Kingfishers in action

The Telegraph has these incredible shots of kingfishers fishing, taken by National Geographic photographer Joe Petersburger.

Giant crystals

National Geographic has a photo feature of the cave of giant gypsum crystals at Naica, near Chihuahua, Mexico. Click through for more images and information. Thanks Matthew for the link.

Update: there is a BBC video clip of the cave here which is quite mindblowing.


PS National Geographic is selling complete DVD-ROM sets of every National Geographic issue since 1888! That also does my head in. When I was a child my family had a shelf with about 6 feet of National Geographics, but that was only a few years' worth....

Landscapes of Mars

Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to these astonishing photos of Mars, taken over the last 3 years by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They really are breathtaking, go have a look!

Rather him than me

Photographer and mountaineer Alexandre Buisse has this page of breathtaking images taken while climbing in Peru. He says he takes about 300 shots a day while climbing! To me it sounds, and looks, quite impossible. Kudos to him for bringing back such amazing pictures for non-climbers to enjoy. :-) Thanks to Ben for the link.

Garden at Night

This is an unusual book of garden photographs. All the images were taken at night, in whatever ambient light was available, using long exposures. As a consequence, the plants loom dramatically out of the darkness, and the setting resembles nothing so much as an empty stage or film set. The colours appear not quite as usual. And as a consequence of the long exposures, fine detail is slightly blurred. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Fire in the sky

I took these pictures last summer. There was in fact no fire, just low, hazy clouds, lit by the setting sun.

[if it's real, scary exploding fire you want, try these pictures of Anak Krakatau (=son of Krakatoa). Thanks to Tom for the link]

Chancy photography

Johnny Stiletto is famous for shooting from the hip, literally: taking photos when there's not enough time, or not enough light, or no way to keep the camera steady, or a need to keep moving. Sometimes the results are extraordinary, and sometimes the imperfect results have a beauty that more "careful" photography lacks.

If you've got some time, have a look through his portfolio here. His commentary which accompanies the images is equally quirky and interesting.

A few of my favourites:
The Henry Moore sculpture with the strange-looking real person.
The woman in the cathedral who seems to de-materialise.
The painter and his tools, seen from below the glass-brick pavement.
The shop-window dummy with ennui.
and
A view of the waiter from behind the folded napkin.

Identified flying objects

Lenticular clouds have elongated, streamlined shapes. They are sometimes mistaken for flying saucers. Can you see why?!

I took these on Friday afternoon.















I took this one later on. As you can see, there was still a lot of iridescence in the sky.



More of my pictures of lenticular clouds here. More information about iridescence here. And there is a particularly good explanation of the origins of lenticular clouds and the iridescence that often accompanies them, here.

Pretending it's fake

Check out TiltShift, the website that helps you make your photographs look faked! The TiltShift software gives your landscape photos shallow depth of field, creating the impression that you have photographed a scale model. The results are remarkably convincing! Have a look, here. If you don't want to use your own photos, you can play around with theirs.

Crepuscular and anti-crepuscular rays

Crepuscular rays are areas of brightly-lit air that appear to radiate outwards from the sun when it is setting or rising. They are caused by clouds or mountains near the horizon casting shadows across the sky. Under good conditions the rays can be seen crossing the sky all the way to the point directly opposite the sun, the anti-solar point, where they appear to converge. In fact both the apparent divergence and the apparent convergence are illusions caused by perspective. The sun's rays are parallel but we perceive them as converging in the same way as we perceive a railway track as converging in the distance.

A full explanation, diagrams, and examples, can be found on Les Cowley's brilliant Atmospheric Optics site, here.

There was an amazing sunset here in Christchurch on January 17th. Clouds near the setting sun cast shadows across the sky that resulted in dramatic contrast between sunlit and shadowed air.

This was the view towards the sun:


This was the view to the north. You can see the rays' paths across the sky, travelling to the east...

At the anti-solar point in the east, the rays appear to converge. Around the anti-solar point these are known as 'anti-crepuscular' rays:

Crepuscular rays and anti-crepuscular rays are different ends of the same phenomenon, as can be seen in this wide-angle image taken of the same January 17 sunset at Birdlings Flat, some 50km from where I took my photographs.

I photographed a dramatic single crepuscular ray on April 5:

Robin Morrison: Photojournalist

NZ On Screen has a 20-minute chunk of this excellent 1981 documentary in which Robin Morrison talks about his work. It's well worth a look. Hat tip to Russell Brown for the link.

Sharing photographs on the internet

I love showing people my pictures, saying: this is where I've been; this is what it looks like; this is what I saw; these are the things I like; this is my way of seeing....

Taking photographs is something I do for money, and although I love it, I also take it seriously. I love people to look and enjoy, but I don't want them to appropriate. Copyright applies on the web as it does anywhere else.

I have begun marking the images I post here so they are clearly identified as mine. It's hard to find a balance between making a clear, legible marking, and not wrecking the appearance of the image; I'm not sure I've got it right yet, and I'd value feedback on this.



