Latest News from Adam Monk

I’ve been wanting to put this image up for a few months now, but there was a little reticence on the part of the model, the Blackwood River Nymph.  It’s a landscape image with a difference for me, it has a person in it Read the rest of this entry »

When i was in Bahia, in the North East of Brasil, a few years ago i was lucky enough to attend a Candomblé ceremony in one of the local Terreiros (Religious centres, pronounced Te-he-ro) just outside the city of Salvadore de Bahia.

Candomblé is one of the major forms of Afro Brasilian religion found in Brasil. It originated in the city of Salvadore de Bahia, and the surrounding areas in the North East of Brasil, where the African Slaves would cloak their African Animist Religion in a thin veneer of Christianity to fool the Portuguese Slave owners.   The practising of the African religions was strictly forbidden and the Christianisation of the Slaves strictly enforced, so the Slaves adapted. Out of this versatility and will to survive Candomblé was formed.

Candomblé, sometimes called Macumba, holds many similarities to the Afro-Cuban Religion of Santería and the Afro-Haitian Religion of Voodoun (Voodoo) as their origens are from the same regions in Africa, being largely the Yoruba Tribes of West Africa.  

In each of these forms of worship the Christian Saints take on the persona of the African ancestor spirits called Oríshas in Cuba or Orixás (pronounced Ori-shaas)  in Brasil, and these spirits will possess the bodies of their worshipers and thus communicate with the living and experience life again.  It’s a religion that requires a lot of participation and involves many hours of ritual and dance with hypnotic african rhythms played on drums throughout the ceremony.

For a few dollars to help supplement income, the ceremony participants are happy to let visitors come to observe and even take a few unobtrusive pictures (no flash of course).  These ceremonies are not done for tourism and there is nothing vaguely commercial about them, they are the real thing.  On the night i attended there were a few of us from a small hostel in Salvadore there, along with many locals and initiates.

It’s a very surreal experience, with the drumming and the ritualised dancing around the circle, this was made even more so when the girl who had been standing next to me – who had come on the same bus as me and was staying in the same hostel – suddenly started to shake and then leapt into the middle of the circling dancers.  She then proceeded to dance wildly around within the circle, not crazy western person dancing, but precise steps to the rhythm in the same African style of the ceremony participants, she had her eyes closed the whole time.  None of the locals even flinched, we had already seen this happen a couple of times during the course of the evening, but it had previously happened to Candomblé initiates, this was certainly a new twist for me.

She danced this way for several minutes before some of the senior women gently lead her away out the back. This happened once more that evening, the next time to a young Spanish or Italian guy, i don’t remember which, who was also staying at my hostel and had come on the same bus as me.   When they re-joined us for the bus trip back they both looked dazed and had no recollection of anything that had happened after arriving at the Terreiro.

These images were shot with the permission of the participants on a Leica RE with a 90mm f2 lens and Kodak Tri-X Pan 400 black and white film pushed to ISO800.  There was of course no flash used.

I shot this image of the Pinnacles near Cervantes North of Perth in WA a few months ago, and basically forgot about it…  That seems to happen a lot.  I needed a couple of shots of the Pinnacles a few days back, so i opened the folder and had a play around and got this Read the rest of this entry »

A bit of  last minute notice here for the Camera Swapmeet on at the Leederville Town Hall tomorrow morning from 8.30am (Sunday 20th February).  Its a great social event and if you’ve never been to one its also a bit of a photographic cultural event too, with all sorts of gear being traded from digital to large format studio cameras, slide projectors and enlargers.  You can get a cup of tea and a home made cake Read the rest of this entry »

Finally i got some time to work up that image from Redgate Beach, Margaret River, though actually its not the same image that i posted a few months back, its a differant series a few minutes earlier, the other one i may work on some more tomorrow.

Clearing Rain, Redgate Beach, Margaret River

I  love the water movement across the foreground of this image, as the water from the previous wave rushes back out from the left to the right.

This image is 6 pairs of vertical exposures stitched and then manually HDR blended to get the light in the foreground, its shot on the Canon 5DMk II with the 17mm f4L tilt shift lens.   Its still a work in progress, but i think its coming up nicely, i may put this one up in the gallery to see what the response is.

Happy New Year by the way, they seem to come up more and more often the older i get!

It’s that time of year again, it came so fast, seems only a few weeks ago it was Christmas last year… if that makes any sense.  I’ve decided i’m taking a holiday this Christmas, I have closed the doors of the gallery til next year.  Thats right, i’m shutting until January 4th next year, so if you come down between now and then you can look in the windows…

I wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas, with a great start to the new year to follow!  I’ll leave you with my dog Fiasco imitating a reindeer…

Fiasco as Rudolf...

without the red nose...