Merryjack's photostream  

My Family:
www.flickr.com/photos/30718177@N08/4411202928/

Current Equipment
Body
Nikon D700
Nikon D90
Nikon FE2
Pentax K20D
Lens
Nikkor: primes, macro, wide, midrange and tele zooms
Sigma: primes, fisheye, macro, wide and tele zooms.
Lensbaby composer with wide and tele objectives.
Flash
Nikon SB 600
Nikon SB 400
Other
Fuji FinePix Z33WP
Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS
Canon PowerShot SX100 IS
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
The historical collection
Kodak Brownie 2A
Kodal No.1 Pocket Series II patent 1913

NEWS
Annual Report 2011
The year finished with a flurry as I took over as admin for a gaggle of taxonomic bird groups, 12 in all, long neglected and full of every kind of bird but the ones they were meant for, they all needed major weeding of images and members.

Fortunately, weeding of library collections based on significance assessement and other criteria is something I do regularly; taxonomy is the basis of my interest in the origin of species, primatology and human evolution; and my relationship with our featherd friends began when I joined the Gould League of Birdlovers in primary school. Later I used to help my Dad set up his bird hide in the bush and take over the camera when he wanted a break.

In December I attended the opening of the Trainspotting show at the Powerhouse Museum and afer the obligatory interview next to my photo, stayed on to photograph some of the many amazing exhibits. I also had the pleasure of meeting Bernadette Murray, the overall winner, she is a very talented photographer.

In November I acquired a panoramic tripod head and have been experimenting with lens settings and adjustments, this will go into a blog article.

My daughter took the Canon Powershot SX10 to South America: Machu Pichu and the Amazon, so it's stacking up the frequent flyer points and has performed well on AA lithium batteries.

All time views topped 232,000 on 2,500 photos. Most viewed was Waratah Flower with 2,480 views.


The new year promises more photographic opportunities and learning.

Nov. 2011
My shot of Cadman's cottage appears as a double page spread in "Building Sydney’s History, Structures, sculptures, stories and secrets" by Derek and Julia Parker, Woodslane Press www.woodslane.com.au/



May 2011
"Night Work Katoomba Station" short listed for Powerhouse Museum Trainspotting competition and awarded Highly Commended.


In total there were approximately 1500 entries. Of the 47 images in the exhibition 10 are from Australian photographers. The overall winner, Bernadette Murray, is from Sydney.
The full exhibition including the highly commended images will first tour to regional New South Wales from July through to November and will then return to go on display at the Powerhouse Museum in December 2011.
www.flickr.com/groups/powerhouse_museum_photo_competition...

Update March 2011
My image of Weeping Rock was selected as Photo of the Day by the Power House Museum and compared to Charles Kerry's version from around 1900 - www.powerhousemuseum.com/imageservices/index.php/2011/03/...

Annual Report 2010
All time views reach 110K on 1850 photos and videos, average of 50 views each. Founded groups 25 and live contacts also 25. Other groups now 78 after weeding. Have been contributing machine tags to better id images see : wraggelabs.com/fmtc/ and wraggelabs.com/identities/

Contributed Cadman's Cottage image to book on Sydney's 50 Famous Buildings to be published 2011.

Grinding Grooves at Mount Banks selected by Wiley publishers for secondary school textbook titled History Alive 7 for the Australian Curriculum Edition, by Darlington.

My work Flickr has reached 106.6K views on 430 images, average 247.

New photographic horizons opened up, opportunities appeared, some new friends made and life long learning continued. All in all a pretty good Flickr year.

Mid Year Report June 2010
A hectic six months with the D700 and loving it. Signed a contract with Dorling Kindersley publishers for use of selected botanical images. Ran several successful photo workshops for seniors and kids with a work colleague at the library. Photographic highlight was Vivid Sydney. All time views will top 88K by the end of June.

My Flickr work site at - www.flickr.com/photos/blue_mountains_library_-_local_stud... has topped 80K views on 420 items and one item at 1000+ views. Not bad for vintage B&W photos and documents and some old Kodachrome scans.

