Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

Just a quick one tonight, my bed is calling me and i’m keen to answer!  This one is the beach below the town of Nas on the Greek Island of Ikaria, it is also the opening to the sea of the Chalares Canyon from a previous post.  On the opposite bank of the river is the site of an ancient temple of Artemis, the Greek Goddess of the wilderness, the hunt, wild animals and fertility; there’s not much left of it now but the sea wall and the foundations, but it is a beautiful site.  I just found out the other day that this temple was originally built from stone quarried from Petrokopio beach on the neighbouring island of Fourni which featured in this post

Temple of Artemis, Nas Ikaria

For those interested… Canon 5D Mk2 with 16-35mm f2.8L lens at 16mm.  This image is a 14 image stitch shot after sunset…

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.