Balnarring Jetty wave motion for Sunday Best

 

I mentioned recently that I had taken around 200 shots at Balnarring Jetty. As with any photographic adventure, some frames turned out to be little jackpots, capturing that fleeting magic I had hoped for, while others simply missed the mark. Such is the nature of photography. Sometimes the light, the timing and the composition come together beautifully; at other times, the moment slips quietly through our fingers.

Going through those images again, I found a few more worth sharing. Perhaps it is time to dust off some of those forgotten frames and let them see the light of day, especially after my recent sabbatical from photography as a hobby. There is something rather comforting about revisiting old photographs. You begin to see them differently, with fresh eyes and a quieter mind, discovering little treasures that you might have overlooked the first time around.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for my new camera to arrive. The Sony A7R VI has yet to find its way into Australian stock, and honestly, how long does one have to wait? 😂 In the meantime, I suppose patience is another skill a photographer must learn, alongside chasing the light and waiting for the perfect moment.

Until then, I shall make do with what I have, revisit a few old favourites, and keep shooting whenever the mood strikes. After all, the joy of photography was never just about having the latest gear. It is about seeing the world a little differently, finding beauty in unexpected places, and occasionally striking gold among those hundreds of frames.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Bay of Martyrs Great Ocean Road for Skywatch Friday

 

The sun dips low, painting the sky in soft, bruised tones of twilight as it holds its breath above the Great Ocean Road. At the Bay of Martyrs, evening arrives not with a roar, but a quiet, golden sigh.

A brilliant trail of liquid light spills across the dark silk of the sea, fracturing into a thousand shimmering ripples that reach toward the shore. Guarding this fleeting brilliance are the ancient ones—dark, weather-worn islands and solitary sea stacks rising from the shadows. They stand as silent sentinels in the fading warmth, cradling the sun’s last fiery reflection before the night reclaims the waves.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Doncaster Shopping town Westfield view for Treasure Tuesday

 

Lately, Joel and I have grown a little lazy with our photography outings, spending less time chasing scenery and more time simply enjoying the day together. After a Korean barbecue at Westfield Doncaster, I happened to glance out across the car park and caught sight of the Melbourne skyline stretching into the distance. A quick shot, almost an afterthought, yet somehow it became the treasure of the day. Sometimes, the photographs worth keeping are not the ones we set out to capture, but the unexpected gifts that find us along the way.

There is, however, a certain irony to photographing from shopping centre car parks. Security guards are quick to approach us when we point our cameras towards the distant skyline, as though a harmless photograph of Melbourne's cityscape poses some great security threat. Yet, when it comes to the reported incidents of youngsters wielding machetes inside shopping centres, one cannot help but wonder where that same vigilance goes. It seems that a camera aimed at the horizon can attract more immediate attention than the troubling things happening much closer to home.

Still, the skyline remains beautiful, and the photograph is mine to keep. After all, we went out for a meal, not a photography expedition, and came home with a little unexpected treasure. Perhaps that is the charm of photography: even on a lazy day, when inspiration seems to have wandered off somewhere, the world occasionally offers us a reason to lift the camera again.

Sony a7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Mount Wellington in Tasmania for Sunday Best

 

Thirteen years ago, during that same Tasmanian photographic trip, Joel and I ventured up Mount Wellington. What awaited us at the summit was something neither of us had quite bargained for — a heavy fall of snow, turning the mountain into a world of white.

Joel, the poor lad, bravely drove us higher and higher along that winding mountain road, without a single chain on the tyres. The road was slippery, the bends seemed endless, and the car occasionally skidded beneath us. I remember thinking, somewhere between one corner and the next, that this was probably how a perfectly good photographic expedition might come to a rather unfortunate end. I was nearly having a heart attack.

And then, having survived the ascent, we discovered that we had prepared ourselves beautifully for photography, but almost completely neglected the small matter of winter clothing. We stood there in the snow, cameras in hand, shivering like two fools who had wandered into the wrong season.

Eventually, there was little choice but to huddle together for warmth. Two grown men, somewhere near the summit of Mount Wellington, cuddling simply because neither had thought to bring a proper coat. It was hardly the heroic mountain adventure we had imagined.

