[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 1 July 2024].
to a beloved | qui riposa
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 18 June 2024].
pay here
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 6 March 2024].
she hath done what she could
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 6 March 2024].<
Often, when I'm perusing my catalogue of unedited photos to share, one will pop out at me, and I just know it's right to share at this moment in time.
It may not always be the most eye-catching or aesthetically pleasing photograph.
But it captures where my mind or heart is right now.
Or it depicts a place, an object, a plant, etc., that - when I research it further - is relevant to something in my life at that moment and clicks.
This photograph I took in Cornubia Lutheran Cemetery, also known as Carbrook Lutheran Cemetery, did that for me today.
post-floral
blood red
Two of my self-portraits - one from my wallflowers series, the other from my plush series - are included in Issue #123: Color 2024 of F-Stop Magazine, and both feature floral motifs: the wallpaper in one and my dress in the other.
This photograph, which I took in my parents' garden in Redland Bay in 2009, of a Cordyline fruticosa (commonly known as a ti plant) doesn't include a floral motif. But the leaves are so vibrant with the backlighting that they fit the colour theme I submitted to.
Since I've already shared the two photographs included in F-Stop Magazine, I thought I'd share this one alongside the news.
disappearing further into obscurity
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 7 January 2024].
disappearing into obscurity
singapore graveyard flower
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 1 December 2023].
Whilst staying with my uncle and his partner in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, shortly after arriving in Australia in June, I ventured out to purchase various devices I lacked.
I had never needed a UK-to-Australian adaptor outside my Apple travel kit, but I relied on a Windows laptop from my day job on this visit. I also needed a replacement cable for my iPhone to feed into my Apple adaptor as my existing cable was lightning to lightning, not lightning to USB, and the adaptor was many years old.
All that is beside the point, really.
The point is that I walked from my uncle's to one of the three plus shopping centres "nearby" (all were at least a 20-minute walk) to get such items, and I took my camera, foreseeing that I could capture something of the local area.
My uncle was somewhat sceptical of what I might find to photograph along the way. Which was, in fairness, understandable. Except my idea of photogenic is often not the same as others’.
These and other flowers I photographed in parkland near my uncle's home were more traditionally photogenic. But, had I not had my camera with me, I wouldn't have captured them (well, I would have, with my phone, as I did, but not at the same quality).
The odd thing, though, has been coming back to these photos months later, knowing they are frangipanis and having Wikipedia tell me that Australia recognises a different tree as a frangipani.
This genus is the only frangipani I know as someone who grew up in Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin, Melbourne, country Victoria, and later in life lived on the Gold Coast, and I photographed these in a park in Sunnybank Hills, Brisbane.
We had what I believe to be a plumeria obtusa on the nature strip at the front of the house we rented in Darwin. I remember the fragrant flowers and climbing into its branches to lounge whilst listening to Madonna's album, Like a Virgin, playing from the cassette player I'd fed out my bedroom window onto the table on the balcony.
I looked up where our house used to be in Rapid Creek (or Nightcliff, as we knew it to be at the time), and though the house is long gone (I already knew this from previous searches of former homes), I'm pleased to say the frangipani tree was still standing in 2021.
glass house mountains
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 29 March 2023].
The same day Mum, Dad and I visited Peachester Cemetery, we travelled along a road giving us a view of the Glass House Mountains.
It wasn't the best weather that day, but the view was still impressive.
After an extensive discussion with Dad, we believe all but the second photograph is Mount Coonowrin, but taken from various directions (some of the photos were taken 20 minutes apart).
I'm unsure which of the Glass House Mountains the second photograph is, so if you know, please feel free to weigh in.
As with many natural formations in Australia, the First Nations Australians have a legend about the mountains. Wikipedia tells me they are located in the traditional lands of the Jinibara and Gubbi Gubbi people.
I don't recall visiting them in my childhood or teens. But I would be surprised if we didn't at least drive through the area and admire them while I lived in Brisbane or when visiting Queensland after we moved away.
death in reserve
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 26 March 2023].
As with many of my friends and lovers, my parents reached a point where they not only accommodated my obsession with visiting and photographing cemeteries, graveyards, churchyards and other final resting places. But they facilitated it.
Sometimes I wonder if it was because they felt they owed me for all the times my brothers and I were left to our own devices in winery car parks in our childhood and teens. While they tasted and purchased wine, muscat and/or port, whether on a day out or on a road trip.
I spent most of those times reading the books I was absorbed by, and I came to enjoy wine in my early 20s. My brothers didn't. Maybe they "owed" my brothers more than me.
Sometimes, it was because the cemetery was near where they or their relatives lived at some point.
I vaguely remember Mum mentioning that one of her relatives was buried in Peachester Cemetery. Dad confirmed it was one of her cousins.
Whatever the initial reasoning, my parents seemed to find them interesting the more they lurked in them with me.
And with Crohamhurst Ecological Reserve on its borders, Peachester Cemetery was one of the more scenic cemeteries I've photographed, although the graves were simple.
coronary
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 2 October 2022].
until the day dawns
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 20 September 2022].
the sacred heart of balmoral
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 September 2022].
ochna serrulata
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 21 May 2022].
Technically, these are the fruitlets and sepals of the Ochna serrulata, not the flower, but sepals are part of the flowers, so I'mma let this one pass through because they're damned purty.
Taken during a photo walk around Redland Bay in Queensland back in 2009.
They're designated as an invasive species in Australia despite their attractive appearance.
god will link the broken chain
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 11 April 2022].
pietà
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 8 March 2022].
on cloud nine
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 30 January 2022].
Here's the first collage from a series that came into my mind while I was completing cut out and keep; my 100 Days Project for 2020.
I'll explain my thinking behind the idea more as I go along because this particular one doesn't best illustrate my concept for sapphic studies.
But it's an opener to the series.
Painting:
Le Sommeil (Sleep) by Gustave Courbet
mother and child
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 6 February 2022].
the only way is up
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 30 January 2022].