Sunprinting.

 Some years ago I bought several bottles of all the available colours of  Jacquard's SolarFast sun printing ink. I was not aware that it had a short shelf life of only 6 months once opened and 2 years if unopened, and it's been sitting in my collection of art materials for over the 2 year limit. I decided that I wanted to make some sunprints and was somewhat dismayed when the colours were dull and not at all what I wanted. Of course I went to the web site to find out why and discovered the life span of these inks, which is not written on the bottles.  I had lots negatives that I had made years ago, so I decided to use up the inks as best I could before they were totally useless! Above are 2 prints that are the inversion of each other. The mud colour is a bit dull, but might work as backgrounds.

 Again, one positive and one negative. The trees were made with the heads of fine 'shivery' grass, and the lightening was a digital brush.

The real reason I wanted to use the SolarFast was to make a piece for a specific exhibition that stipulated the use of the human body. Rather than join the ranks of people exhibiting nudes, I worked on a photo of a little swimmer, (who is now over 40 years old), jumping into a backyard swimming pool. I'm not quite sure where this is going, but we'll see.

Rhinoceros Beetle Stamp.

I have carved several beetles before now, but they have always been seen from above as it were, so this side view  is new to me and a little more difficult to carve I think. My original drawing of the Rhinoceros beetle is on the left, and the new stamp, mounted on a piece of Perspex is to the right, and I think that the best image from the stamp is the lower right version. I seem to have misplaced my black ink pad, so I printed this one in a darkish grey, I don't think that it shows the beetle off very well though.

Dry, Dry, Dry!

 We have just experienced one of our dried Februarys with only about 1.4ml of rain for the whole month. Even on a dry hillside these Belladonna lilies are flowering beautifully. These are the shorter white/pale pink varieties, but if you look carefully you can see the remains of the tall darker pink ones at the back right.

                                  Nothing but dry grass and leaves as far as the eye can see.

                       Even this little Bronze Wing Pigeon is looking a bit hot and bothered.

Return to the Dam.

 Although the water is much lower in the dam this week, there was still plenty of depth for a dog to swim in to retrieve sticks. If we don't get rain soon however, she'll be walking into a puddle to fetch sticks next time!

                                Well out of her depth here, so it's dog paddle to the bank.

 Where just a few weeks ago she was swimming right up to the bank, now it's her knee depth and an exposed mud bank ahead.

                                                                Another stick please!

The Full Moon.

I first started taking photographs as a young child, progressing from an Agfa Box camera through the ranks of SLRs with the last one being a Pentax that I lugged around on my travels. It was heavy, had an external light meter and of course used expensive film and processing. I used to love my little half frame Olympus Pen as it was compact and light, but it too used rolls of film which cost even more to process as there were double the number of exposures to be printed.
Now of course there are digital cameras, and I am constantly amazed at what they are capable of. This shot of a full moon was taken with my Panasonic Lumix TZ60, which is by no stretch of the imagination a top digital camera, but what a result!

Patterns.

 With a fallen Manna Gum tree to remove from a pathway, son-in-law got busy with his chain saw and quickly cut the lower parts of the trunk up into suitable lengths for the winter fires. When he had stacked it all I was fascinated by the amazing patterns visible on the cut ends of the logs, not one the same as the next.

    Perhaps you can see recognisable shapes in the darker marks. Some sort of star fish maybe?

                 Perhaps a bird taking off from the top of a post, flying away to the right.

                                                                   A bear or snowman?

            One of those odd angles that city buildings on the horizon are sometimes shown from?

Messy Birds.

 When the council decided not long ago to use ornamental pear trees as street trees, I don't think anyone reckoned on the destructive powers of our native Corella. The pear trees are lovely in spring with their masses of white blossom, but from flowers come fruits which these parrots love, tearing up the branches and leaves to get at them and littering the streets.

The Corellas descend in huge flocks and although very gregarious, I couldn't get any closer this morning to take a photo of any more of the group before they flew off to another pear tree further down the street. The Rainbow Lorikeets weren't happy with the invasion, keeping up a very loud 'get away from here' call whilst the Corellas were around.

Last One.

Although I photographed this lovely Tiger Lily in January this year, I've decided to include it in lieu of the Flower for December in the monthly series of 12.

 And here they all are from the top left to right, Lotus, Native Rose, Poinsettia, Blood Lily,  Hibiscus, I'm not sure of the name of this Lily, Hellebore, Passion Flower, Rose, Tiger Lily, Hippeastrum and Clematis.

I began using interesting patterned fabric for the reverse sides, but in the last 2 where I was in a hurry to finish, I used plain fabric. Each piece has the date that I visited the particular garden and it's name.

Unfortunately when applying the name to the Tiger Lily, I orientated it  horizontally rather than vertically as it should have been, too much haste!