For the next two days, we both wandered around with dripping noses, nursing the consequences of our alpine enthusiasm. At the time, it was cold, uncomfortable and slightly ridiculous.

Now, thirteen years later, it has become one of those memories that makes me smile.

Perhaps that is what time does to travel memories. The fear fades, the discomfort disappears, and even the foolishness becomes part of the charm. What remains is the laughter, the companionship, and the strange little stories that photographs alone can never quite tell.

These are the images I took that day, preserved from those early days when photography was still a simple adventure for the two of us. Joel also made a panorama from the mountain, which I eventually had printed. It has since found a permanent place on the wall of my home in Bendigo.

Every time I look at it, I see more than a snowy Tasmanian mountain. I see two younger men, an unprepared winter expedition, a terrifying drive up a winding road, two frozen photographers huddling together for warmth — and, somehow, a very good day.

Thirteen years have passed, but the snow is still there on my wall, quietly keeping the memory alive.

Canon 6D

EF 70-200mm f2.8 

Linking Sunday Best

Balnarring Pylons in Cape Schanck for Water H2O Thursday

 

This was one of nearly 200 frames I made at Balnarring, each one an attempt to find a slightly different rhythm in the water. After spending so much time chasing that particular kind of silky, flowing motion, I wanted to show another interpretation—water curling and breaking around the weathered remains of the old pylon.

Eventually, I found the shutter speed I was looking for. The sea softened without losing its character, wrapping itself around the broken timber in long, restless threads. It was one of those small moments when the camera finally seems to see what I had imagined in my head.

Last weekend, though, the weather had other plans. Storms rolled through, and Joel and I decided to take a quiet break rather than head out. My teeth are still giving me grief, nearly three weeks after the extractions, which is becoming rather tedious. Sometimes the best photographic decision is simply to stay home, let the weather pass, and wait for both the sea and oneself to settle down.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Balnarring Jetty in Cape Schanck for Treasure Tuesday

 

Balnarring Beach is only about 40 minutes from Melbourne, an easy drive that I have made more times than I can remember. Yet somehow, this ordinary stretch of coast became the setting for a rather long-running obsession.

For more than four years, I kept coming back to the same broken pylons and beams, trying to photograph the water in a particular way. I had seen the image in my head: the sea curling and stretching away from the timber, forming those creamy, almost string-like threads of water—soft enough to feel painterly, but still retaining the sense of movement.

It sounds slightly ridiculous when I put it that way. Four years of returning to a beach for a particular shutter speed.

But photography has always had these little obsessions for me.

The tide had to be right. The light had to be right. The waves had to arrive with just the right amount of energy. And then there was the shutter speed—too fast, and the water remained ordinary water; too slow, and the delicate strands dissolved into a featureless blur. I would come home with something close, sometimes very close, and think, perhaps next time.

And then I would come back again.

Looking back, I think that is what I remember most—not just the photograph, but all those earlier visits. The quiet drives down from Melbourne, the familiar coastline, the changing seasons, the times when everything looked promising and somehow refused to come together. Four years is a long time to chase a small idea.

Perhaps that is why finally getting the shot felt so satisfying.

For a few seconds, everything aligned—the tide, the light, the movement of the sea and that tiny decision about shutter speed. The broken old beams stayed exactly where they had always been, while the water finally did what I had been asking it to do for years.

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about that.

Places become part of our photographic memory. We return to them older, carrying different cameras, different ideas, different versions of ourselves. The beach hasn't really changed, but somehow we have.

And every now and then, after years of trying, the sea gives you the photograph you came back for.

Maybe that is the real obsession.

Not getting the picture.

Just having a reason to keep coming back.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Bay of Fire in Tasmania Australia for Sunday Best

 

More than thirteen years ago, Joel and I escaped to Tasmania for a little boys’ time away from the complications of real life. He was about to become a father for the second time, while his relationship was already beginning to fray at the edges. I was carrying my own disappointments. I had failed my fellowship examination, and with it went much of the confidence I had once taken for granted. I was uncertain where life would lead me next.

