[Leica] All good things must

[Alastair Firkin <firkin@netconnect.com.au>]

come to an end, and so it is with my holiday.

G'day all,

I have just spent a week on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South 
Australia, camping and photographing. Firstly, for anyone wanting to 
see the older style of Australian bush/farming community, KI is 
perfect, but changing. It is years since I've travelled on so many 
gravel roads, or had the car so "shaken-up" by the relentless 
corrugations of the road. The isolation was fantastic, and although 
the weather was not perfect -- blew a gale most days, the scenery, 
wildlife and atmosphere were. It was such and interesting journey, 
that we sort of forgot to relax, and so when I got home, it took me a 
day to recover, and then :-( back to work.

BUT, I have to admit, that being involved with our new Family of Man 
Project, really got me up and running. It is fantastic to have a 
purpose for all those people shots you would love to take, but don't 
really fancy on the bedroom wall ;-)

Now I plough on in there, introduce myself, and begin to take 
pictures, and its working. Of course like anything in life, it takes 
WORK and lots of it. At first I've found it hard to "intrude" into 
peoples lives, but using many of the techniques I've read about here, 
and by putting myself into the fray, the results are beginning to 
show. We met eucalyptus oil distillers, sheep cheese makers, honey 
bee keepers (there is a word for them, and I've already forgotten -- 
starts with A, can anyone help) horseradish farmers, dairy farmers, 
horse drawn tram conductors, and shared stories and traded 
information with all of them. The more I worked at it, the better it 
became, and they all accepted me and the camera (M6 0.85) without 
much fuss. Now don't expect too much from me, though I hope some of 
the images will work, but this is a learning curve, and for the first 
few, I simply did not take enough images, and even in the end there 
was still a little of the old AGF, timid and shy, but it was good fun 
(if hard work).

So FOM2 is working for me. It gives me a focus for my photographic 
images away from the attempted artistry and away from the holiday 
snap shots, and made the trip more like a photojournalistic week, 
full of human stories and humour.

Oh, and I could not finish without also saying that the wildlife and 
landscape imagery was also fantastic. Damn Kodak for being so slow 
with Kodachrome. The turn around time has become dismal, with only 
one bloke in Australia now doing all the work for the region. Good 
news is that on my return the darkroom processor Jobo was fixed, and 
now re-installed, so perhaps I will have to move to E6 as well.

Anyway, I'm back, and will be replying to those of you who sent 
profiles and details into FOM2 soon. Hope to hear your stories, and 
I'll try to get some examples of the week up on my home page soon.

cheers and heres luck
- -- 
Alastair Firkin

http://www.afirkin.com