend I head off on a 4WD trip with a mate and his 4WD club. In a fortnight I’m off to Beechworth. In two months I head off on my own to Tasmania for a week.

I am having FUN.

There is still food in the fridge and pantry, the washing gets done, I clean the house when it needs it, I mow the lawns when they need it, I walk my dogs, I play in my garden when I feel the urge to do it, I see my son when he’s home, I go to work and I pay my bills. I have not shirked any of the responsibilities…… I merely attend to them when they need attending rather than on a strict schedule.

And there is NOTHING wrong with that.

The longer I live, the more I realise that I need to live.

Nobody is going to suffer if I don’t clean my bathroom every week on a Friday morning before 10am. The world will not stop turning if I haven’t done the grocery shopping on Wednesday afternoon. The neighbours will not be offended by the occasional weed in the garden.

I, however, will stagnate and age beyond my years if I do not continue the journey I have begun. I understand the importance of pacing myself so that I don’t burn out, but I cannot revert to my previous ways. I deserve to have fun. Everyone deserves to have fun. And everyone deserves the right to enjoy that fun without being scorned for it.

There is no such thing as having too much fun. Having fun means that you are alive………..and, by god, that’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

How many techniques can one use in a weekend?

Now before you get all excited and start imagining that I am going to talk about sex………………….

…………It’s been so long I’ve forgotten most of the fancy ones and I’d be struggling to remember the basics. (Though I have heard said that it’s like riding a bike…..)

No, you naughty people, I’m talking about photography techniques. I think I used most of the techniques in my photography repertoire and picked up the ins and outs of a few more over the course of the last weekend.

There was landscape photography, long exposure, panning, photo journalism, animal portraiture, sports, sunrise shoots, sunset shoots, light painting and probably a few more that I’ll think of later. That’s pretty good for a weekend away in the country.

Sports photography, and motor sports in particular, was definitely not a style of photography I thought I’d be attempting on the weekend. After all, we had been invited to a quiet country town to shoot landscapes and farms and the like. However, when your excursion to what’s left of an inland sea is hijacked by a group of ‘boys and their toys’ one must think on one’s feet. The expected pristine, windblown sand dunes had become a motor-cross track and we landscape photographer morphed into enthusiastic motor-sports photo-journalists.

To say that I was happy with the shots I got on Saturday afternoon would be an understatement.