My work blog at - bmlocalstudies.blogspot.com/ has also been busy considering it carries strictly local info, with nearly 3K hits from 69 countries.

Annual Report 2009
Well another year is almost over and as of Friday 18 December we have 1,225 images with 66,664 views.

A number of my pix, including the Orphan Rock, are in the new edition of Blue Mountains Best Bushwalks by Veechi Stewart, thanks Veechi.

So let's look forward to another great year of recording our lives and the wonderful world around us!

October 2009,
"Invitation to Join Getty Images
Hi Merryjack,
Flickr has partnered with the fabulous Getty Images to offer an invitation-only service for Flickr members to license their photos for commercial use.
The Getty Images team has noticed your work on Flickr, and is pleased to offer you an invitation to enroll with them. Congratulations! And, good luck!
Regards,
The Flickreenos"

March 2009
The new edition of Blue Mountains Dreaming: the Aboriginal Heritage, which I co-edited and co-authored, is out now with some of my photos, more on Merryjack's blog, the link is : jmerriman.blogspot.com/

My stuff
My images amount to a post card collection of the great adventure - the life we live and make. Most are unprocessed, have minimal editing and stand on their own or not as the case may be. Yes, some earlier, and even later photos in the stream are more or less cringe-worthy but they stay for the record.

My pics may be used non-commercially as long as you request permission and properly attribute to me under my full name and source. However it's two way street so if you collect or download stuff and you don't have a visible profile or images, the block button is not far away. My photos are now licensed through Getty Images and may not be used commercially without permission and payment of a fee.

My son Inigo is in my contacts as "Inigo images" with some great pics from his life travels.

Contacts
I believe every picture tells a story and has a context in space and time and the mind of the photographer, this adds to its meaning and our understanding. Please don't make me a contact if you have only a minimalist profile and are not prepared to share camera data or locations. I am increasingly disinclined to reciprocate to 'make them a contact too?' requests, especially when they have 100s or even 1000s other contacts.

But even older contacts, like friends and continents, do drift apart, that's life, that's what it is. I regularly review faves and do not look favourably on those who have thousands of faves, just to score views so they can maybe make Explore for a day.

If you do drop in, and have read this far, and feel inclined to respond, I'm happy to return the visit. If we find we share a similar or totally contrasting way of seeing the world, well and good, that's how we expand horizons and grow as photographers.

Etiquette
"People who won't share locations or techniques are usually the least experienced and unprofessional people. They lack confidence.
We know that even though there are 10 million photographers, that there also are zillions of potential customers.
We all benefit by sharing. Trying to keep a secret loses friends and cheats you out of learning even more. "
Ken Rockwell www.kenrockwell.com/tech/share.htm

My New Year's resolutions are to keep my groups to under 100 and active contacts to one screen. This allows groups to load quickly and regular visits to all contacts - it's only good manners.

My photostream is displayed as small items with sets - having to view large items in a stream is tiresome waiting for them to load, it discourages comments, and maxes out those with a download allowance far to early in the month, please consider others.

A comment code can be useful to at least acknowledge an image that catches your eye without resorting to the same old clichés, and you can learn a little HTML in the process.

The dreaded incestuous sparkle awards, aka bullshit awards, can be annoying with their comment requirements and various non-sensicle tags and then waiting for submission approval - I just delete them.

I don't analyse other people's work, there are groups for that, and it feels pretentious, so my comments are usually short and just a way of saying I dropped in for a visit and liked what I saw, "I ain't lookin'...to analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you."

Groups I administer
Small and friendly, you don't have to apply to join, your pics don't need to be approved - aren't we sick of that kid stuff! All have multiple admins and moderators. I give up on groups with a single, lazy or disinterested admin who dominates the pool and doesn't maintain the group.