In those days, Joel and I were also finding our way back to each other after years of drifting apart. Perhaps the trip was as much about rediscovering an old friendship as it was about photography.

Photography was supposed to be the reason for the journey. I had only recently returned to the hobby, armed with a rather modest Canon setup and even a few lenses I had bought back in my university days. There was nothing particularly sophisticated about the equipment, but perhaps that was part of the charm. I was simply happy to be looking through a viewfinder again.

Then came the Bay of Fires.

It was already an iconic corner of Tasmania, with its rust-red granite glowing against the cool Tasmanian sea. We pointed our cameras towards the rocks and water and, with the modest tools we had, somehow managed to bring home a few frames that still hold their own.

The first is almost a classic: that unmistakable red stone, softened by the silky, creamy movement of the ocean as it slipped around the rocks. The second caught something altogether more dramatic—a great burst of water frozen at precisely the right shutter speed, as though the sea itself had exploded into the frame.

Looking back now, the photographs seem to belong to a simpler time. Two old friends, two cameras, a rugged coastline—and for a little while, an escape from everything waiting for us when we returned home.

Canon 6D

EF 70-200mm f2.8 

Linking Sunday Best

Mount Cook Lake Aoraki for Water H2O Thursday

This is not the sweeping grandeur for which Aoraki / Mount Cook is so often celebrated, but an intimate study of stillness. A solitary stone rises from the quiet lake, its reflection dissolving into water veiled by drifting mist. The familiar drama of peaks and glaciers retreats into obscurity, leaving only fragments of a world suspended between presence and absence.

The soft haze wraps the landscape in silence, blurring the boundary between earth and sky until the stone seems to hover within a realm of quiet contemplation. Its mirrored image trembles upon the glass-like surface, as though reality itself were uncertain. There is something ancient and enigmatic in this restrained composition—a reminder that mystery often resides not in vast panoramas, but in the smallest corners where nature whispers rather than proclaims.

In the shadow of Aoraki, revered by the Māori as an ancestor and the highest summit in New Zealand, the lake becomes more than a body of water. It is a mirror of memory, where mist conceals as much as it reveals, inviting the imagination to wander beyond what the eye can clearly discern. The photograph lingers not on spectacle, but on atmosphere—on that fleeting moment when silence, reflection, and mystery converge into quiet poetry.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

 

Balnarring Pylon remnant Cape Schanck for Sunday Best

 

There is a subtle art in slowing time without quite surrendering it.

This photograph was made at just 1/8 of a second—not a true long exposure, but slow enough to catch the water in the way the naked eye often perceives it: flowing, breathing, yet still retaining its shape. The difficulty lies in finding that fleeting balance. The sea has no metronome; its speed changes with every surge, every retreat, every breath of the tide. A fraction too fast, and the water freezes into fragments. A fraction too slow, and it dissolves into an indistinct veil.

It is therefore a little like fishing for a moment that may never return.

This was one of the frames I managed to catch two weeks ago at the remnants of the old Balnarring jetty. Among the weathered timber, restless water and shifting light, everything came together for just that brief instant—the kind of quiet, fluid beauty that happens to be exactly my cup of tea.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Balnarring Beach Cape Schanck for Water H2O Thursday

 

Winter had been reluctant to let go of the rain, so the first truly sunny Saturday in what felt like an age was too precious to waste. Joel and I pointed the car towards Balnarring Beach, eager for a walk beneath a sky washed clean by weeks of grey.

The air carried that unmistakable bite of a Victorian winter, cold enough to numb fingertips, yet the sunlight transformed everything it touched. The sea shimmered like polished glass, long shadows stretched across the sand, and every wave seemed edged with silver. It was the sort of light photographers wait patiently for—gentle, golden and impossibly clear, making even the ordinary feel quietly extraordinary.

After our walk, we returned to the little fish and chip shop we had enjoyed only a few months before. But time, it seems, can change a place as surely as the tide reshapes a shoreline. The familiar faces in the kitchen had disappeared, replaced by three well-meaning teenagers doing their best to keep up. Unfortunately, enthusiasm could not rescue cold, soggy chips and potatoes that had barely met the fryer.