I sell prints of my photos; I also licence them for use on the internet and in print media. If there's something here you want, contact me at info@ratadesign.com for a quote.

Hallucinating Tony Fomison

These pictures are also from Tunnel Beach. As I say, it's a magical place.

Tunnel Beach

I was at Tunnel Beach recently, and it really is an amazing place. It's just South of Dunedin city, seaward from the suburb of Green Island, and it costs nothig to visit. Try to visit when the tide is out, as you will be able to explore more of the beach. Reasonable fitness is required as the path is steep: you realise exactly how steep, on the way back :-)



There are fantastic cliffs:

The beach access is through a short tunnel carved in the limestone. The walls of the tunnel have a wonderful texture:

On the beach, there are more amazing cliffs:

Some of the eroding limestone cliffs take fantastical shapes:

So long, Noah

American photographer and blogger Noah Grey is a legend to anyone who ever saw his incredible pictures or read his writing. For many years he was an example of just how much great work could be shared on a website.

And now it's gone: his amazing portfolio in its ever-expanding glory; Grey Expectations, his daily photolog; and Noah's Lark, his blog.

For some years Noah lived in Redondo Beach, California, and his pictures were of beaches and seabirds and surfers and Californians in the sun. Then he and his husband separated and he went home to Texas for a spell: I remember pictures of liveoaks and leaves. Then, after publishing his book of lush Californian pictures, California, he met a new love, Barry, with whom he moved to Dublin, Ireland. His Dublin pictures were misty, foggy, rainy: as gentle and subtle as his Californian pictures had been bold and brassy. He wrote of his great happiness with Barry, and his new life in Ireland. And then the unthinkable happened: Barry had a seizure in his sleep and could not be revived.

All that remains of http://www.noahgrey.com/ is a picture of Barry, vignetted with shadows.

Noah has moved on, obviously. I hope he is all right, and still taking his amazing pictures and writing about things. In all the years I followed his website I never bought a print of one of his pictures, I never commented, I never emailed him. But I admired him hugely. Is it fatuous to say I revelled in his successes and grieved for his sadness?

So long, Noah, you are much missed. I'm sure many others feel the same.

Beautiful nature photographs

BBC Nature photographer William A. Bolton is featured in the Guardian with some recent works. They're all very striking, but this one is my favourite.
Thanks to Tom for the link.

Cow Portraits

I've only ever taken one portrait of cattle, and this is it:



This was taken near Ahaura, on the West Coast. They obviously don't get a lot of visitors.

English painter Sue Moffitt has forged an entire career out of portraits of cows, and they are just amazing! Look at this. Or this. Who would have thought you could get so much personality into a picture of a cow? You can check out Sue Moffitt's whole portfolio here.

Image copyright Grace Dalley. All rights reserved.

The Moon-Bull

Beautiful O Beautiful
Is the moon-bull
Mild, immense and white
He sniffs the moist night.

He sniffs the black hole
Through which slowly roll
The teeming galaxies.
He is always at ease.

He thinks Night is his cow.
There he stands now
Licking the glossy side
Of his infinite bride.

Ted Hughes, from Moon Whales.

Moon Whales, supposedly for children, is one of Ted Hughes' best and most accessible collections of poems. Sadly, it's out of print, but it's available in libraries, or if you're lucky you can pick it up second-hand.

Images copyright 2009 Grace Dalley. All rights reserved.

Imaging alien worlds

Chesley Bonestell's paintings of space exploration and alien worlds are recognisable to any science fiction fan. (if you don't believe me, look here) He was able to paint such fine details of imaginary things because he made exacting models of many of them first: have a look at the creation of his classic image Saturn as seen from Titan. And here are some other fascinating models. And this group is particularly impressive, although I can't imagine how he found the time to do all that modelling.

A recent panoramic view of Mars taken by the Mars Exploration Rover was named in honour of Bonestell and his work.

On the theme of other worlds, for anyone who missed the amazing photographs of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft, look here. And there's a magical view of the dark side of Saturn, also taken by Cassini, here.

Photographic anxiety

You'd think that perusing stunningly beautiful photos of meteorological phenomena (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/) would be a nice soothing thing to do before bed, right?
Well, it gave me nightmares!

In the dreams I would see an amazing spectacle unfolding (mirage, halo, clouds, whatever) and reach for my camera. There are a number of ways this plays out:
1) I have left my camera at home
2) I reach for my camera but it is not in the case/bag
3) I have left the camera in the car, which is parked on the far side of a busy highway, which I have to cross (twice), Frogger-style, before I can attempt to take the picture. I think there was even a variant of this dream in which, having crossed the highway, I had lost the car keys, and could only look yearningly at my camera through the car window.
4) My camera battery is flat
5) When I press the shutter button nothing happens. This is actually the worst, since I can see the amazing scene framed by the lens, but can't record it.

In each scenario the amazing spectacle disappears unphotographed.

Do other people have these sorts of terrifying nightmares?? clouds