Sounds like wish - A quiet place.

19 July, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Tilted

Feluccas are traditional motorless boats that have been used for transport on the Nile River since biblical times. From the photo below you’d have to agree that they are graceful whether their masts are tilted into the wind or tilted at rest on the beach. The design is simple, a small wooden boat with a few cushioned seats around the sides, a table in the middle, and sails made from cotton or other natural fibres.

Today feluccas carry tourists and locals on peaceful pleasure boat trips along the Nile. This photo is from my father’s World War two album and was taken in 1941 or 1942. Aren’t the large creamy triangular sails ideal in black and white photography!

Ailsa came up with this theme for a photo challenge. Check out an amazing tilted tree and other photos here.

13 July, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: The Golden Hour

When I read the weekly photo challenge to take a photo at the golden hour of sunrise or sunset, I thought, well, I already know about sunset light, so why not make an effort to study the light of sunrise. But to do that I’d have to get up at sunrise on Sunday. I had no intention of doing that.

Then, this morning at ten to seven, after six hours’ sleep, I woke to see my room suffused with pink. At first I ignored it. Too tired. But I dared to open my eyes again a few minutes later and the light in the room was tinged with reddish purple. I jumped out of bed and raced to find my camera, knowing that coloured light is fleeting. You can see that I took the first photo at three minutes past seven – it took me that long to get ready for my cold back yard.

The official sunrise time was 7:10am, but Canberra was pretty in pink before that moment. Not really a ‘golden hour’; more of a ‘rosy hour’. When the actual moment came at 7:10, the pink glow had mostly gone, faded to grey. It’s mid-winter here; the temperature was about 6 degrees, a few degrees warmer than usual for this time of morning; the sky today is completely covered. I know the sun was behind these rosy photos but I never saw it.

Sunrise, Canberra, 14th July 2013, three minutes past seven — Seven minutes before sunrise, Canberra, 14th July 2013, three past seven

Five minutes before sunrise, Canberra, 14th July 2013, five past seven

Exact official moment of sunrise, Canberra, 14 July 2013, ten minutes past seven — Exact official moment of sunrise, Canberra, 14 July 2013, ten past seven

11 July, 2013

I spy with my little eye

Marianne from East of Málaga asks
what can I spy
and what is my point of view?
I spy with my little eye
a window I can’t see through:

One of the stained glass windows by Leonard French in the National Library of Australia — One of 16 stained glass windows by Leonard French in the National Library of Australia

Bottom panel of a stained glass window by Leonard French, National Library of Australia

The glass is about 20cm thick, hand-chiselled and set into pewter-coloured concrete. The artist is an amazing Australian, Leonard French, who made 16 of these windows for the National Library in 1967. They are all visible from the foyer of the library through the interior plain glass walls of the café and the bookshop. The windows on the side of the building receiving the morning sun are in warm colours, those you see here decorating the walls of the café. On the other side of the foyer, the afternoon sun side, the colours are cool blues and purples filling two walls of the bookshop. French had a philosophy that art should be accessible to the masses and not just for viewing, a philosophy which makes me happy every time I sit at a window table in the café (I’m a little less happy when they’re all taken.). The chiselled edges of the glass are not sharp. I know this because I like to stroke it. The sun shining on the glass makes it glow and makes it warm to touch, but not hot. A spirit-lifter.

As part of the photo challenge, Marianne suggests we recommend two blogs. Two come to mind immediately: The Wanderlust Gene and Covetotop. Their blogs don’t just have interesting photos of faraway places, but more importantly for me they are well-written. I’m always on the lookout for readable writers.

6 July, 2013

Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgic

If you’re living in Cairo at present, you’re probably feeling nostalgic for a quieter city with fewer people in the streets. Here’s a photo to prove that your city was once more peaceful, well, at least outside this hospital. And there was a world war going on!

With a theme like ‘Nostalgic’ I just had to return to my father’s war album. I often think I’ve blogged about his best photos, but when I dig around it long enough I can still find a photo to match a challenge, especially this week when Cairo is undergoing yet more trouble and millions of people are in the streets. It’s the ideal time to post a photo taken in Cairo in about 1941. My father wrote “9th BGH Heliopolis” under it, that is, the 9th British General Hospital in the suburb of Heliopolis, Cairo.

Postscript: Thanks to Ahmad Omar (see his comment below) I now know that this was originally the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, opened in 1910, which became a hospital in both WWI and WWII and since the 1980s has been one of the Presidential Palaces where presidential offices are located.