Australian Woodchopping www.flickr.com/groups/australian_woodchopping/
Bathurst NSW www.flickr.com/groups/bathurst_nsw/
Blackheath NSW www.flickr.com/groups/blackheath_nsw/
Blue Mountains Birds www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_birds/
Blue Mountains By Night www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_by_night/
Blue Mountains Cemeteries www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_cemeteries/
Blue Mountains Gardens www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_gardens/
Blue Mountains Mammals www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_mammals/
Blue Mountains Murals www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_murals/
Blue Mountains Native Plantswww.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_native_plants/
Blue Mountains Public Art www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_public_art/
Blue Mountains Reptiles www.flickr.com/groups/blue_mountains_reptiles/
Carcoar www.flickr.com/groups/carcoar_nsw/
Hartley www.flickr.com/groups/hartley_nsw/
Hill End www.flickr.com/groups/hill_end/
Katoomba www.flickr.com/groups/katoomba/
Lawson www.flickr.com/groups/lawson_nsw/
Leura www.flickr.com/groups/leura_nsw/
Lithgow www.flickr.com/groups/lithgow/
Mt Victoria www.flickr.com/groups/mount_victoria_nsw/
Mt Wilson and surrounds www.flickr.com/groups/mount_wilson_nsw/
Sofala NSW www.flickr.com/groups/sofala/
Springwood NSW www.flickr.com/groups/springwood_nsw/
Square Australia www.flickr.com/groups/square_australia/
Trunkey & the Abercrombie www.flickr.com/groups/trunkey_and_the_abercrombie/
Wentworth Falls NSW www.flickr.com/groups/wentworth_falls_nsw/
Woodford & Linden NSW www.flickr.com/groups/woodford_linden_nsw/

Our Feathered Friends - neglected groups which I inherited and are now shaping up
www.flickr.com/groups/australian_cuckoos/
www.flickr.com/groups/bulbuls__tits/
www.flickr.com/groups/honeyeaters_flycatchers_thrushes/
www.flickr.com/groups/bower_birds__birds_of_paradise/
www.flickr.com/groups/crows_ravens_magpies/
www.flickr.com/groups/emus_ostriches/
www.flickr.com/groups/kingfishers_pittas_rollers_bee-eaters/
www.flickr.com/groups/lyre_birds/
www.flickr.com/groups/orioles_catbirds_starlings/
www.flickr.com/groups/pardalotes_sunbirds/
www.flickr.com/groups/parrots__cockatoos/
www.flickr.com/groups/pidgeons_doves/
www.flickr.com/groups/swallows_martins__swifts/

The Biographical bit

Dropped out of medical school in the 60s; lived in Wooloomooloo and worked as a psychiatric nurse in the closed wards of historic Callan Park Hospital, then builders labourer and factory hand. Took a 707 one way to Bali and travelled the hippie trails of Asia and the Middle East at the end of the 60s, ending up in swinging London via Andalusia, married and a father, living in a basement flat in Ladbroke Grove, working in the fairyland of Harrods, Knightsbridge and hanging out weekends in the British Museum.

Returned to Oz and back to the historic inner Sydney suburb of Wolloomooloo in the early 70s, managed a bookshop for a national chain before taking my Archaeology & Paleoanthropology degree and Library & Information Science diploma.

Came to librarianship almost by accident but cannot imagine doing anything else. Now providing a local studies information and research service and managing the online historic photo collection in our busy local library service.

The Artistic Manifesto, some quotes...

"There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit."
Ansel Adams

In 1888 when the newly-formed Alpine Club decided to open Mount Buffalo, then known only to cattlemen, Nicholas Caire spent several weeks camping on the plateau in company with two guides. His photographs were later used in a publicity campaign to arouse interest in the snowfields and raise funds for the building of a road there. When asked by one of his daughters whether he saw many snakes on the plateau Caire, who had hauled his large box camera by ropes to dizzy ledges to capture the best views, replied, "No, no snakes, but I saw glory!"'

