Waverley Camera Club

Hi all – the next scheduled WCC Sunday Outing is  Sunday the 6th November at Chesterfield Farm and the Traction Engine Museum. The address for Chesterfield Farm is 1221 Ferntreegully Road Scoresby 3170 and the Melways Reference is 72 D8.  You must pay to get into the farm but the traction engine display is FREE.

I have put an emphasis on scheduled because there has been at least one other unscheduled suggestion this month.  The take-up for the unscheduled suggestion was not good.

Just opposite The Farm at 1200 Ferntreegully Road Scoresby is the Traction Engine Museum.  This is a collection of traction engines maintained by the Steam and Traction Engine Club in the South Eastern Suburbs.  They have a large and varied collection of steam engines including ploughing engines, steam rollers, portable engines and a large collection of industrial engines, marine engines and stationary steam engines. THIS IS A STATIC DISPLAY.
On Sundays they also run a miniature railway.
They are opened from 11.00 am to 4.00 pm each Sunday and entrance to the museum is FREE. There is a small donation box.

But on the LAST Sunday of the month which is Sunday the 30th October they will ‘raise steam’ and run as many of the engines as they have volunteers for, in the areana.  So all you steam buffs, if you want to make images of steam engines working in a captive environment then go down there on Sunday the 30th October first. I think Rosie and I will.

Given the farm is opened reasonably early but the steam museum is opened after 11.00am i’m suggesting it will be a longer day with lunch in the car so together with wide angled lens, tripod and flash unit dont forget to bring along a picnic basket, a drink or two and some water.  Rosie and I will try to be at the Farm reasonably early and stay ontill the Traction Engine display is opened.  I love trains  – dont you!!!

One thing I havnt been able to confirm is the weather for the 6th November but who in his/her right mind will try to predict the weather in Melbourne several days ahead?

Cheers folk and have a great day- Andy

Just to let you all know that the Sunday outing scheduled for Sunday the 4th of September – Fathers Day – is cancelled.

Instead we will try to get to the Ballarat International Photo Biennale next Sunday the 11th of September. If anyone is interested (to go) please write to me and I will set it up. I’m told there is very little parking in Ballarat particlarly during the weekends, and indeed particularly during these weekends of the Biennale (BIFB’11) so we must organise ourselves with that in mind.

The core program of the Biennale is in 21 shows at 7 different venues within the Ballarat CBD. They are said to be no more than 5 minutes walk from each other. They are all FREE and are all open every day. Some of the fringe programs operating independently of the Festival Core programs are said NOT to be open every day and may not be FREE. The Projections Program is held at the Art Gallery Of Ballarat on a rolling schedule throughout the day and is open daily during the festival.

So, these are some of the excitements served up by the Ballarat International Photo Biennale – held from the 20th August to the 18th September. If you want to go let me know quickly.

We should be there ‘early’ and meet someplace convenient to all.

Andy Armitage

It was a cracker of a morning, chaps, and it was no wonder we stopped at least once on the way. As we approached the Yarra Valley there even was a SKY and it was as blue as blue can be; and there were white clouds scudding about and there were balloons in the sky. The milch-cows were slowly drifting homewards to the old bus – which seemed to be serving as a shed – for morning milking, the dairy farmer himself covered up in his dry-as-a-bone cape was out already, hand feeding the early returns and whistling up the stragglers. Smoke rising out of the chimney told us the lady of the farm was baking something fancy. So when we got to the meeting point at the supermarket there they were, waiting, waiting, waiting then they got tired of waiting and started out without us. But wait, here we are! There were 7 cars with Vicky leading the procession.

Slipping into the queue quickly we made a smart u-turn and joined up behind Tuck and Sue together with the new member, we think his name is John. (If your name isn’t John forgive me!) As we drove down to Phantom Falls our scheduled first stop Rosie and I spoke about those terrible fires and thought about the people in cars trying to get away from the raging inferno on poorly constructed bush tracks with smoke and the radiant heat beating down on them unmercifully – anyway, suddenly in front of us was a small marsupial mouse sadly so too was the front left side tire of the car in front – oops! .. and then again the car behind … oh dear! After a slip sliding ride in the muddy wet tracks of the cars in front of us we made it to the car park safely. The beautiful early morning day we started out with had deteriorated into a wet drizzly and dark late morning. In between the tall trees and the under story re-growth of ferns and bracken, there was not a lot of light to work with. We had all taken tripods, and the other new member, Rosie says his name is Peter, even had a set of neutral density filters. Great stuff.

More pictures and we took off to the next spot. Once again I think the darkness of the environment combined with the dark skies and drizzle made good photographs more difficult for slow learners like me, and it didn’t help that somehow the back of my camera, you know the place where you get to look at the completed image, had shattered. Now there’s an “oops” for you. John told me that he had learned well from Pete Davies who told him to raise the ISO levels in bad light which he had done. Just after 12 we stopped for lunch and a wee break at the bakery before heading off again, in the rain, down to the very interesting sculpture gardens ( have a look at Ian Hansen’s pictures).

From here as the weather deteriorated further Vicky wisely decided we’d better go indoors and she escorted us to the Crystal Way Museum (?) where among other souvenirs of that terrible inferno 2 years ago, Vicky showed us a huge image of her own home being consumed by the fire – an image made by her husband from the relative safety of the garage, because her own camera was still in the house. Sooner than we wanted to it was time for us to return home but not before we visited long time friends Beryl and Nat who run a ski hire shop out of a temporary shelter in the main street of Marysville. On the way home the sun broke out of the heavy clouds and once again Rosie and I stopped several times and took some acceptable pictures of the beautiful trees.

