Travellin' Penguin

This weekend has been very busy with photography.  Getting ready for the Wooden Boat Festival on Friday (see my last post if interested) and several of us photographers participated in a Saturday Photojournalism course for the day.  We had some theoretical information and photos on the screen (wall) as examples.  Then we split into three groups and off we went amongst the millions are Salamanca market. This market is large enough but with tourists pouring into town and a cruise ship emptying about 3000 more tourists into the area it was full on.

Our team had a brief to photograph. We were assigned a task to develop a story of jewellery or fashion.  Our team just could not get it together. Five people on the team and five different directions people wanted to go.  I don’t feel we satisfied the brief of showing beginning, middle and end photos that told a story but we had fun and did get a few good shots. Overall we were just concentrating on photographs that tell a story.

Then today was the Chinese community festival on Parliament Lawns. So much good food. I’m glad I left my money in my motorbike a couple blocks away as I could have eaten a lot.  The smells alone were worth money.  I got a few photos but I could have had more if I hadn’t of fudged the settings on my camera and drastically overexposed several. Was kicking myself once I got home.  I’ll share a few here from the weekend that weren’t so bad.

This coming Thursday our book group meets and we’ll be discussing the book The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. It will be interesting what our group members thought of it. I’ll do a post about it once we’ve met.

I’m reading the Newspaper of Claremont Street by Elizabeth Jolley now and really enjoying it. Quite short and I should be through with it soon.  So more on that later too.

Well the whole weekend is about trying to get the perfect shot and there have been lots of laughs along the way. A good distraction from the fires which are still going.  But I’ve decided not to think of them today. Nothing I can do about it anyway except support those wildlife organisations I like.

More soon, enjoy our weekend efforts.

Coming up on Friday next week is the largest wooden boat festival in the world. Right here in Hobart. Our photography club has many members who have volunteered to be event photographers.  I have not photographed events seriously in the past so this will be a good place to start. The event will have approximately 400,000 people attending over the four days of next weekend. Friday though Monday.

Yesterday I attended an induction for volunteers. Without volunteers the event would not survive. It is held bi-yearly in Hobart. I have attended in the past but never volunteered.  I am not a boat person. I get very seasick on the water. But I do appreciate the expertise and workmanship that goes into these wooden boats. We will have everything on display from dinghies to tall ships. People attend from all over the world. I see there is an American pavilion so I might drop in and say hello.  The event is staged in the Hobart wharf area which is a beautiful spot.

There will be about 30 photographers from our club. Once spaces were filled by club members remaining spaces opened up to photographers outside of the club.  It feels like a job. There will be a morning, afternoon and evening shift. I will probably try to work the morning and evening shifts especially if weather is hot. We supply the event coordinators the photos and they choose what they want for marketing and publication.

Tomorrow I will be attending a day long photo-journalism course. We will have assignments around the Salamanca market to complete. There will be lots of people in the area as the market is on and there are lots of tourists in town.  Though I am slightly intimidated I think it will be interesting and fun. Several others I know will be in the workshop too. It goes from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm.

Other good news is…..Remember the photographs I submitted of the African animals to Australian Photographic magazine’s competition for Wildlife Photographer of the Year? No, I did not come near to winning. The winning photos were truly stunning but I did get a highly commended certificate mailed to me. That meant my images went through not one shortlist but two.  I was thrilled.  It is a big honour for me who has only been participating in photography seriously between two and three years.  Now I’m inspired to keep going and enter more challenges, not because I ever expect to win but they are so much fun and hoping for a win is enough.

I have been sorting through some of my Sri Lanka photos and came up with a short portfolio of portraiture I did. I’ll close out the post with those photos.

I’ve been in a reading slump for a couple of weeks but feel I’m out of it and am ready to pick up some books off my shelf and start them.  I’ll be pretty busy with the festival but that might be a good way to relax at night to get the boats and water out of my head enough to fall asleep at night.  More to come….

Sadly, Tasmania is burning and it just has everyone on edge and filled with sadness. The fires began in our wilderness areas from lightning strikes from a dry storm we had a few weeks ago.  They seem to be spreading from west to east.  They have now approached residential parts of the state in the southwest and central highlands. People are evacuating everywhere.

Tasmania has very good fire management strategies and so far there has been no loss of life though a few houses have now gone.

