Category: Ricoh RF 500

Abstract by Patrick JenningsJun 29, 20158:06 pm

My Muses: Paint

This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, Muse, poses a simple enough challenge, “So what’s your muse — what subject do you turn to frequently, more inspired each time?”

I’ve already responded with Function follows Form, which relates how form itself is my favourite subject. Here I want to draw back to my favourite element with which to explore form — and a variety of other subjects — and that has to be paint. When I bought my first professional camera in nearly 15 years, the first shots were all painted surfaces. Some abstractions. Others records of communication. Still others were essays on the environment in which the surface was painted.

Landscape by Patrick JenningsJun 28, 20158:13 am

Rollling Hills, The Mereenie Loop, Near Gosse Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia

The Wide Ochre Land

I’ve heard it famously referred to as the wide brown land, but to me it is an expanse of ochre and red, tones more descriptive of its character. Australia is a rich land, but not overly saturated. Intense, but not glaring. One goes to ground here, becomes part of the earth, lives at a walker’s pace. Immersed in a hot bath of air, the heat fills my lungs, reddens my flesh, soothes my spirit.

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJun 25, 20158:38 am

Reflections

The sun falls
On the Andaman Sea
Kicking up reflections
Of a day’s moments

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJun 15, 20157:00 am

Gateways

“Travelling South East Asia,” he said
“You’ll wake up every morning
And have no idea
What the day will bring.”

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJun 10, 20157:00 am

One Word Photo Challenge: Wet

There is nothing quite like
The way a child takes comfort
In water

Poetry by Patrick JenningsMay 28, 20158:58 pm

A little help, please!?

Sometimes
All you really need
Is a little help
From a friend

Ricoh RF 500 by Patrick JenningsMay 26, 20157:00 am

Give me shelter

Roofs. Shelter and safety.

First, a tangent.

Chinese characters are beautiful things. The more interesting ones often contain characters within characters, known as ‘radicals’. So any character containing the character for water is inflected with the sense of liquid, and any character containing the roof radical is inflected with the sense of shelter/safety, or lack of it.

Poetry by Patrick JenningsMay 23, 201512:46 pm

MacDonnell Range Station

It rested there
Nestled in the valley
Watched over by ghost gums
Fortified by mountains

A small outpost
In a large land
A cattle station
In the Red Centre

Poetry by Patrick JenningsMay 22, 20159:04 pm

Barbed Wire & Bullet Holes

Barbed wire and bullet holes
A 20 year old reminder
Of a country broken
And rebuilt
Broken again
And rebuilt

People by Patrick JenningsMay 10, 201512:41 pm

One Word Photo Challenge: Storm

The crowd awaiting the next express boat mingles restlessly on Tha Thien Pier which lightly but sharply pitches and yaws, jostled by the water, itself kicked up and churned by the river’s heavy boat traffic. I’m snapping photos of a group of boys swimming and splashing in the unfathomably filthy waters of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya river when the boat arrives, sliding just past the pier before going into full reverse. The corner of its tail bangs up against the pier with a shudder, then stays pinned there as the boat’s pilot finds another gear of reverse. People begin leaping to and from the boat’s large, railingless rear deck, now level with the pier, but still only in contact with it at one corner.