Soon enough, fast cars, traffic lights and more rain broke the peace and tranquillity that is the Yarra Valley. We headed home got to Springvale and settled in for a warm dinner and to watched the finals of Master Chef – what an anti-climax.

Andy.

Photographs by Ian Hansen

Rosie and I went to the Healesville races on Saturday the 9th of April.  On the way we stopped in at the Beechworth Bakery and who do we see ambling through the car park but Jenny Boyle.  If I was telling the truth I would say Jenny told me she was going to the races too and she told me the Beechworth Bakery was the place to stop, that is if we wanted to stop for breakfast.  Jenny, Rosie and I then proceeded from the Beechworth Bakery to the Healesville Picnic Races together.

There were not a lot of people there when we arrived and we were able to get ourselves a great possie beside the fence, not too close mind in case a horse’s hoof came through the fence and broke your watch as it did at the Cranbourne Rodeo. We spoke to a few people sitting beside us and made ourselves comfortable; since we were photographers some of the members thought it would be a good idea if we went over to the President, John O’Brien, and introduced ourselves; John had been known to give visiting photographers the run of the course.  John was very nice but disappointed that we didn’t give him advance notice, “… because” he said “… you can’t run around the place making images of the people here”.  Re-assured that we were here to take pictures only of the horses running fast, John then made us welcome, but no he didn’t give us the run of the course as he had done for some other visiting photographers on previous occasions.

The first race began at 1.30 pm and we killed time organising ourselves and having something to eat before then. People in the know came up and spoke to us offering advice on the best places to be when the horses began their run and it soon became apparent we had already chosen one of the better possies. Not long after the first race while we were still looking dismayed at our efforts a guy came to us beer in hand and asked if we were “… doing a course or something” when we told him what we were trying to do he offered some tips, tricks and suggestions - he also admitted he was a ‘professional’ of sorts being the official photographer for a group of folk who race fast boats and have ski races, jumps and other fancy stuff behind really fast boats.  In the course of 4 hours of conversation he offered information that revealed he had done several photography courses for fun and had travelled a lot with his South-African born wife and was in real life an aero-engineer with Qantas.  His tips were authentic and when we showed him our results, he made fair criticism of the images we had taken.  Never intrusive or abusive of our own privacy this gentleman proved to be the real genuine find of the afternoon.  He went away from time to time only to reappear before each event to tell us how long the race was going to be, where the start was, where the finish was and how best to get the shots we were after.  His tips included about using low shutter speeds and panning, on focus, on faster shutter speeds and on making sure the story included that the animals were moving at speed.  Sometime during the afternoon the weather closed in and our images became more and more under-exposed; heavy clouds gathered and the announcer informed the by now restive crowd that the rain was bucketing down in The City.  Jenny had to leave early because she had other things to do.

Just before 4.30 pm Rosie and I wrapped up the picnic blanket, gathered up our gear and threw it into the boot; but before we left I remembered to go to the official tent and thank the President of the Healesville Racing Club for his hospitality and for allowing us to shoot pictures at the meet. He seemed chuffed at that.  We joined the throng of picnickers heading out of the race grounds.  It wasn’t long before the rain caught up with us but we were happy campers.

Next Healesville Picnic Race meeting is October 19th, Jenny will contact the President for permission to shoot images, in advance, and we may yet be offered the run of the course so let’s try to make it a club outing.

Cheers Andy

Images By Andy Armitage

For those of us who were able to go to the Rodeo at Cranbourne I hope you all had a great time – as great a time as I had at least, I was like a child in a lolly shop.

Dave Sumner, Dave Burton and I were there, together for the most part, so too it seems was Kaye Harding and John Mallet who wrote to me that night to tell me so.  It was a wonderful day.  Sure it was a little hotter than it has been, but it is summer after all – isn’t it?  There was a lot of dust around, bull, horse and the real stuff and for those of you reluctant to expose yourselves due to your health you were justified.  Dave dared me to go up to the St Johns Ambulance folk and squeeze in between their carrying thingy and the fence.  The ladies were too nice about it and before long Dave came up too and brought along his bazooka like 400mm lens, tripod, bag, change of clothes and all the other paraphernalia.  I didn’t bother with a change of clothes.  In hindsight, and indeed that was all we got sometimes, we could have found a better place but once in a good spot we were not too happy to go fossicking for a better spot so we stayed put.  The result of which was that we missed Mr Mallet.  Anyway I had not been to a Rodeo since we took Jamie to Mareeba in North Queensland; in 1979 I think it was, he must have been 4 or 5 years old.  Boy that does put the age on me.  Anyway it all was the same but this time I was able to take a few shots and if I can clean them up I might even include them in this little note.

Technically I needed a long lens; 400mm at least, it would have provided a means of isolating the action from the distr-action. It would also have been nice to have a printed programme that would have allowed an opportunity to know where the action was going to take place in the arena before excited horses, angry bulls, concerned wranglers, ropes and crazy clowns all descended in the same place at the same time!  Sometimes all I saw was horse’s legs!  One cow-boy got his foot caught in the stirrup and he was dragged about like a rag-doll in front of us but neither Dave nor I had a thought for taking his picture – multiple pictures in our case.  Come to think of it the bull riders, wild horse breakers and the cow ropers were all rag-dolls being tossed about by the huge animals they were expected to do duel with.  The golden evening light was wonderful but all too quickly what there was insufficient to make images of the very fast moving action in front of us.  One horses hoof, real one, came through the fence rails and smashed the glass on the face of my watch – don’t ask!!  There was roping, wrestling, riding and a hell of a lot of getting dumped on your bum on the hard baked earth. Huge fun for those of us that were watching.

We missed you there – so we’ll hopefully see you next Sunday 6th February at Queenscliff!

Cheers Andy

Photo by Andy Armitage