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.

 

 

White Night. Again?? Didn’t I just do it?

It was White Night………..again………. This time in the beautiful and historic, regional city of Ballarat, just a smidgen over an hour away from my home.

It was a ‘must do’ for me. I just had to see how the town handled their inaugural White Night and how it compared to my marvellous Melbourne’s massive extravaganza.

In a word……….bravo.

Bravo to Ballarat. The city looked wonderful. The light projections were designed specifically for the magnificent historical buildings and they also were themed to incorporate Ballarat history. Some of the installations and roving art was the same as shown in Melbourne and I have no problem with that. After all, the reason for having White Night in Ballarat was for those living in regional Victoria who don’t want to have to travel into Melbourne.

The main thoroughfares of this wonderful old town are wide and smooth and as darkness descended I watched as the locals and visitors began to fill these streets in huge numbers. But at no time did I feel that the crowd was too big, nor did I feel a sense of danger. It was a delightful family event.

And a massive bravo to the weather. It was a perfect night for it. The day had been quite warm, but the evening settled into a clear, calm, mild evening. I had forgotten to throw a jacket in the car and I only wore jeans and a t-shirt but was very comfortable. Jacket not required. 🙂

Ballarat White Night was, fortunately, not as big as Melbourne’s. It didn’t need to be. The city centre was more than adequate for what they had. They used the side streets and laneways to great effect.

Great job to all concerned. I look forward to seeing it next year. (weather depending)

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.

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.