Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

All is not lost with James Price Point, it seems Geoff Cousins is now on board the campaign to stop the giant Kimberley Gas Project (20 square Kilometres!). He is the man who was instrumental in several massive successful campaigns in Tasmania, including the Tamar Valley Pulp Mill.  This is a man who can really make a difference, he has a lot of influence and a loud voice, its good to see someone like him fighting for the cause.

More on the Gunns pulp mill

More on Geoff Cousins

Even More on Geoff Cousins and Gunns

Yesterday i shot a wedding for the first time in about 7 years. It was the 10/10/10 and apparently that is a great day for a wedding, because despite the terrible weather, there were al least another 4 weddings taking place within a stones throw of the one i was photographing.

I’ve been trying to be a little creative with ways to get out from behind the gallery counter more and back behind the camera, where i love to be, so when a friend asked me if i might shoot his daughters wedding, not really expecting me to say yes… (him understanding my love of empty quiet places and general dislike of crowds.) i surprised both of us when i said, sure, why not?  Well, i had just bought the Canon 5D Mk II and was having fun taking pictures of anything and everything so it seemed like providence. Read the rest of this entry »

All  the images on my site are shot on large format film, except one… can you pick it?   I have many thousands of negatives of all formats from 5″x4″ to 35mm in folders all over the place… so much for organised security!

I’ve had a lot of fun with film, and used more than my fair share of it over the years.  Time i moved on, so,  about 8 months ago  i bought my first real digital camera, a Canon 5D Mk II  and  i am loving it.  I recently took it with me to Greece and i just had a ball, shooting HDR images (manually blended with layers) and stitched Panos with this awesome  pano head from Really Right Stuff that i picked up a while back.  This camera is not just my first real digital, its my first camera with auto focus!  I’ve been sitting on the fence for quite a while it seems.

The last 35mm gear i had was a Leica RE with a whole bag of beautiful prime lenses, all manual focus and full manual exposure.  I think the camera had some auto exposure functions on it, but i never used them, so i have no idea if they worked or not.  I just sold this camera recently, it’s helping pay for the new setup.

I remember 12 years ago when i worked for Fremantle Black & White (Black & White lab here in Freo), and using one of the first serious professional digital cameras in the studio, it was about 1.5 mega pixels and hugely expensive.  It had a viewing screen the size of a postage stamp and was awfully slow, but even then it was clearly the way forward, though it had a long way to go.

Check out the depth of field

A couple of days ago i picked up the latest addition for the Canon 5D Mk II kit, a 17mm f4L Tilt Shift lens. its a bit more like what i’m used to, being a prime lens with manual focus.  Although it’s really designed for architectural style work, the tilt and shift capabilities make it ideal for landscape due to the almost infinite depth of field possible.  I took it down to South Beach yesterday after work and had a bit of a play around, takes a bit of getting used to, but i think its going to be awesome for stitching pano images.

I think it’ll still be a while before i replace the 6 x 17 film camera, but not because i think it’s better than digital, rather, i can’t yet afford the camera that can replace it.  Anybody want to lend me $50,000?

Both these images shot at f5.6

Yesterday was a tragic day for Australia, yesterday Malcolm Douglas died. He will be sorely missed.

I grew up watching Malcolm Douglas films, i’m pretty sure i’ve seen all 50 odd of them, many times.  He was the initial inspiration for my love for the wild places of Australia,  the Kimberley in particular.

I remember seeing my first one of his films at a community hall someplace, i don’t remember where, being shown by Malcolm Douglas himself. I sat on the wooden floor of the hall, and saw images of places i had never even dreamed existed, fabulous exotic places, that i wanted to visit and wild adventures that i wanted to be a part of too.

That’s where it all began for me and many other Australians, Malcolm Douglas brought the outback into our living rooms and showed us how beautiful and important it is.

Malcolm Douglas was a bushman, a true ecologist and a statesman, he believed passionately in the sanctity of the Kimberley and fought most of his life for its preservation.  He was instrumental in setting up the Save the Kimberley Foundation, was very vocal about having the whole Kimberley coast World Heritage listed, and vigourously opposed the James Price Point gas development.  He was a caring compassionate man who believed in standing up for what’s important.

Now he is gone, and with so much left to do and so many things yet to be completed, its up to us to continue the fight.

Goodbye Malcolm, i’m proud to say i met you once, and i shook your hand.

For those who don’t know who Malcolm Douglas is…

I spent the day today, between talking to clients, working on my presentations for the next photographic workshop, Perfect Printing.  Today i was writing up the notes for the colour management part of the course, and i found myself just writing and writing and writing… i kept thinking, this is way too much,  this talk is only supposed to last an hour or so and i’m going to go on all day!

Its amazing how teaching something to others can really clarify it in your own mind, i mean, colour management, the words that can strike fear into the hearts of the  bravest photographer, is something that i learned by osmosis over many years of trial and error.  Reading a bit here a bit there, getting crazy results and trying to figure out why, talking to somebody in passing and picking up a tip or two, reading a bit more.  Now i’m trying to collate all these years of experiences and condense them down into a palatable not too boring talk of an hour or so… because this is, after all, just one component of the 3 day photographic workshop about printing.

It seems the art is not so much about what to put in, but what to leave out, thats what i mean by clarifying, its forcing me to organise my thoughts on something that i’ve never tried to explain to anyone before and really glean out the important bits.  Its actually a fantastic process, and one i am enjoying very much.

This is only my second full photographic workshop (teaching, that is), so it’s still a very new experience for me and  has surprised me just how much fun it can be.  Its taken me many years to feel that i have reached a standard high enough to be able to teach anything to others, and the great thing is that it really is a two way process,  i am learning about as much again in return, both in the preparation, and in the presentation.

It is said that its good to face your fears.  One of my fears has always been public speaking, i don’t shoot wilderness landscapes for nothing you know, no crowds to direct out there!  At the last workshop just before my first presentation i felt like i was going to die and running away seemed like an excellent alternative option.  Just me in front of 30 odd people… it felt like 30,000.  Suddenly it all felt very real, and i was $hitting myself!

Well, i got the first word out, then the second and the the third, and i didn’t die.  by the time i got to the third or fourth sentence i felt my heart slow down a little and i could almost breath again… Then i began enjoying myself.  People actually laughed at my jokes (They were jokes about me, always the best topic for jokes i reckon, can’t hurt anybodies feelings that way), and they seemed to be interested in what i had to say!  It was a great experience and my one hour talk went on for two and a half hours.

I cant really say I’m totally over my fear of public speaking, i reckon i’ll still get the urge to run away. Plus  now i’ve got the extra challenge of  trying to make Colour Management sound interesting and exotic!  Got to think up some new jokes… lots of them…