Photo Notes #4
Often, when out and about making photographs, the first thing I’m attracted to is the type of light, whether the soft haze of a foggy day or the sharp shadows of a midday summer sun. It’s perhaps bordering on an obsession but its been this way for a long time.
Looking back at the photographs I took in Rose Pine Cottage, the house I stayed in with my sister on a recent trip to Australia, I think about what it is that might unite a set of images. The cottage was built in the 1880s, originally a smaller timber framed house with a verandah which has been added to over the years to its current status as a two bedroom holiday home. Its interior could be described as eccentric with a quirky collection of art and objects sourced over a lifetime, organised on shelves and dressers throughout each room.
Most days we were lucky with glorious sunshine, not always warm — it is Fall in Australia after all — but definitely bright and with that brightness came beautiful sharp graphic shadows that carved their way through the kitchen blinds at the back of the house or filtered through the thin net curtains hanging at the front. Occasionally the mornings would be overcast, a mountain fog filling the view from the front of the house hiding the landscape beyond the other side of the road.
For these pictures I used my Ricoh GRiii, a small digital camera that fits perfectly into the palm of my hand. I almost always use the camera on manual setting in an effort to improve my photography by getting to grips with what makes or breaks an exposure — or as my photography tutors taught us, use the exposure settings to express what you visualise. Or something like that anyway.
Sometimes I would take pictures of the cottage in the mornings, on other days in the late afternoon, on a search for different types of light and the qualities it brings. Although I love dramatic pictures with high contrast I am also learning to appreciate the pictures I sometimes take where the light is gentle rendering the colours into delicate hues.
I’ve tried here to edit the photographs from Rose Pine by thinking about the different qualities of light — the way it filters through a window or a curtain or a blind, how framing the scene impacts the final image. All good food for thought. Enjoy.
All photos by Tanya Clarke - Rose Pine Cottage, Leura, Australia 2024
