A Designed Landscape

Designer landscapes are nothing new: they were doing it in Tudor times. But the visual impact of such a place—often today merely considered landscape gardening and dismissed as something unimportant—can be amazing. On January 25th, 2023, I paid a visit to Carrick Hill, the famous early 20^th century mansion in the Adelaide Hills, overlooking the city and plain, and the entire grounds are designed to compliment and interact with the house. Views abound, and not just outward—this is a view of the mansion through a veritable keyhole in the now-well-grown trees. It’s an example of expert design given its head, where the undulation of the land features strongly in the layout, and the altitude allows lush growth of northern, deciduous species despite the Australian summer extremes. The place is well worth a visit! Here, it’s a simple shot where composition is everything—the POV looks back at the house through the frame of the trees, and is as picturesque as a painting. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike. Mm

 

Home sweet home

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On, to be in England, now that April's here ... Except, it's downunder in the wintertime! How lush, how green this country can be, it only some rain would fall. You find these little hideaways all over the Adelaide Hills: a large house sitting on a hectare or two (anything up to five acres), behind dense hedges ... the "cottage in the woods" rather than the "cabin," but the principle is the same. The real magic of this image is in the framing and cropping, and later, in the enhancement, which brought up the color and flattened the contrast. The galvanized metal roof was glaring in the sun, overpowering the whole image. Photo by Mel, 2006.

Colonial Memories

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The Adelaide Hills are dotted with little sites like this, reminders of the colonial past are everywhere. These farm houses were built between the late 1830s and the turn of the twentieth century, and some of them were still inhabited in the 1960s, even though there was no electricity wired in, and you carried water from your well! (A friend of mine raised five kids in a house just like this, near Victor Harbor! They were a sturdier breed in those days.) These structures were built to last, and will be around a great deal longer, even though they're now derelict and some, like this one, are no more than ruins. This farmer's cottage stands at the edge of the Scott Creek Conservation Park, South Australia, and this image was captured in the fall of 2007. The grass is green ... we've clearly had some rain! Photo by Mel, 2007.

Turner or Constable?

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Sometimes the light does strange things: it can ruin your shot or make it. This was the latter, the fine, soft light of evening with the sun low enough to throw much of the harbour into shadow, and flooding the image with short wavelengths. This is Whitby Harbour, photographed from the end of the west quay, about the base of the breakwater, on a cold and windy evening in mid-November 2006. The scene just begged to be photographed but it was not until I saw the image on a screen weeks later that the patterning of the clouds and water brought home the feeling of a seascape by Turner or a landscape by Constable. I've always said there's something unique and beautiful about the quality of the very light in England, perhaps the latitude has a lot to do with it, but here it shows how special it can make an everyday scene. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Photo by Mike.

A drought-scourged panorama

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On a roasting day in summer, you've just jolted down the most horrific road in South Australia. You're not quite sure if your knee or shoulder joints are still attached, and if your kidneys are where they used to be! But the reward for making it down the road to Myponga Beach is glorious peace and quiet and a panoramic view from the ocean to what seems to be sub-desert but is in fact sheep grazing country that's being scourged by drought. Up on the hill is a station house ... and here's where it gets interesting. Refer back to Sand, sea and sun, Aussie style, which was uploaded a few days ago, and look at the top of the shot. There's the same house, seen in the distance, photographed from Silver Sands, near Aldinga ... and in the previous shot you can also see that horrific road down the hillside! That's what you drive in order to get to the location above. Dramatic though this shot is, it was also easy to get. I remember the day being so hot that I left the Fuju 6500 set on full auto and let the gadget do the work! Photo by Mel, 2007.

How the other half live ... wow!

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I got interested in panoramic shots a while ago, while traveling overseas. Some locations offer the most amazing mid-range material, while the top and bottom of the frame are ... blah. Like this one. It's the line of millionaires' houses and Norfolk Island pine trees that are the interesting segment of the photo. The upper third is just sky, and the bottom third --? I was standing in the water to get this, so you can imagine what the bottom third was all about. The best thing to do is photograph the whole scene at the max resolution you have ... 6MP is just fine; 10MP is superb, but you'll need one of the newer cameras to get this. (Incidentally, check the Digital Kosmos Store, to the right of your screen: you'll see the new Fuji at a good price -- and it would do this job perfectly.) However, this shot was captured with 6MP, and I don't have a problem with it. In your imaging software, just crop the wide shot out of the whole frame, then size it to what you need, sharpen, and adjust color, brightness, contrast and color saturation, if you need to or want to. The results? Beautiful! This photo was taken from the waterline at Seacliff, Adelaide. Photo by Jade, 2007.