Moving day

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I have moved this blog to my new website.  Please follow me to andreelawrey.com if you would like to keep in touch.

Favourite Cactus

© Andrée Lawrey

Pure self-indulgence. I love that gentle green, the soft-looking texture of the leaves, those interlocking curves...

Alternatives at Abell's Kopi Tiam

Camogli at Dusk © Andrée Lawrey

Afternoon Silhouettes, Portofino  © Andrée Lawrey

Alternatives is an exhibition by three photographer friends – Lorna Sim, Susan Henderson and Andrée Lawrey – who enjoy experimenting with alternative capture and printing processes in our work.  We happily mix and match advanced digital cameras, medium format film, basic plastic cameras, traditional chemical printing processes, digital stitches and montages, retro phone camera apps and anything else we think of in our quest for evocative images.  While these processes are never an end in themselves, but only tools we use to craft our images, we have a lot of creative fun along the way.

This exhibition has been in the back of our minds at least since we were making cyanotypes together in 2010.  At that stage we were thinking purely in terms of alternative printing processes (cyanotype, Vandyke brown) but over time the concept evolved to reflect new directions in our work.  When we finally started selecting work for the exhibition, we found ourselves stretching the boundaries to include plastic cameras and modern, digital "alternatives" as well as cyanotypes and other traditional processes.

Susan is showing cyanotype and Vandyke prints – subtle, organic, ethereal still life studies of shells, feathers and flowers – with two jewel-like landscapes captured on medium format film with a Holga plastic camera.  Lorna has combined her hi-fi dance photography with lo-fi dream-like landscapes to create images with a strong, almost surreal mythological feeling.  And I am showing a selection from my iPhone in Italy series, which began as a light-hearted attempt to express my delight in a wonderful trip and somehow found its way onto my "personal best" list.

Lorna, Susan and I are very happy to present a selection of our favourite "alternatives" at Abell's Kopi Tiam restaurant in Furneaux Street, Manuka (ph. 6239 4199).  

Catching Up

On the Way to Portofino © Andrée Lawrey

I love January. It is the quietest month as summer settles in after the silly season. Suddenly there is time to catch up with sleep, friends, family, the backlog of half-sorted photos, unfinished projects, the blog (ahem!), travel plans and everything else that gets pushed aside during the busy times.

I am still sifting through my photographs from Italy. This pair were taken from the bus on the way to Portofino, on the last afternoon of the Liguria Within The Frame workshop.  I love the challenge of photographing from a moving vehicle – it is a lot of fun as well as a wonderful exercise in timing and composition – and wrote about it in my November 2011 Different Strokes article, here (on page 23 of Capital Image).

My last article for the year was Holiday Tasks (here, on page 13), which takes a light-hearted look at ways to keep some photography happening during the festive season when we don't really have time and energy to spare.

Twelve Months

Inspired by Susannah Conway and some of her blog friends, here is a review of my photographic year.

January

Near Guthega © Andrée Lawrey

A weekend Southside Camera Club excursion to Guthega, Kosciuszko National Park, NSW gave me a chance to test my legs on some easy mountain walks and prove I was fully recovered from past injuries.  I still grin with delight at the memory.

February

Sydney Reflection © Andrée Lawrey

Seen on the way to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition on a busy day trip to Sydney.

March

3 Yallourn Street, Fyshwick, ACT © Andrée Lawrey

Still working hard on the Fyshwick project.

April

Venice © Andrée Lawrey

Italia!  A joy, a delight and a photographic feast, including a wonderful tour with my friend Luiza and an excellent Within the Frame photo workshop with David duChemin and Jeffrey Chapman.  Special thanks to all concerned, old friends and new, for a delightful experience.  It's thanks to you that I'm still dreaming of Italy!

More of the iPhone in Italy series can be seen on my website.

May

Night Tree © Andrée Lawrey

Home again and having fun challenging the iPhone camera in tricky light.

June

40 Kembla Street © Andrée Lawrey

A gift!  Spotted at the very end of shooting for the Fyshwick exhibition.

July

Done at last!

August

Wired © Andrée Lawrey

Taking a break and playing around with the iPhone.

September

Squares, Bibo Café, Ballarat © Andrée Lawrey

I love this Ballarat café, with its retro décor, soft colours and hearty breakfasts.  The 2011 Ballarat International Foto Biennale was also a special treat.

October

Lamp, Benedict House © Andrée Lawrey

Benedict House is always a joy to visit.  We love the food and the photo opportunities in equal measure...