"For me the photograph was a particular moment of happiness: you're exhilarated by what reaches you through your eyes, you want to seize it; it's a way of saying, Executioner, please, just one moment more."
"A moment of happiness for whom?"
"For the person with whom I wanted to share it."
"It's not for oneself that one takes photographs?"
"No, certainly not, it's to share them."
Robert Doisneau (1912-1994), interviewed 1983

"Modern photography must do more than entertain; it must incite thought and, by its clean statements of actuality, cultivate a sympathetic understanding of men and women and the life they create and live"
Max Dupain (1911-1992)

"In a flicker of sunlight on a blank wall, or an engine at night there's a sudden significance and importance and inspection that makes the breath stop with a gulp of certainty or happiness. It's not that the wall or the smoke seem important for anything, or suddenly reveal some general statement - only that for you they're perfect and unique...I suppose my preoccupation is being in love with the universe - or (for it's an important difference), with certain spots and moments and points of it."
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Memoir, 1928.

"To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wildflower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour."
Fragment from "Auguries of Innocence" 1805
William Blake (1757-1827)

"The whole world is a museum, we can become ordinary visitors in our own lives, we can begin to look at ordinary objects from our range of experience and that of our immediate predecessors. We can learn to walk around the area where we live and in our own minds turn that into a tourist experience"
Donald Horne, "Visitors in Our Own Lives", Australian Cultural History, 1991, no.10.

How about this one that puts me in mind of the archival nature of photography, as well as one's mortality, and also works in another flicker reference. Written by the Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) translated by Roger Pulvers and quoted in New Scientist with a beaut Cartier-Bresson photo, I have made a few small changes for the sake of brevity and emphasis.
"The phenomenon called I
Is a single blue illumination
Of karma's alternating current lamp
Flickering unceasingly, restlessly
The light is preserved
After the lamp itself is lost."

Recently I came across this from Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, which applies rather well to photography as a means of recalling experience:
" People say that all we are seeking is a meaning for life. But I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality , so that we actually feel the slow burning rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about."

On digital humanism:
"The methodologies of the computer allow us to share a commonality of human expression that crosses disciplines. If approached openly by thinking people who hold the humanist tradition dear, they allow a means for creativity which will enable us to reinforce that which makes us human. The great achievements of man lie in the quest to expose the unseen, and the computer's value lies in its ability to further these achievements."
From Digital Humanism, by Charles H Traub and Jonothan Lipkin, 2001
www.charlestraub.com/writings/dh/dhfull.html

These from my Flickr friend Velvetink:
"The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own." ~ Susan Sontag

"No photographer is as good as the simplest camera." ~ Edward Steichen

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera." ~ Lewis Hine
Thanks Velvetink

From the Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly:
"The beauty and fascination of being human is the capacity to experience opposing emotions at once – to be cynical and moved in concert (crying during a schmaltzy movie) or to feel blessed and ridiculous simultaneously (sex!) – and to be able to float above them both, observing, testing out the one then the other..."
www.themonthly.com.au/arts-letters-paul-kelly-pretendies-...

"The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."
Richard Avedon

Stop Thinking About Photography
"Photography, at least to the extent that people write about it today, has gone astray. Whether at the bookstore or on the internet, one could spend hours reading about pretty little machines, obsessing about them, purchasing them, fondling them, and disposing of them.

Or one could spend an entire human lifetime experimenting with processing and output methods. But these uses of time are just a sideshow, the samsara of photography. People have become very self-conscious about the how and have completely lost track of the what and the why.

Photography exists to serve art and express some aspect of life. So why are so many people hung up on issues of form? The problem is that photography is democratic, but talent is not."

Read more from Dante Stella at -
www.dantestella.com/technical/stopthink.html


And finally from the great Australian woman writer, Miles Franklin (1879-1954):
"When we were young we were weary sometimes of our elders croaking about the necessity to love our fellows, etc, but in our turn we come to know that it is the only thing that lasts — if memory lasts, too, of course — and the only thing that mitigates the inexplicable punishment, the endless wonder of being alive."

Moving on...
Thank you for visiting, we learn so much of our visual language by making, looking and thinking about images; something humans have been doing for quite a while now, like 30,000-40,000 years or more if we consider Chauvet, Altamira, Lascaux and Kakadu and their antecedents.
sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5393/1451
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117082246.htm

Thanks to everyone in the Flickrverse for sharing your visions of existence, no matter how strange, see you around on Flickr sometime...

Now clear off and take some photos!

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