Tag: juice

Posted in Life, Mid-life blogger, Writing

Friday Feels

Posted on by Sharon

It’s November.

I know. I don’t know where the year has gone either. One minute you’re waking up on New Year’s Day and then next minute it’s November.

It’s one of the good things about writing blog posts – or keeping a diary; you can go back and see that the year hasn’t whizzed by in a flash, and that you have actually done things throughout the year, and March did happen, as did a whole pile of other things. The same could be said of your life though, which is one reason for cramming a lot in: there’s lots to ruminate over, reflect on and remember, and when you do that, you feel the length of months and years and time spreads out, expands, slows down a tad.

But that’s enough philosophising for now. Onto the regular three Friday questions and an F-word.

The questions are:

  1. What made me happy this week?
  2. What town did I most enjoy this week?
  3. Who came back to Australia this week?

And my F-word? Future

But first to the questions.

  1. What made me happy this week? I was at the International terminal earlier in the week, and it was so lovely to watch the interactions between those arriving and those who were anxiously waiting for them. The grandfather beaming at the sight of his tiny granddaughter; the mother weeping at the sight of her grown son; the sons, daughters, grandchildren, second cousins twice removed who each had a bunch of flowers and excitedly presented them to the family patriach as he tried to embrace every crying member of his family at once; the pregnant, exhausted mother, her trolley piled high with bags and car seats, watching carefully as her eldest pushed the soon-to-be middle child in a stroller, looking for a familiar face in the crowd to relieve her of some of her burdens; the young couple meeting, perhaps for the first time (he had a bunch of flowers in what could have been a pre-arranged signal), posing for photos at all points of the arrivals hall. It really was a Love Actually moment, and that made me happy.

    2. What town did I most enjoy this week? Weird question Sharon! I know, but it was a lovely day on Sunday and we went to Kyneton and decided to wander along Piper Street. Kyneton is a strange town in a way. It seems to have three distinct shopping areas, with Piper Street being the most interesting. The buildings are old, the shops are diverse, the cafes are interesting, and the people are lovely. I was told at least four times that the dress I was wearing was some variation of “lovely”. (Just for context, I think it’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever owned.) We had a lovely lunch at Home Grown on Piper – Tim said it was the best Reuben he’s ever had. And then we wandered, and bought things, and chatted with people in shops, and spent ages and $$ in The Stockroom. It was really delightful.

    3. Who came back to Australia this week? Very specific question Sharon! I know, but apart from all the other people who came (back) to Australia this week, the one I know best is Mum. She’s been away for about 6 weeks, cruising on rivers in Portugal, visiting Salamanca in Spain, spending some time in London, a little village near Colchester, and catching up with family in the west country (think Bristol, Cheddar, Bath). I hope when I’m 86 I’ll still be travelling the world like that.
Mum arriving back in Australia


My F-word for the week? Future. More specifically, THE future. I’ve just finished reading Tim Winton’s latest release, titled Juice, and it’s a sobering look at the future. It’s not a happy book it has to be said, but it sure does make you think. This is a book set far into the future – Winton said in an interview that it’s about 300 years into the future – and it’s a warning that if we don’t do something now, we’ll be leaving future generations in a world of pain.

One bit really got me: The main character – I don’t think we know his name – is telling stories of his early years, when he was 16 years old. His world is full of ash and heat so unbearable they have to cover themselves completely and live way underground in the summers. Think a Mad Max kind of landscape. He meets some people who show him images and videos from our time – from now, our present, what they call “the Dirty World”. He says, “We believed that the world was the way it was. That it did what it did. In the way it always would. Because that’s how things were. This idea that our travails were the result of others’ actions had never occured to me. … To be told that my trials were not random accidents but deliberate acts undertaken with the knowledge of their consquences? … It was infuriating to the point of derangement.”

Deliberate acts – the burning of coal and gas to generate juice so that the oligarchs maintain their power.

Now that’s a sobering thought.

If you’re into apocalytic fiction that has more than a tinge of reality, then this is a fabulous read. I finished it very early one morning through the week and cried myself back to sleep.

That’s it for me for another Friday. I’ll see you next week.

Posted in Food, Mid-life blogger, Photography

Intentional Photography: The Black Glove series

Posted on by Sharon

A few weeks ago, the word for our Word a Week photography challenge was orange. I had the idea of taking a photo of half an orange being squeezed to make orange juice.

We tried out a few shots, then Tim (who was doing the squeezing) asked: ‘how about I wear a black glove?’ and so the Black Glove series was born.

This morning was very wet and very windy, thus the perfect time to squeeze some more fruit. It’s a messy business, so we turned the garage into a makeshift studio.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with these images, apart from share them here, but that’s not really the point.

The point is, I really enjoy the process. There were aesthetic decisions to make: how to hold the fruit, where to put it in relation to the light, how much to squeeze, when not to, where to put the fruit in the frame; and then there were technical decisions: do I need the reflector? One light or two? Do I need to feather the light? Side lighting or front?

And that’s mostly what I enjoy about the process: being intentional.

Intentionality

When I did part of a photography course a number of years ago, one thing was emphasised over just about anything else: ‘intentionality’. Being intentional in photography is being deliberate about the decisions you make in relation to things like choice of subject, composition, lighting, equipment, post-processing.Now, I love wandering around, seeing something of interest, whipping my phone out and taking a photo of whatever’s captured my attention as much as the next person. But I really love being intentional.

I can remember when Tim first gave me a camera – I’d make all kinds of decisions I really didn’t know how to make – about lighting, composition, and what I wanted the image to look like – and over the years I think I became less intentional. It’s so easy, with the camera in your phone now (I first started taking photos with a camera before mobile phones had decent ones), to point it at something and click the shutter button.

But everytime I get into the studio (whether that’s a proper studio or the garage), I get to be intentional. I’m not just seeing something of interest – I’m creating something. For me, it’s the difference between taking the shot and making the shot. When I’m being intentional, I get to make something, and that brings enormous satisfaction.

A blog post on the fstoppers website, outlines the difference: “One is a passive approach meant to capture what occurs in front of the camera should something interesting cross its view, while the other is an active engagement in the creative process that draws on the technique, imagination, and foresight of the photographer“.

So, after a quick burst of intentional decisions – from choosing the fruit to squeezing it just right, adjusting the lighting, and framing each shot – here are the results.

All image ©Sharon Pittaway

Photography for me, especially when I’m intentional about it, gives me a great deal of satisfaction. These images aren’t only about fruit being squeezed; they’re about creativity and play.

I can be creative through playing: playing with the lights, playing with angles, framing the subject in different ways (low in the frame, or high) and playing through the post-production process. It’s no coincidence that the tagline of this blog is playing with ideas and images.

But of course, there’s more to images than taking them. There’s the viewer. How is a viewer going to respond? They don’t see the decisions, only the outcomes; they don’t know why I asked Tim to squeeze an orange in the first place, that he came up with the idea of putting on a glove (partly because he wasn’t enjoying the juice on his hands) and why I chose to shoot more fruit in the way I did today.

I won’t know your response, unless you tell me in the comments, but one person who saw the orange juice image recoiled at the “violence” in the shot. Another person who saw it said, “that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Neither of those responses were anywhere near my thinking when I took the shots. As the photographer, I can make deliberate decisions about how to make the shot, but I’m not in any kind of control over how a viewer responds. And most of the time I never get to find out because people don’t generally comment or give any feedback.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know your response to these images. And/or tell me about your intentionality. What kinds of decisions do you make in your photography?

Thanks, as always, to Tim for being my willing accomplice.