Very Bloody Australian, Mate

Ever since Mad Max, a burned-out landscape under a blue sky, with a two-way blacktop highway running through it has been a symbol of Australia. Up the country, roads can be so quiet you can stretch out on the white line to get really low shots without any danger. In 2021 I photographed a number of locations way north of Adelaide, but due to a hard drive crash I lost my 2021 pictures—there were many lamentations, as you would imagine. On April 3^rd, 2023, that particular expedition was recreated—going back to the same spots and recapturing lost frames. For good measure, here are two from that day. It’s a highway juncture about 300kms north of Adelaide, up beyond Burra and Tarlee, where the land is wide and flat and, by April, burned as dry as it’ll ever be. Here some bright spark named the road “Worlds End Highway," which feels like it belongs in a Mad Max movie to start with. Those ridges in the background? The “Hallelujah Hills,” and that fits the picture too, along with the ruins of settler homesteads and the abandoned towns up there. It’s an interesting place to visit, for sure! No photographic cleverness here, it was all about the place. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Vertiginous View

This is another frame from the set I took at York Minster, England, in November, 2011, on my fourth UK trip (I mistakenly quoted it as my third in a previous post). This was once the tallest building in Europe, some 800 years ago. Everything I said before applies, but this frame, with the skew-off in framing, creates a more vertiginous aspect. The sun came out—that’s the big thing, because so many of my UK trip photos are dominated by grey skies and racing clouds, which, though spectacular in their own right, can get a bit monotonous. Here is proof that blue skies do occur in the British Isles—just now and then! Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

Hard, Grey and Cold

 

This image evokes thoughts of wind. It was blowing a gale when I was out on that day, and it was so cold. I took this frame on November 22^nd, 2012, close to the waterfront at Tiger Bay, Cardiff. I’m standing practically on top of the secret Torchwood base, here, sheltering under the overhang of the Millennium Centre, looking toward Roald Dahl Plass, beyond which is the bay. I was in town to see the Dr Who Experience (discontinued several years ago), and was glad I braved the weather for the chance to do the tour. No one was out and about—I seemed to have the place to myself, as presumably the locals know to stay indoors when the wind off the Atlantic comes in so strong, and only crazy tourists are abroad. The wan light and hard surfaces create a texture of such starkness: the image is engaging merely for its brutalism. Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.