The other day I posted some photos of the grounds of Werribee Mansion. A. and I really enjoyed exploring the old greenhouses that sat close to the flower beds, and the various lighting that the place offered made for some interesting portraits as well. These are some of those images.
Yeah, you just read that.
Took a break from preparing a rack of shish kebabs to enjoy the colour and geometry of fresh food. Shot on my Canon EOS 400D using EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro, natural light.
Taking photos in forests is a tricky prospect. I’ve talked a little elsewhere about the fact that the key to outdoors photography is the balancing of light and shadow- and when light is on one part of the frame but not on another, there has to be a compromise- either one part will become too light, or another too dark. The best thing to do is wait until the light has hit the bit that you want to be nicely lit, and then take your photo- which is, of course, a luxury we can’t always afford.
Forests are especially difficult because of the extreme contrasts in light and shadow. Although we don’t really notice it because our eyes adjust instinctively to differences in light and shade (and have a much broader dynamic range than cameras do), in fact forest floors are habitually shady places. That means if we take photos of forests and expose for the forest floor, chances are, we’ll be exposing for the shade, and the sky will burn out- become just a white haze between the branches, even on a nice sunny day. The alternative is that the foreground becomes very dark and you lose a lot of detail for the sake of exposing the sky, not a good prospect for a forest photo.
The photographs I love from forests are the ones where sunbeams are catching in smoke or mist. We’ve all seen these sorts of shots- they’re phenomenally atmospheric, with shafts of light split by boughs and branches to form beautiful patterns. I haven’t yet succeeded in taking any of these, but it remains a goal. Shots of trees- especially Australian eucalypts with their pale trunks- in the mist also make for really pretty images.
Other, simpler alternatives include shots which exclude the sky altogether- so that the entire image is exposed for the darker undergrowth. You often need to do more close-up photography or angle the lens downwards to do this- and because the forest is often quite dark, you may need a tripod. A lot of long-exposure shots of forest streams are taken like this, and it can work well. Alternatively, especially in a place like Australia where the white bark of the gums is so stark against the blue sky, shooting skywards when trunks are illumated by sunlight can look quite good- although this sort of shot is rarely very eye-catching once displayed, and I tend to find looks a lot better through the viewfinder than it does on the screen.
As with my earlier post on light on cloudy days, waiting for a stray sunbeam to make it down to the forest floor will allow you to get a better balance between the light and dark areas, but because of the nature of a forest (lots of canopy cover), these sunbeams are usually pretty spaced out, which means small areas lit and lots of areas of shadow-still not the best look. For these two shots of the Porongorups, in Western Australia, I really lucked out because not only was there a big enough gap in the canopy for light to be hitting the forest floor, but there was also a gorgeous spray of vibrant undergrowth which contrasted nicely with the bark of the tree trunks. The overall image was one that was well lit from sky to soil, and I was able to expose it easily. This is a rare success story, and I have to say that nine times out of ten, I rarely break my camera out while I’m walking through the bush- so few shots actually turn out well.
Incidentally, the Porongorup Ranges is a beautiful and understated region to visit. A low line of rounded hills that boasts some of the geologically oldest rocks on the planet (about a billion years old, for those nerds among you) and an extremely diverse and unique biome consisting of a large number of plants unique to the area, there are numerous walking trails that wind their way up through the forest to the ridgeline. Once on the treeless ridge top, the views in three hundred and sixty degrees are spectacular- the vast flat plains of South Western WA broken by the Stirling Ranges some twenty kilometres to the north, and far to the south, the Southern Ocean. When we were up there, we had the hills largely to ourselves, and it was peaceful and exposed and dramatic- a fantastic area to explore.
Down at the foot of the hills, the Porongorups are navigated by one main and mostly-sealed road that connects nowhere with nowhere else. It’s a sedate area, with the hamlet of Porongorup forming a hub around which are spread vineyards and farms, and an incongruous Thai restaurant that’s also worth a visit. The A-Frame cottages of the Porongorup Chalets, where we stayed, are delightful. Set in pretty woodland backing straight into the bush, they are comfortable and cozy inside, and well catered for. For a quiet weekend away you’d be hard pressed to find a more relaxing milieu.
I’m in Indonesia. West Java, specifically. And, for the precision junkies among you, a small hillside village just outside the town of Lembang, twenty minutes from Bandung, which is in turn about three hours’ drive inland from Jakarta.
This is my first trip to Indonesia. As with all the best arrivals into a new place, I arrived late at night. I like this, because you travel to your destination in the darkness, with no real clues to what everything looks like, and when you get up the next morning and see it in the daylight, it’s like arriving for a second time. It’s my own little ceremony and I’m very fond of it.
Of course, my arrival wasn’t a particularly gracious one. I travel with a backpack- even for work. In fact, I have a thing about backpacks. I hesitate to call it a fetish. But I do confess that my propensity to shop for backpacks does mirror a particular gender’s preference for buying shoes. I won’t tell you how many backpacks I currently own, but I will say that I have more than I could reasonably carry on one trip. My main workhorse at the moment is a 60+10-litre Lowe Alpine which has served me well over the last eighteen months (and which I admit plays second fiddle to my Lowe Alpine 75+20L Liberty behemoth which accompanies me on really big trips)… and… see? I’m already away talking about them. A dangerous topic. Get back on track.