9th British General Hospital, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941 (formerly Heliopolis Palace Hotel)

30 June, 2013

Ailsa's photo challenge: Sculpture

For a couple of hours every afternoon in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia, an artistic mist drifts over a pond, hiding the water and reeds and reflections and ducks and sixty-six sculpted heads.

Heads from the North and duck, Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Australia (NGA)

When the mist clears it’s an uncomfortable experience to circle the pond, looking at the heads facing in many directions.

Dadang Christanto, an Indonesian-born sculptor now living in Australia, created Heads from the North in 2004 as a memorial to an Indonesian military coup in which his father died.

Beside the pond there’s a restaurant in a marquis. I couldn’t eat there.

Sculpture Garden restaurant, National Gallery of Australia — Sculpture Garden restaurant, NGA

Though I frequent the sculpture garden, I have, until today, always skipped quickly past this pond and over to the sculptures I understand, those I would have in my own garden (if I could), like Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. But this afternoon I twisted my own arm and stopped to look into the eyes of these drowning men. Now I see, in a small way, what a task it must have been for Dadang Christanto to create this work of art to honour his father.

Ailsa came up with this great theme of Sculpture. Take a look at her photos here.

23 June, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Ripples

Ailsa is looking for photos of ripples.

Yesterday I was on Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay, NSW, when I was taken aback by this rippling rock erosion that resembles skulls:

And the ripples led to a flow, crossing Hyams Beach, one of the whitest beaches in the world; its fine white grains are mostly composed of quartz. In the distance that’s my husband again, as he was in my last post:

And this morning in the icy atmosphere of a highland reserve, I saw the rippling Yarrunga Creek rushing through heavy fog towards Fitzroy Falls:

Again, the ripples led to a flow and then a plummet a short distance further on where the water tumbled over the edge; there was just enough visibility around the waterfall to take this photo. The rest of the space was white, like standing in cloud.

I remembered seeing a recent photo of these falls on another blog, where Christopher captured the water in sunlight. : http://christopheryardin.com/2013/06/17/travel-theme-flow/

It’s worth a look!

22 June, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: the world through my eyes

Through my eyes this weekend I’m seeing a lot of rocks, surf, sand and seaweed. And a lot of my husband.

While I dally along looking at every rock pool …

Red seaweed in rock pool, Huskisson — Nature imitating Aboriginal art: red seaweed and creature trails in a rock pool, Huskisson, NSW

stopped in my tracks by the beauty of a shell heap …

studying the red seaweed washing in and gathering in wavy edges, he keeps going, so that when I snap a general view he’s often there at its edge.

Huskisson Beach, Jervis Bay, NSW — Huskisson Beach, NSW

This rock platform seems to have eroded with the ebb tide. I was totally amazed by it, but he wasn’t.

Rocks, Huskisson Beach — Rock shelf, Huskisson Beach

But then, he’s an Ebook kind of guy and I prefer paper. He’s happy to read first then eat his banana. I like to do both at once.

17 June, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Flow

I have this photo which is entirely suitable for Ailsa’s challenge this week. She asks us to open the floodgates and let the creativity flow. Well, this photo is not a product of my creativity but of my treasure-hunting. I found it in my father’s WWII album, where it’s entitled ‘Weir in Nile’. The water is certainly flowing!

Often when I want to identify a location in one of these old photos, I can search the web for similar photos, which usually is a sure way of finding details about my image. This time, however, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve researched the dams,weirs and barrages on the Nile River in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia and not found any image that resembles mine. It’s possible that this dam has been rebuilt since the 1940s and now looks completely different. Click twice to enlarge the image.

If anyone out there is an expert on old Nile dams, and if you know what this one was called, please tell me. I’ll be very grateful!

13 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 54!!!

No eggs! No eggs!! Thousand thunders, man, what do you mean by no eggs?

Saint Joan, Bernard Shaw

*****

My edition of this play has a 41-page preface written in 1924 by Ayot St Lawrence which also has a great first line:
“Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920.”

What a great résumé.

*****

Thank you to all of you who’ve read any of these 54 opening lines. Perhaps you’ve been encouraged to write the first line of your own novel, poem or play. As a bonus, I can’t help adding the line that many of us think of immediately when asked for a great opener:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Paul Clifford, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

12 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 53

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

*****

A book I’ve begun but not yet finished. However, since this is about opening lines, I submit this one as a favourite. I recently tried to describe ‘afternoon tea’ to an older French woman who thought eating mid-afternoon was an odd thing. When I turned up at her apartment the next afternoon with pastries and asking for her to put the kettle on, she chose not to eat or drink anything and simply sat watching me enjoy what Henry James and I call an agreeable hour.