Lil Nanshe

When I was a teenager, I would only write in my diary when I was sad or angry.  I don’t want this blog to become the same thing, but as Banderas’ final post is here, it seems fitting to place lil Nanshe here too.

Nanshe checking out our wedding rings. This photo is in our wedding album

Banderas and Nanshe curled up in a cupboard

Lil Nanshe liked lil boxes

Nanshe used to love to lick the shower after Will had been in it.

She often crossed her paws like a little princess.

If it was small and dark, Nanshe was probably inside

Nanshe did not like moving house. This is her after one move, having found the smallest space she could get into in the flat/

The last photo I have of Nanshe, from June last year.

Nanshe was put to sleep yesterday.

Nanshe came to us at the same time as Banderas, coincidentally around the same time my husband and I first got together.  I went from a single person living alone to having a partner and two troublesome cats in about a week.  The cats were truly troublesome; they were about two years old, and had come from a small house with 18 other cats in it.  Neither cat was at all socialised and for several weeks we could barely go near them.  Over time, with bribes of food and toys, they came to allow us to pat them and hold them.  Neither really ever became lap cats, but they did become a lot more affectionate.

Nanshe had additional troubles, as the runt of her litter.  I couldn’t tell if she was eating at all at first, and she wasn’t properly toilet trained.  Again, over time and with patience, both problems were resolved.

Nanshe’s favourite means of getting your attention was to “dust for fingerprints” – with her hugely fluffy tail, she’d back up to you and vibrate it against you, somethng I later learned was the ultimate cat compliment.  She’d follow me around the house, which unfortunately earned her a few kicks as she was impossible to see when walking in the dark at night!  Often when coming home, she’d be waiting near the bottom of the stairs to greet us, her squeaky purr at the ready (her puur sounded like she needed oiling).  She also loved to follow me into the bathroom, and got most confused when I had a bath, sniffing the water and looking at me like I was a crazy lady.

She was such a small cat she became our international standard of small, and of fluffy.  Her hair was unbelieveably soft, never changing from that kitten softness that most cats lose.  Her name is the Sumerian goddess of dreams, as she reminded me of soft fluffy clouds.  Despite her tiny size and soft hair, she was easily the bravest of the two, dusting and winning over strangers when they came to our house, and she loved going outside when she got the chance.  Our last flat in London was in a loft extension, and in the evenings she’d roam the rooftops of Hammersmith, but came home when called before we went to bed.  Bar one night, when she didn’t answer.  The next morning she still wasn’t home.  During the day at work Will and I created flyers to put up that evening.  Upon getting home later that day, she was sitting in the lounge like nothing had happened.

Another night we had a house guest who didn’t realise Nanshe was outside and shut the window.  The next day it was pouring with rain, absolutely bucketing.  I realised Nanshe was missing, and opened the window and called and called, although with the rain it was loud.  Eventually she dashed over the rooves and into my arms, wet and shivering.

Her favourite way to wake me was to stand right by my ear, and utter one loud “mew!”.

Nanshe loved fitting herself into boxes, the smaller the better.  She would claim a favourite box until her squishing herself into it would finally break one side.

Good night lil Nanshe, I’m sorry I left you.

Don’t Call Me “Tog”

I don’t know why, but I have an irrational hatred of the the nickname “tog”.  Maybe because it made me feel like an idiot – the first time I saw it used, I had no idea what it meant and it took me a while to suss it out.  Tog = Photographer.  Better than a “phot” or a “graph” or heaven forbid, a “her”, I suppose, but something about the sound of the word just jars with me.

I like being a photographer, or at least aiming to be one.  To my ear it sounds elegant, masterful, the science of technology combined with the art of the eye.  I’ve always been interested in technology – indeed currently I work in IT – but have always had an artistic side.  When I was younger, it was dance.  In the background was always writing, which never amounted to much beyond private diaries and a few travel blog posts, and in the background to all of that was photography.  It’s only been in the last few years that I realised that photography is the expression of my artistic side that I revel in the most (well, and that my body can still do!).