November

Favourite Cactus © Andrée Lawrey

Two splendid potted succulents guard the front door of PhotoAccess.  Sometimes I snatch a photo as I go by.  More often, I remind myself to go back when I have time to make some cactus portraits...

December

Kiln Reflection © Andrée Lawrey

A visit to the ANU School of Art brought some unexpected photo opportunities.  I particularly liked the fragmented reflections in the faceted surface of a kiln (I think it's a kiln) in the courtyard.

Have Cameras, Will Travel – the Art of Being There

Beach Huts Near Portofino © Andrée Lawrey

I had a wonderful time in Italy last April – not least on the Liguria Within the Frame workshop with David Duchemin, Jeffrey Chapman and a small group of committed photographers. I am still absorbing what I learned along the way – more on that and the workshop in future posts and/or articles – but my latest Different Strokes article talks about the core lesson: preparation is important, but being there is essential. You can find it here, in the July 2011 edition of Capital Image (page 25).

An iPhone in Italy (II)

© Andrée Lawrey

More exhibition images from my iPhone in Italy series. The flowers and the church are from Portofino and the others are from a morning excursion to Burano in the Venetian lagoon.

This set is part of Out There 2011, the Canberra Photographic Society's annual exhibition which is now showing at the Watson Arts Centre. More information, including an online catalogue, is available here. The exhibition continues until 10 July.

An iPhone in Italy

Roman Flare and Afternoon Trees © Andrée Lawrey

Many of my favourite images from my visit to Italy last April were taken with my iPhone. The Hipstamatic app I was using just seemed to suit my subjects and the holiday mood I wanted to convey.  

I exhibited this pair in Access all Areas 2011 - The PhotoAccess Members' Show in May. I was trying for silhouettes but the iPhone sensor, the Hipstamatic app's Helga Viking lens and the angle of the sun conspired to deliver some additional special effects. The only post-processing I did was to crop off the white border around each photo, which doesn't look good in prints.

Wheels!

Cool Wheels © Andrée Lawrey – Hipstamatic 201

I'm still catching up with 'normal' life after a delightful few weeks in Italy – more on that when I have finished sorting and processing an embarrassing quantity of photos.  Meanwhile, a Southside Camera Club excursion to Robbo's Motorcycles, a local Harley-Davidson® dealership, provided a totally different subject to help me re-focus on the here and now.

Motorcycles bring out my close-up and abstract, arty side.  Machines as sculpture – all those curvy metal shapes and reflective surfaces.  They are challenging to photograph, especially in the bright,white light of the showroom, but well worth the trouble.  I spent a wonderful morning with these amazing machines – my thanks to Robbo's for giving us the opportunity and making us so welcome.

I love the way the Hipstamatic iPhone app brought out the cool, steely blue of the metal (which must have been reflecting my blue cardigan), while my SLR's sensor responded to the cool, white light with a golden glow I could not bear to 'correct' in post processing.

Warm Wheels © Andrée Lawrey – D700, 105 F/2.8 micro

Highlights @ Floodlight

Highlights © Andrée Lawrey

Here's a favourite from 2007, a lucky find on a PhotoAccess workshop excursion early one frosty morning.  The sun was just melting the frost, turning water drops to jewels and gilding the dead flower heads.  I love the way backlight turns the most commonplace scenes and details to sheer magic.

A print of this image is my contribution to the Floodlight exhibition and auction at PhotoAccess on Saturday, 5 February from 4 to 5.30 pm, which aims to raise funds for victims of the devastating floods in Queensland.  More information and an online catalogue are available here.

 D200, 28-105 f/3.5-4.5

Smartphones and Cyanotypes

Cyanotype Still Life © Andrée Lawrey

Everything old is new again:  my latest Different Strokes article looks at a hi-tech, digital incarnation of plastic camera photography and the fun of making cyanotypes.  You can find it here, in the October 2010 edition of Capital Image (page 18).

Polaroid Chairs Diptych

 © Andrée Lawrey

My first cyanotypes!  Special thanks to my photographer friends Lorna, Susan H and Marlene for giving me such a fun and inspiring introduction to cyanotype printing.

The original image is a Polaroid 600 photo which I scanned to make negatives for contact printing.  I often fall in love with negative images, so I tried printing this one both ways.  The positive print works best – the darker background is less distracting – but I also like the pair as a diptych.  (Thanks for the suggestion, Lorna!)

