Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

The wilderness society of WA has just put out a new short video with some sobering facts on the James Price Point (proposed) gas development.

If you think the gas hub should be stopped, and the Kimberley left alone, there is also a link where you can sign the petition and add your message to federal environment minister Tony Burke.

Tony Burke has to give this project the nod before Colin Barnett and his Giant multinational bedfellows can begin the rape of the Kimberley.  Tell them no, take the 5 minutes it takes and click on the link.

If this project goes ahead we all lose.

Wilderness Society Video

The Horizontal Falls at Talbot Bay is another area under threat from current developement plans

The Greek Island of Ikaria is a haven for bushwalkers and nature lovers.  Unlike many Greek Islands that tend to be dry and windswept (though still beautiful), Ikaria is thickly forested and covered in gorges, rivers and waterfalls… i’m starting to sound like a travel agent or a travel documentary!  Way too formal.

Well, as much as i love beaches, freshwater rivers and waterfalls amongst shady forests are really my favourites, there is something more surreal and almost imaginary about them.  Its probably something left over from my childhood when i would ride off on my bicycle into the bush  and spend the day wading around in creeks and rivers catching little freshwater crayfish and turtles (then letting them go again), only to turn up at home again hours later wet and smelling of the swamp!

Whatever the reason, for me Ikaria was a paradise of rivers, waterfalls and freshwater crayfish (i tend to eat those now…), with lots of long lovely walking trails through shady forests and rocky gorges, that would take you down to places like this one…Chalares Canyon, Ikaria.

Are there any Hobbits living here? Chalares Canyon, Ikaria

I didn’t find any freshwater crayfish, but i did find some very cute little freshwater crabs and some very small shrimp…  I didn’t eat any of them, and i did spend many hours here just sitting.  Bliss.

Again, for those who are interested, this is an 18 image (actually 18 pairs of bracketed exposure) stitch shot on the Canon 5D Mk2 with the 16-35mm f2.8L lens set to 35mm, using the Really Right Stuff pano head.  they were all stitched in PT Gui, then manually blended to hold the detail in the brighter rocks and the darker shadows.  At 300dpi the image comes in natively at 2m long and takes up 3 Gb of space…

Just for fun, here are a couple more images from Fourni Island in Greece.  Its been a quiet day here at the gallery, so i’ve had some time to play around.  More to come!

Netmending, with hands used to hard work

This is one of the very Friendly locals of Fourni, it’s amazing how much communicating can be done, even without a common language if you are both open to it.  I sat with this fellow for hours, had a coffee and watched him quietly mending nets.

And of course, the Churches, little chapels everywhere, some of them smaller than my bedroom.  Gorgeous!

These images were shot with the Canon 5D Mk II and the 24-105mm f4L lens

Churches are one of the many things Greece is famous for

The Greek Island of  Fourni is one of the most eastern of the group of Greek Islands known as the Cyclades (kick-laad-es), or the “white Islands” as they are often called, due to the classic little white houses that are always associated with Greek Islands.

The main local transport of Fourni Island

It is also one of the smallest and least visited by tourists, mainly due to its distance from Athens and the limited number of Ferries that visit it.  As a result life in Fourni goes on pretty much as it always would have with very little concern for the outside world.  The locals are friendly and relaxed, always up for a chat, a coffee or something stronger, more people on the island have a boat than have a car, and it’s not unusual to see 4 people perched precariously on the same scooter putting up the main street.

A short scooter ride (with only 2 people on it) from the township of Fourni, the main town on the Island of Fourni, is this amazing beach called Petrokopio.  What makes this beach unique for me is that rather than sand, the beach is covered with rounded worn pieces of marble, from the ancient marble quarry right behind the beach.  If you look carefully on the right hand side of this image (click on the image to enlarge) you can see the discarded half finished pieces from the stone masons, huge square blocks, segments of pillars over a metre across, a stone basin and a huge alter table, complete with scrolled ends, all carved and chipped out of the natural marble dug from the quarry many hundreds of years ago.

Petrokopio beach Quarry, Fourni Island at Twilight

I was unable to find out exactly how long ago this quarry was in use, but i did find out it was the source of stone for a large Athenian temple on a neighbouring island that was built many hundreds of years back, and the discarded half finished pieces were from that project.  In any other place this would be the roped off  site of  an archaeological dig or a museum, but In a country like Greece, where any where you dig you unearth ancient ruins, this is nothing of significance, just another old quarry on a pretty beach… The biggest problem the Greeks had when building the underground in Athens was not the engineering required, it was that they kept running into archaeologically priceless ancient ruins!  in a brilliant solution, each underground station is now an ancient history museum, with the artefacts still half buried in the walls.

For those who are interested, this Image shot on the Canon 5d with the 16-35mm f2.8L lens at 16mm.  Its 13 double exposure pairs aligned in PT Gui Pro, then manually blended.

Last year in June/July i had the opportunity to go to Greece with my girlfriend Electra, who is Greek.  Greece is one of the places i’d always wanted to go but had never made it to… it’s a long list!  We stayed only 4 weeks, which is not long enough to really explore Greece, but seeing all of it wasn’t the objective, but to experience the life and culture of Greece a little, hear the language and eat the food…  and eat more of the food… Greek food is great, usually quite simple, but really good!

One of the places we visited was the Island of Ikaria, not one of the main tourist islands, and right over near the coast of Turkey. Ikaria was quite different to what i expected Greece to look like, and very different to the other Greek Island we visited on that journey, more on the other island later.

Trapalou Bay, on the Greek Island of Ikaria. Greece

I had always thought Greek Islands would be more like Rottnest Island,  off the coast of Fremantle, and many of them are, very rocky, dry and windswept with low scrubby vegetation and small white painted houses.  In contrast to this Ikaria is green, forested and has beautiful gorges with rivers and waterfalls, and the houses are not painted white!

One thing that was as i expected it to be was the crystal clear water of the Aegean Sea with it’s amazing deep aquamarine blue colour that just invites you to jump in, which i did on many occasions, including just after making this image here, which is the bay of a tiny fishing village at the end of a long rough dusty dirt road (it was a hire car…).  I cant remember the name of the place, but when we finally arrived it was around midday and the whole town (all 15 houses) was asleep for the afternoon, so it was quite eerie, like a ghost town, we had the whole place to ourselves.  So, we went down to the bay and swam around naked! It was lovely.

By the way, this shot was taken on the Canon 5D Mk II with the 16-35mm f2.8L lens and the awesome Really Right Stuff pano head.  It’s composed of 13 portrait format shots stitched with PT Gui Pro and the finished file comes in at 1.9Gb…  It makes nice big sharp prints.

Stay tuned for more on the Greek Island of Ikaria and Greece in general.