Having spent years just taking photos however I felt like whenever I felt like it, with no thought to the technical side, I’m now catching up.  Learning to use a DSLR has meant quite a lot of missed or ruined photos, but when I get it right… wow now that’s fun.  The technical side of photography isn’t just the camera though, it’s everything around you.  Choosing the light, considering the angles, determining the depth of focus, framing the world.  Suddenly taking a photo of that neat looking tree takes on a whole universe of options.  Practice practice practice will make this second nature, but for now I’m constantly evaluating and re-evaulating everything I do.  Sometimes I suspect I get caught up too much in the details and lose my image.  Other times I try so so hard but still miss one little thing that later I realised has ruined the shot.  Sure, with digital there’s “no cost” in taking hundreds or thousands of images that are no good, but it’s still a blow when that I can’t translate what’s in my minds eye to the screen, and of course plenty of wasted time.

Recently my husband and I went to the Bunya Mountains for a long weekend getaway.  I was determined to make the most of all the technical advice I’ve been soaking up recently.  I searched google images for inspiration and learnt about the local famous flora, the distinctive Bunya Pine, and resolved to capture one.  Sunsets were also supposed to be spectacular.

I didn’t get a good Bunya Pine photo, and the day I was ready for sunset disappointed me with an almost perfectly clear sky and not much of interest, so I came away feeling like I hadn’t really made full use of my time there, photographically speaking.  Practice, practice, practice, so that’s what I’ve put that weekend down to.

Bunya Mountains themselves are a sliver of ancient bush surrounded by ploughed fields and tamed land, topped with mobile phone and tv towers.  I’ve never been to a national park with better mobile coverage.  We walked by day (over 13kms one day) and shivered by night, never quite getting the hang of lighting the fire on our cottage.  There was phenomenal clear air at night when the clouds parted, but the impending super moon and the bitter cold kept me indoors.  I wussed out, basically.

Still, here is a collection of images that despite my despondence on returning home, I’m actually fairly happy with.  I may not have captured the images I was hoping for, but these aren’t a bad surprise (Mouse over for captions and in some cases, the story behind the image).

We pulled up to our cabin, I looked up and the sky had turned this amazing dappled pink and purple through a huge thin blanket of cotton wool clouds. The area around our cabin was simply not up to the task. “I need to see the sky!” I declared to my husband, “I’m going for a drive!”. He kindly chose to accompany me. We hadn’t had a chance to scope out the area and I had no idea where would be best to drive to capture this amazing light. We went back up the road to a lookout we’d passed on the way in, and found there was a great big ruddy mountain in the way of the shot I wanted, but I did manage some mist rising from the folds of the foothills.

Frost-bitten Stinging Nettles

Beautiful Bunya Mountains mobile masts

View over the cultivated land beyond the Bunya Mountains. Bunya is marked by many unusual and ancient fauna, like these grasstrees, some estimated to be several hundred years old.

Grasstree at sunset

Missed the moonrise, but had some luck with a few breaks in the cloud

Clear sky sunset. BORING. I took a tonne of photos anyway, since we’d gone to the effort of walking with tripod and waited ages to do this. This is the only one I felt I could inject some interest in by using an unusual crop.

Red-Browed Finch. A juvenile, so no actual red brow yet. There were tonnes of these beautiful lil birds flitting about the bush, our quiet steps disturbing them before we could reach them, and they’d flit up the path away from us. This one was quite the poser though, perhaps too young yet to be afraid.

Taken from the car while driving down the Bruce Highway. I was taking these out of desperation since I wouldn’t be home in time to capture it rising from the bay near my home. Many thanks to Canon 7Ds fast shutter speeds for this one decent shot.

A First – A Win!

Every now and then I remember that the Brisbane newspaper “Courier-Mail” runs a weekly photo competition in their Saturday magazine, and I check out the topic, and send a in photo if I have something suitable, and promptly forget.  Imagine then my surprise when I received a letter on 25th February saying I had won!

Ladybird in Rose Petals

The topic was “Mini”, so I submitted this photo of a ladybird on a rose I took about two years back.  I found her on my stove, and in the absence of a yard of any kind, had moved her to the single rose I had growing in a pot on my balcony.  I’d started experimenting with macro photography so when I found this patient model I took the opportunity to take dozens of photos, most of which, on close inpection, weren’t really all that sharp, or there was something distracting in the background, or numerous other faults.  There was something distracting in the background of this image too, but a tight crop fixed that (admittedly at the cost of quality for a large print).

I’ve always been quite fond of this little lady, especially after the eureka moment I had when I finally managed to balance the colours right to bring out the red (red is always SO HARD to get looking natural).  Now she’s really paid back my good deed.

I have to add, I was quite taken with the first runner-up image in the competition as well. Check it out here – Uluru as you’ve never seen it before.