The smoke not only blankets our state, it has been reported that it has reached New Zealand.

Fires are unrelenting in our high temperatures blanketing out state and they really cause people to feel depressed.  I feel very sad for the people leaving their homes for evacuation shelters and camping in large football ovals in this heat. I also feel very sad for the animals. Wildlife flee, people with horse trailers collect farm animals and move them to large paddocks that have been volunteered away from the fires. People really rise to the occasion and provide amazing relief on all counts.

Lots of donations being made to the dogs home and the woman who is organising paddocks for farm animals. A pet taxi service in Hobart has been collecting domestic pets and driving them to refuge as well.

One feels helpless watching. Everyone wants to do something but is not equipped to do more than donate money to those working. There have been warnings to stay away unless on official business.

Of course there has been one looter caught and another in a campground in the eastern half of the state that is currently fire free lighting a large campfire. Both have been charged and will go through the courts. One can only wonder what these morons think about. There has also been some arsonist that started another fire that diverted one of the helicopters away from the main blazes to put this fire out. I must admit my thoughts run to the days of public floggings.

Like the rest of the country, we need rain. Except Queensland which has floods raging in the north. Isn’t that always the way. We also need politicians who believe in the science of global warming and aren’t pushing through a coal mine at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. (Again the public floggings go though my head.)

As far as books. I have finished up reading the books I wrote of previously and am looking for something that will hold my attention long enough to get out of this funk that quite a few of us find ourselves in.

There is a lot of photography work coming up for me in the month of Feb that will be mentioned later. But for now I just need to get this out of my system.

I know this will pass. Everything passes eventually. Just need to keep telling ourselves that.

Australia is in the grip of a heatwave today and tomorrow especially. It is supposed to get near 40C here which is highly unusual. To my American friends and family that is around 95F.  The sun here is very hot, dry and direct. You can feel it burn through your clothes. The kind of heat we get is hard to describe but other Australians will know what I mean. I think it will be an indoor day with air conditioning on and reading books, writing in my journals or binging on a good Netflix British crime/detective show.

Mr Penguin is travelling in India now for a 19 day tour with four other people. I have his itinerary in my diary and am googling the places he goes each day to see what they get up to.  They are visiting markets, doing cooking classes, tours around cities, boat rides down rivers, riding on the trains and having two nights camping in the desert with a camel trek up through the sand dunes.  It will be fun to follow him.  He might send a photo or two from his tablet or phone that I share here. So far I only have a photo of his hotel room (bed and bath) so not worth sharing. At least I know he got there okay.

The house is full of groceries including ice cream and I have no appointments anywhere. It’s going to be a ‘Pajama Day’ but with shorts and t-shirt.

I’ve been thinking of what I’m going to do with this blog for 2019.  I want to incorporate books I own and read, share some of the old collectable books I keep on a shelf in a hallway that is not exposed to light and I think I’ll use Wednesdays to share my photography.  I had three overseas trips last year and will have two coming up this year in nine different countries. Five of those countries I have not been to before. Many photo opportunities.  I’m not sure I want to call the Wednesday posts ‘Wordless Wednesdays’ as I’d like to caption the photos with descriptions or information of some time. I’d also like a photographic alliteration of Wednesday but have not sat down to think of something with a W.

I’d like a paragraph about books, especially non-fiction books I’m picking my way through and thoughts and simple reviews on the fiction books I read.

I think I’ll keep the Weekend Wander for my walks and motorbike rides around Tasmania that I do mainly on weekends. Or I could pretend I do them on weekends and post them anyway. A bit of walking exercise, including the pets and our own local beautiful cities, towns and state.

I’m going to spend Hot Friday and Cool Change Saturday this weekend redesigning content on this blog.

Sunday I’m going to a local market that has all kinds of stuff, pretty much like a home grown flea market with a good friend to look through old clothes, books, cheap plants and flowers and very cheap doughnuts. That might be the topic for a Weekend Wander.

I love that I have a few faithful follower friends but my aim is not to try and get as many people to follow me as possible. I do this purely for fun and to keep track of my life in a journal format. It’s very lovely when people want to participate and share and I enjoy the conversations but as for trying to be someone like an Instagram Queen, I am just not interested.

For those of you attached to the Penguin, he will remain a part of this blog. In fact I might get him off the page for the Sunday Market and take him with me. Get some photos. He hasn’t been out in awhile.