Backpacks. Given that you can’t lock them, I have invested in a pair of wire mesh backpack protectors, to make sure that nobody takes anything out of my packs, and also, in this world of drug-mules and death penalties, nobody puts anything in. For those not familiar, these are lightweight steel meshes that can unfold and wrap around the backpack, and which you can then padlock in place so that unruly baggage handlers can’t sneak their paws into your luggage. I’ve been very happy with them to date, and over the last eighteen months, the only time I’ve travelled without one (a local flight between Chiang Mai and Bangkok), I had something stolen from my bag, which only reinforced their usage. I would strongly advise regular travellers who use backpacks to invest in one of these things.
That said, I had a rude shock disembarking in Jakarta to discover that some cretin had savaged the wire mesh in transit. I say in transit, but I am fairly confident that I know exactly where said savaging took place, and it wasn’t in Changi Airport, Singapore. Rather, my point of embarkation, where security was through the roof and clearly the security officers none too bright, had viewed my innocuous backpack protector (which has been through two dozen airports at least since I bought it) as a challenge to be overcome, and rather than snap off the $10 padlock and open it up, the morons carved into the $100 mesh itself with a set of wire clippers, ratched up the top of the pack, and destroyed the mesh completely.
My rude arrival into Jakarta.
Ten days on and I’m still steamed about this. Can you tell?
Luckily, nothing was taken. So I filed a complaint with Singapore Airlines and will hopefully get the thing replaced when I’m back home in a couple of weeks.
If you’re still reading, this post has gotten well off topic. Nothing really new there. Except to say, arriving at night, we then travelled straight to Lembang. We left the airport at ten, and got in to the hotel here around two am. Which also didn’t improve my mood arriving. The trip was a long and uninspiring one. Java is the most populous island on earth, with a population of some 130 million people (more than a third of that of the United States, and greater than that of Japan) on a relatively small and very mountainous spine of tropical soil sticking out of the Indian Ocean. It doesn’t let you forget it in a hurry. Between Jakarta and Bandung, the dual-carriageway highway was choked with traffic at midnight on a Monday night, and we were frequently crawling at thirty or forty kilometers an hour. The sheer volume of people is quite overwhelming.
But Lembang itself is a charming little place. At a little over a thousand metres’ altitude, this is the highlands to Jakarta’s steamy, smoggy portside location. Green terraced hills rich with tea-plantations give backdrop to clusters of terracotta-roofed homes laid out alongside steep narrow alleyways. In the distance, the hazy outline of looming volcanoes gives presence to the horizon. The air is cool and fresh in the morning, warm beneath a tropical sun during the day, and gentle again as the evening takes hold. Thunderheads build over the mountains through the afternoon, painting the sky in dramatic contrast, while butterflies and azure bumble-bees dance among manicured flowerbeds. It’s all rather picturesque.
Even here the population is inescapable, however. The main road that connects the towns in this part of the country is choked with traffic day in and day out, and settlement follows it like a ribbon, rarely broken from one village to the next. On weekends, Jakarta’s population flocks to the hills to get away from the sticky, polluted air of the city and find some elusive calm amongst the greenery. A morning trip to hike the rim of a nearby volcanic crater proved to be more like a stroll down Fifth Avenue during the January sales, so frenetic were the throngs of people crowding the site.
Nonetheless, the change of pace and scenery is very welcome. I’m sleeping well, catching up with colleagues I haven’t seen for a while, and even getting a bit of exercise walking up the hill to the conference room- the grounds of this place are huge. I’m due to be in Jakarta in a couple of days and I’m looking forward to getting a bit of a blast from that city as well, because I’m sure it will be interesting. However I’ll certainly miss the scenery of central Java, and hope to get a chance to come back here to do some travelling when time allows.
NB- Apologies for the silence of late- a combination of unreliable internet and limited headspace for thinking out here (coupled with a minor chest infection) have stymied my plans to keep the posts rolling… thanks for being a forgiving audience!
Victoria’s drought is no secret. Since I got back to Melbourne in late December, the state has averaged less than about 2cm (1 inch) of rain. Our water storages are at about 30%, 5% lower than the same period last year, and dropping at a rate of about 0.5% per week. It’s the lowest level displayed on the record, which starts in 1997, but as far as I know we’ve never been this low before. We’re in stage 3a water restrictions, and gardens are dying out across the state. Flying in to Melbourne airport, the landscape is yellow-brown from horizon to horizon.
The morning after Mike & Lisa’s wedding in sub-tropical New South Wales was mild and damp, and a wet grey rain fell in a refreshing shower that hissed on vibrant green leaves and left the atmosphere singing with moist droplets. For this Victorian, it was like taking a deep breath of cool, clean air. Invigorating and nostalgic. How we could do with a nice downpour here in Melbourne…