Spring Blossom

© Andrée Lawrey

It's too easy to overlook the photo opportunity just outside the front door.  Quite literally, in this case – every Spring I mean to photograph the blossoming crab apple trees lining the path by my front door, walking by day after day, thinking "I must come down with the macro lens and see what I can make of this", then letting the days slip by until the opportunity is lost for another year.

Then, at a portraiture class on Sunday afternoon, I found myself shamefully out of practice with spot metering and manual exposure settings.  I drove home determined to refresh my manual photography skills at the first opportunity.  And there were the flowering crab apples...

I was thinking of Chinese flower paintings and watercolours on heavy, absorbent paper.  And Spring, of course.

D700, 105 f/2.8 micro

Hang It Yourself at PhotoAccess

© Andrée Lawrey

Some Polaroids from my last visit to a favourite holiday location on the South Coast of New South Wales – more holiday dreaming... The originals are quite soft, so the prints had to be small; I used a textured paper to emphasise their soft, almost painterly quality.

This completes my 2010 group exhibition marathon! Always a fun show, this year's Hang it Yourself at PhotoAccess should be the best yet. It opens on Sunday, 5 September at 12 noon and continues until 19 September. Further details are available here.

Polaroid 600 Spirit

Don't Blame the Equipment!

© Andrée Lawrey

Unsharp photos, the bane of my life – except when I'm playing around with plastic cameras and other 'creative blur' approaches. Soft and moody has its own charm, but I'm trying to remember that even famously unsharp Holga, Diana and Polaroid cameras give better results with a bit of care and application on my part – and the solution for my DSLR is not necessarily a shiny new lens!

My latest Different Strokes article is available here, in the August 2010 edition of Capital Image (page 12).

Polaroid 600 Spirit

Showing Off

Whew! One of my New Year's resolutions was to take up every exhibition opportunity that came my way in 2010. Deadlines are good, I thought, they will force me to start working on some of my project ideas. At that stage it wasn't obvious that several deadlines would come together to give my life that extra edge in May/June. Still, I made it, learning so much from the experience that my latest Different Strokes article practically wrote itself – you can find it here, in the June 2010 edition of Capital Image (page 22).

And the exhibitions? They were: Access All Areas 2010: The PhotoAccess Members' Show (Huw Davies Gallery, 29 April–16 May); Thredbo – A PhotoAccess Group Show (Huw Davies Gallery, 20 May–6 June); and Diversity is a Nine Letter Word (Strathnairn Homestead Gallery, 15–30 May). Finally, Out There 2, the Canberra Photographic Society's annual exhibition opens today at the Watson Arts Centre (1 Aspinall St, Watson; 1–11 July; gallery hours 10am–4pm Thurs-Sun).

The photo? It's Autumn Reflections 5, last of a series I made in 2006, rediscovered when I was preparing work for the Diversity exhibition.

The Postcard Show

I have two sets of photos in Holiday Snaps – A Members' Postcard Show at PhotoAccess. That's not quite what I planned. I set out to produce a 'mini retrospective' of ten favourite travel images I had not shown before, but somehow the project took off at a tangent. This is better, I think, with only a nod to the past and a stronger focus on more recent work. As for the two very different sets of images, both are equally 'me'. I am glad the 10 images limit gave me scope to show both together.

This is the Polaroid 600/Holga set. The beach, the ocean baths, the spotted gum tree, even Canberra's lakeshore in the early morning – holiday dreaming, anyone?

© Andrée Lawrey

And here's the 35mm/DSLR set. Something old, something new – my favourite photo from Canberra's 2006 Balloonfiesta, fishing boats at Essaouira (taken on a 2001 photo tour to Morocco), a battered weathervane snapped in some friends' back yard last December.

© Andrée Lawrey

The show continues until Sunday, 21 February. More information is available here.

In the Mist Garden

© Andrée Lawrey

The February 2010 edition of Capital Image – including my latest Different Strokes article (Refresh, Revive, Re-inspire, page 16) – is now available here, on the Canberra Photographic Society's website.

D700, 180 f/2.8

Grounded Weathervane

© Andrée Lawrey

I'm sorting through my photo collection, looking for candidates for my submission to Holiday Snaps – a Members' Postcard Show (11 to 21 February 2010), the next group exhibition at PhotoAccess. I have promised ten 4x6 inch prints and, as always, I'm cutting it fine on the timing and interpreting the brief widely – anything to bring together a nice variety of 'holiday spirit' (i.e. fun) images.

D700, 28-105 f/3.4-4.5

Hall of Mirrors

© Andrée Lawrey
D700, 50 f/1.8