All Change

If you own a cat and read nothing else in this post, please read this link on cat nutrition and consider what you’re feeding your furry friend.

I missed last week’s photo challenge “Changing Seasons”.  I had nothing and no time to even think of a good image for Brisbane’s slow slide into summer, as it’s been a week of change here of a different type.  My partner and I are moving into our first owned house tomorrow, which is exciting.  We also lost a beloved cat to diabetes, which is sad.  There’ll be plenty about the house to come in time, so for now, here’s a little gallery of boofhead Banderas.

Banderas wasn’t the brightest of cats, it has to be said.  But he was adorable with it.  He could purr like a steam train and his favourite trick was to headbutt you until he had your attention, particularly if you were talking on the phone or had a glass of something in your hand.  Despite his size he was a shy thing around strangers, but would eventually come out of hiding to headbutt them too.  An unusual technique but it worked; he charmed anyone fond of four-legged creatures.

We decided to leave Banderas in the UK when we moved to Australia last year, due to the stress of the long flights and quarantine.  Luckily for us and Banderas, my brother-in-law was able to take him in and when we visited earlier this year, it was easy to see that Banderas had not only settled in but had happily claimed brother-in-law as his own.  We all thought he had a few years left in him.

He was nine when he died, too early, but we’d fed him on Hills prescription dry food for five years, on the advice of a vet after he had a urinary tract problem.  His diabetes went into remission when we changed his diet to low-carb high-protein wet food, but there’s a reason it’s called “remission” and not “recovery”. He got in a couple more years of headbutting his favourite people though, and he was always loved.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

Edited to add: I completely forgot I used this photo in the silhouette challenge only a few weeks ago! Forgive me regular readers, buying a house has scrambled my brain. From now on I’m only going to use recent photos in these challenges, unless I’m really sure the image is good enough and not been seen here before.

Remember Hope

I’m drawn to contrasts in life.  To appreciate joy, we need sadness; to appreciate life, we need death; to appreciate the beauty of the stars, we need the darkness of the night.  Renewal is one such contrast, a sea change for the better.

I shot this through an open car window as we were driving out of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, USA.  I was actually aiming for the repetition of the dead trees into the distance,  but later the burst of light through the silhouettes is what kept my attention.  Funny how a photo can change meaning even to the photographer!  It’s one of those photos that’s a bit odd and I’m too close to it to tell if it’s actually any good, but it feels “renewal-ly” to me.

In other news, I’m currently in Cairns, having flown up here to witness the solar eclipse on Wednesday.  Now there’s a contrast.  It was pretty epic!  More on that another day (but if you want a sneak peak, two of my eclipse photos are up on flickr).

Weekly Photography Challenge: Foreign

I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot, and so I have heaps of photos from many part so the world. But I struggle with the word “foreign”. I’m acutely aware that what seems foreign to me is totally everyday and banal to someone else. So who am I to decide that something is foreign?

But of course there is lots in the world that is weird and wonderful to me. As an Australian, snow is a particularly foreign substance. I’ve lived in the UK and I’ve travelled to snowy places, but even now the sight of a fresh blanket of snow in the early morning light is enough to turn me into a giggling 5 year old. SNOW!!! It doesn’t get much better. I’ve posted a few snowy images for other challenges before, so I’m hopefully not repeating myself too much, but here’s some of my favourite snowy shots.

Spring Melt in the French Alps

Lac du Montriond in March 2011, slowly melting in the warm spring sunshine.

Snow blown off Vatnajokull Glacier

Clear blue sky to the right, snow churning up into cloud on the right.  I really wish I’d thought to take a proper panoramic shot of this, it was really striking.

First Snow over the Rockies

I was on a road trip from Denver to Las Vegas about this time last year, and we saw this view from the road and absolutely had to stop to soak it in.

An Icelandic Winter Sunset

Snow is no foreign concept to Icelanders, but I just can’t get over its beauty and the simplicity it brings to a scene.

(Last Week’s) Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine

This post is late partially because the challenge was posted late, but also because this is the first time I’ve had to take a photo just for the challenge, and I needed some daylight to do that in.  I did look through my favourite photos, of animals and landscapes and the occasional skyscraper, but none of them really said “Mine” to me.  But this is mine.

