Our Other Blog: Two Sisters and Two Points of View
by Taswegian1957 & Human59
Usually, when I’m taking doll photos I’m working very hard to eliminate shadows so this challenge is a bit different for me.
The weather has been so dull that finding shadows outside or even in the kitchen has been almost impossible. So I decided to create some artificially.
I’d love to have got some pictures of outdoor toilets, “dunnies” as Aussies call them. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t born here.
Instead, here are some of my own bathroom when I was painting it a year or two ago and earlier after we had the new shower put in. We were so pleased with it.
A modern bathroom in a Hobart apartment I visited as part of Open House Hobart a few years ago. I could not avoid getting myself in the picture.
A public bathroom aboard Explorer of the Seas.
My featured image is an edit of one I took for the doll blog some years ago. It was for Halloween and I was trying to recreate the old tale that if a girl brushed her hair in front of a mirror at midnight on Halloween she’d see the reflection of her future husband. The doll is a Fashion Fever Teresa (Barbie) and the sink and mirror are vintage Sindy ones which belong to Naomi.
I’ve practically been in hibernation this past week. It has been quite cold and apart from going to and from the Op Shop or out for coffee with friends I’ve really not been anywhere or done anything worthy of note. In the evenings I’ve curled up with the laptop while most of my photo archive lives on a hard drive attached to the desktop computer which I haven’t switched on in about three days.
So if anyone was worried where I’d got to don’t. It’s just winter and a bit of a writing slump.
These first two photos were taken around Geeveston, at Heritage Park and at the Geeveston Primary School. They are not actually in a lawn but they are garden ornaments. The third one is a topiary bird at Oatlands and the last one is the floral clock at the Botanical Gardens.
As Cee has given us an open choice this week I went looking in my archives for something interesting and found some photographs that I took at Port Huon several years ago now. Port Huon used to be an extremely busy port as apples were sent from here to overseas ports. After Britain joined the European Common Market trade declined and so did the port. There is a little boat repair business at one of the nearby slipways but most other businesses that were there have long gone.
When I took these photos it was still possible to go on to the wharf to fish or take photos but it is used by a fish farming operation and I believe that they have now completely closed off the wharf to the public. I love old buildings like these and I thought that the old sheds would make good subjects in black and white.
Since I started to play with Cee’s black and white challenge I’ve found it a lot of fun to experiment with editing my photos using different filters, desaturating or sepia for different effects. I also love to photograph the flowers in my garden so although I still like them better in colour it’s quite fun to see how they come out.
Even as a child I loved to look at houses. I remember walking around my neighbourhood and looking at the different types of houses and gardens and thinking about which one I’d like to have. The houses in South Australia were very different from the ones I knew in England. In the sixties it was mostly what mum called “bungalows” and every house was brick or the new fangled brick veneer that was becoming popular. In my suburb, which was fairly new there was not a lot of weatherboard or fibro. I recall how when we first went to Melbourne we were fascinated to see so many weatherboard houses. I liked them. I like all kinds of houses though, the Georgian houses in Oatlands and other older towns, Edwardian villas, California bungalows, art deco. Pretty much anything built before 1970 has some interest for me. The first picture in this collection is an old bank on Murray St, Hobart which is now a private residence. The red awnings caused a lot of controversies when the residents put them up as the council did not like them but in the end, they were allowed to stay. I’ve left them red to commemorate all the fuss.
I am not really comfortable photographing suburban houses though in case the owners don’t like it. Occasionally I do if they are in a historic area or I find them especially interesting. With so many lovely old homes being demolished to make way for ugly apartment blocks and Mc Mansions I feel I want to preserve some of the memories. We have some lovely art deco buildings around the Hobart CBD and nearby Sandy Bay, here is one of them. The other is another interesting old home on Sandy Bay Road.
Naomi’s home town of Oatlands has many interesting old buildings from the early to mid-1800s. Blossom’s Cottages are now tourist accommodation. The stork on its nest is a sculpture. In stark contrast some very ugly townhouses built on the banks of the Port River, Port Adelaide.
Finally an apartment block in Little India, Singapore. There are many of these all over Singapore. I would hate to live in something like this.
