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Rob Blakers, our photography instructor, in addition to being a superb photographer, is clearly an amazingly athletic guy. He walked into the bush with us encumbered by not only a heavy pack, but also this cumbersome iMac. |
Friday, 16 November: we walk
into the Tarkine — takayna
I cropped many from the Canon-standard 3×2 proportions.
My journal is detailed in its account of the first hours of the day: «We were to be picked up at 0800, whereas the restaurant across the street would be opening only at 0730. So we brought our stuff down and pulled it into the restaurant at opening time, and ate just as fast as we could.
the two pictures to the left, I have a thing for ferns.
«We met one of the guides, Johanna, and would pick up the other, Trevor, later on into the move into the wilderness. Our one photographic advisor is Rob Blakers, who has turned out to be an amazingly skilled photographer, who has definite ideas on how to get good pictures. He seems also to be well known throughout Australia, doing not only art photography but documentary and commercial.
«We drove along the north coast of the island, turned in, and after picking Trevor up, went inland on ever rougher roads, till we got to the dropoff point, which we hiked away from, into the bush. Everybody is being solicitous to this geezer, and again I’ve felt a bit guilty.»
That’s Nick, entering to the
left
(small image only).
Before going out to do photography, we introduced ourselves: two other walkers, Ira and Nick; and the three guides, Jo, Trevor, and Rob. Then Rob spent some time explaining what we would do, and going into some detail about the kind of pictures he would be teaching us to make. Unfortunately, the best way of following his guidance would be to use a tripod, and to save weight I had brought only a monopod, since for all of our previous walking experiences, this had been enough support and stabilization for the camera.
Thus I felt a little bit out of the loop, being partially unprepared for the kind of photography that Rob was recommending, about which much more later. But I tried as well as I could to follow his lessons on composition, and I’m hoping that some of them stuck.
At this point of our stay in the Tarkine, my journal no longer has day-by-day entries, so let me sample from it, not necessarily in the order that things were written:
«Each day, we left as early as possible to get views of the forest uncontaminated by the dappled sunlight that ruins so many outdoor pictures not in full sun. We’d stay out several hours, coming back in most cases for lunch (Sunday, Jo cooked stirfry for us right on the trail). All walks involved a good bit of ascent and descent, sometimes rather steep. I was still recovering from the overexertion of the Freycinet Experience, and might have preferred walks that were all on the level. But this is mountainous territory, and there is no “on the level” to be found here.
«Everyone was very solicitous of my incompetences, and I finally got to accepting help, in the form of an extended hand, when the steepness or the difficulty of footing warranted it.»
Immediately after this I wrote: «Rob Blakers is a superb photographer and an excellent teacher, with a definite personal viewpoint on the elements of photography: composition, lighting, techniques. I earned a hell of a lot from him, and will certainly be putting to use a great deal of his advice.
«Rob showed us a computer-assisted technique called “focus stacking”, usable only for perfectly motionless subjects. One takes multiple shots of that one subject, varying only in the plane of the best focus, […] as many as ten shots or so. Then, loading them all into specially designed software called Helicon Focus, you get a single image in which the subject is in sharp focus everywhere. Mark is going to try it out and I am interested to see the results.&rqauo;
And then my journal says a little about Trevor, too little in fact, because he was by far the most interesting of our little group. Shortly after we all introduced each other, Trevor said to me, “You two are beaus?” This charmed me endlessly: the rather old-fashioned term, expressing perhaps a reticence to hint at more serious intimacy between Mark and me, the frank curiosity. I smiled and allowed as Yes, and said no more about the question till our last day. At any rate, here’s what my journal says:
«Trevor is a most excellent fellow, bluff, good-natured, pretending to be something of a clown, but thoughtful, even deep-thinking, beneath. Superb company, full of stories and anecdotes, always entertaining.» He takes no particular care in his dress, and his hair goes in all directions. The rear view to the right gives only a hint of how he comes across, at least before you engage him in conversation.
I think I’ll stop here, leaving further quotes from the journal to next day’s page. Go and read about it.