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

I do not have a green thumb, and have killed more plants in my time than I care to mention, but I love fresh herbs and have kept at least one basil plant in my kitchen over the years, and now I have the space to attempt a few more herbs in hanging baskets on my back deck.  I love watching them grow under my tender ministrations… which I define as remembering to water them about once every two days or so.  It’s not all been a success – there’s a dying sage out of shot, and recently I had to give up on a curry plant, and replace the basil – but overall I love my little wall of green.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Everyday Life

Nine months ago I moved from the close quarters of London to sprawling Brisbane surburbia, so it’s easy for me to appreciate the area I live in.  Just today, I walked with my husband along the shore, holding hands in the sunlight as gentle waves lapped below, watching kids hunting for crabs in the rocks.  Just today I said I feel so lucky to be here, to have this lifestyle at my doorstep, and while London was certainly a lot of fun, it feels right that this is home for me now.

I live a few minutes walk from Bramble Bay, in the north of Brisbane, Australia.  Sunset is often a glorious time at the bay.

Sunset at Bramble Bay

I’m told the sunrises are also amazing, but I’m not a morning person and have yet to manage being awake before dawn.

The bay is protected by Moreton Island, a large sand island 37kms long, so waves here are little more than the ripples caused by wind and tide.  This is not a surfer’s beach, more a place to stroll and breathe and relax.

Seagulls on Shorncliffe Pier

Shorncliffe Pier is a local historical landmark, opened in 1872, but recently closed due to safety concerns over marine borers weakening the old supports.  There is a worry that the council will tear down this beautiful old pier and replace it with a concrete monstrosity, and as a result of the subsequent protest by locals, the talk from officials has been only of repair work, not replacement.   But although an engineering report has been completed, no work is planned to commence for another year, so “Save the Pier” signs still adorn many front fences.

For a little piece of suburbia, we have great wildlife.  Flocks of rainbow lorikeets are common, and in autumn they love eating the berries off the tree right outside my front door.

Cheeky!

Ibis are also very common.  Generally considered more of a pest than an attraction, as they’ll snatch food out of your hand as soon as look at you and you can imagine the mess they leave on your car, when they’re gliding overhead they’re a graceful sight.

Ibis over Bramble Bay

Not all our wildlife is so photogenic. One summer day after a strong wind, our bay waters were filled with these little beauties.

Jellyblubber Sea

Completely harmless, but why swim in water when you can walk on it!

Bringing it home, as we are in surburbia, these little creatures both torment and delight me every day.

Taala and Elska

Walking is the pace of thinking

Turning on the TV on a Sunday afternoon is rarely productive.  Relaxing, yes, often necessarily so, but not productive.

Today I flicked through ABC (Australia) and stumbled upon a short documentary about the writer Will Self and his obsession with walking.  In 2010 he walked from his home in south London to Heathrow, boarded a plane, then walked from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood.  The walk was a means to an end, not to arrive in Hollywood, but to connect with the urban landscape and provide inspiration and introspection for a narrative for a new book.

It didn’t turn out all rosy for him, taking him on unexpected mental twists so that although he arrived in Hollywood as planned, inside he was lost.  But along the way he said, “Walking is the pace of thinking”.  Walking is 4/4 time, a beat set by your own body at the speed of your brain’s choosing.

I often walk quite fast, but that doesn’t make me a fast thinker.  Quite the opposite in fact; I’m forcing myself to minimise the time I spend walking so I can get to home or to work and back to the latest distraction from my brain.  My thoughts when walking like this are very little beyond the observational (“oh, the jasmine on that fence is dying”) and the shallow (“what’s for dinner?”).

But Self’s comment was a reminder that walking for the sake of walking is when I love taking photos the best.  The surroundings soak in and my brain bumbles along, and suddenly images spring to my eye that I’d never noticed before.

Scottish Thistle

Walking around Richmond Park, London, netted me these two little details.

Trash or Treasure?

Walking with Will Self is the documentary, and “Walking to Hollywood” is Self’s book, now on my to-read list.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Friendship

I’m currently in sunny (haha) London without access to most of my photos or much time to take new ones, but regardless, I would have found this week’s topic a difficult one, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve become a bit rubbish at taking photos of actual people, and I think this is a people kind of topic.

But while looking through my online archives, I found this one of my husband and father.  Who said in-laws don’t get on!  Admittedly, there may have been a little booze around before this photo was taken, but it still makes me smile.

Determining whether that’s a smile or a grimace on my dad’s face is an exercise left entirely up to the viewer.