Michael Ward | Creative
A young Bennetts wallaby mother lets her Joey take a look at the world. In another couple of months this eager joey will have all its fur and be able to hop along with its mother on the nightly foraging excursion. But the nights in Tasmania are still close to being cold with strong gusts of wind so for now mums pouch is the best place to be…
For some reason I nearly always feel very comfortable using a TLR and the Rollei T in particular. The camera I used through my Art school years was a Minolta Autocord II that focused with a leaver beneath the taking lens which was almost as good as the Rollei left hand focus wheel (knob) The disadvantage was that in cold weather (for me) it was too easy to catch the shutter if the leaver happened to be on the RHS at the start of focusing. Other than that the lenses and the film advance is much the same. Like really the linking of the aperture and shutter speed on the T and peculiarly I think the Rollei T is the only TLR that has that feature. Several TLR’s have 645 adaptor mask and counter wheels but as far as I know only the T in the house of Rollei. I’m going to put some fast 800 colour film in it next something that I have never used in medium before !
A rainy night in Launie with apologies to Brook Benton. With a voice as rich and as smooth as oiled mahogany ‘A rainy night in Georgia’ epitomises the sheer haunting beauty of the black soul voice.
As for my picture the digital camera can do things which become tediously trying with film and these days expensive. Even with practice experience there are only two films I would consider for night work Fuji ACROS and Ilford 3200 rated at 1600. The former because ACROS film is unique in as much as one doesn’t have to account for reciprocity failure and the Ilford film because it can be pushed to 6400 and beyond (12500 anyone!) with acceptable results when developed in Ilfotec DDX, which sadly is perhaps the most expensive developer available in Australia… The above was made on an OM systems EM5 and the reason how I could capture this is the absolutely remarkable image stabilisation that the camera offers. No tripod needed!
An early walk through the morning mist in the Gorge the sun shatters the light from every rain drop that gathered on the trees and shrubs over night. As might be imagined the French mange to say the same thing so much better in just two words ‘Contre jour‘…
The North Esk River flows into the Tamar River via Cataract Gorge. The North Esk is a massive drain for a huge area of land that runs from the Western Tiers (the Great Western Mountains) to the City of Launceston in Tasmania. It is prone to flooding in fact the place where I stood to make this photo is now under three metres of water after only a few days of rain.