Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

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…

I don’t know about you, but i’m having a hard time conceiving James Price Point as an insignificant place, i’m beginning to wonder if Colin Barnett has actually been there at all, or perhaps he just views the world in a different way to me.  I mean, do you really think there should be a gas plant here??

Ideal site for a gas refinery?

I spent the day playing with my Epson 9900 large format printer… no, honestly, I was working… What an awesome piece of technology it is.  I was thinking of all those years ago when I used to work in the dark room printing black and white images for hours and hours on end.  Enlargers, negative holders, paper processors, drying cabinets and chemicals, chemicals, chemicals.  I’m pretty sure I used to stink of fixer all the time, no wonder nobody wanted to sit next to me!

I used to love printing black and white images like that.  I would make my own concocted negative developers that would mature like a fine wine over many months, producing beautiful smooth tonal results, playing around with water baths and dilutions at different temperatures to slow down or speed up development to modify the resulting negative still further.

Often I would be running two enlargers at once, concurrently printing two different images, exposing one, dodging and burning with my  hands or small pieces of cardboard to get the exposure just right, then dropping it in the dilute developer tray to soak while moving onto the second negative and repeating the process…  Everything was an experiment, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, i’ve still got boxes and boxes of those meticulously printed images at home, great experience and great memories.  Do I miss it?  No.

I still do exactly the same thing now, just with a Mac Pro computer (with lots and lots of RAM!) and the Epson 9900 large format printer.  Oh, and without the chemical stink, which is a bonus for the environment and my friends.

So, if any of this sounds good to you, you should come along to the latest photography workshop I’m doing with Greg Hocking, Perfect Printing, this October.  There will be no chemicals and no stink, but there will be loads of invaluable information and tips learned from a combined knowledge gained in over 35 years of photographic printing on how to make your prints perfect, every time.  To read more click this link… about the upcoming Perfect Printing Photography Workshop, there are still a few places left.

Its official, James Price Point is now the subject of a compulsory acquisition  court action.  Just when I thought politicians couldn’t sink any lower, Colin Barnett take a bow, you have outdone yourself.  For those of you who came in late, this is James Price Point as it is today…

If Colin Barnett and Co win the day this will be the site of a massive gas processing plant, stretching over 20 square km, complete with deep water harbour (blasted through the reef), sewage treatment plants & power generation facility, with all the extra bits and pieces that go with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Sydney is such a beautiful place it’s hard not to take photos, and the clouds this afternoon were spectacular… Now where is that permit…

Tomorrow it is back to normality.

This image is Manly Pool in Sydney,  shot on the Canon 5D Mk II with the 16-35mm f2.8L lens at 16mm.

Manly Pool with looming sky