Joel, who rarely disguises disappointment where food is concerned, launched into such an animated critique that one could almost believe he had been temporarily possessed by the spirit of a disgruntled food critic. His colourful commentary provided far more flavour than the meal itself, and before long I found myself laughing harder than I had all week.

So that was our weekend: glorious winter light, a windswept beach, a forgettable dinner, and a reminder that even when the fish and chips disappoint, good company and shared laughter can still make for a memorable day.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Blue Lotus Garden Lily for Water H2O Thursday

 

I rarely turn my lens toward lilies or flowers, my heart usually drawn instead to distant coastlines, weathered cliffs, and vast horizons. Yet this quiet encounter reminded me that beauty asks for no passport. Just a short journey from home, the lilies unfolded in graceful silence, their delicate petals catching the light with an elegance that rivalled any faraway landscape. It was a gentle reminder that wonder often blooms in the places we overlook, waiting patiently for us to pause, look closely, and appreciate the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Melbourne Skyline at night for Water H2O Thursday

 

Only on the rarest of tides, when the sea retreats to a mere 0.1 metre at Brighton Beach, does it grant passage far into the bay. In the stillness of the night, I can walk where water usually reigns, carrying my tripod into the darkness until the shoreline feels like a distant memory.

There, suspended between sea and sky, the familiar becomes quietly extraordinary. The gentle ripples cradle reflections of scattered lights, while the horizon dissolves into a seamless union of black water and starlit silence. It is a fleeting privilege offered only by the tide—a reminder that some photographs are not simply found, but patiently awaited, when the moon, the sea, and time itself briefly conspire to reveal a view hidden for most of the year.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Boort Sunrise in Rural Victoria for Skywatch Friday

 

The morning wore a veil of mist, and the first shards of sunlight were only just beginning to prise open the darkness. The road stretched ahead through the Wimmera, quiet and spectral, as I drove towards Donald for a job interview many years ago. The landscape possessed a strange beauty at dawn—half dream, half memory—its paddocks and gum trees emerging slowly from the fog like forgotten figures.

What I did not know then was that the town seemed wrapped in another kind of mist: an insular culture where belonging was measured not by character but by ancestry. To be considered a local, one almost needed five generations buried in the district cemetery. Newcomers could live there for decades and still be introduced as "not originally from here."

There was a peculiar pride in that exclusivity, as though longevity alone conferred wisdom or virtue. Yet beneath it lingered a culture of small-town bullying and parochial politics that often seemed more interested in guarding the gate than opening it.

And so I found myself asking a simple question: why would I want to be your local anyway? What great prize awaits on the other side of that fence? The mist eventually lifted from the paddocks, but not from the town. I drove away with the sunrise at my back and the comforting thought that some clubs are far more impressive from the outside than within.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM

Linking Skywatch Friday

Lake Tyrrell selfie moment for black and white community

 

On the endless mirrored flats of Lake Tyrrell, a young woman stood alone upon the narrow platform, dressed in dark yoga pants that traced clean lines against the luminous salt landscape. Around her, the shallow water lay perfectly still, transforming the lake into a vast sheet of polished glass where sky and earth dissolved into one another.

She lifted her phone for a selfie, yet the moment became more than a simple photograph. Her reflection floated beneath her in the water — soft, elongated, almost dreamlike — while the platform itself seemed suspended between two worlds, one real and one mirrored. The pale horizon faded into silver-blue distance, and the silence of the Mallee wrapped around her like open air in a cathedral of salt.

For an instant, she appeared multiplied by the lake: the woman above, the reflection below, and the surrounding sky holding both together in a single luminous frame. In that fleeting act of self-portraiture, modern ritual met ancient landscape — the glow of a phone screen against a terrain shaped by wind, salt, and geological time.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Black and White Community

Brighton Beach Sunset in Melbourne for Sunday Best

 

At Brighton Beach, the evening settles gently, as though the day is exhaling its last quiet breath. The sky softens into molten gold and amber, spilling light across the water in trembling ribbons.

A lone boat drifts beneath the sinking sun, its silhouette cutting a slow, deliberate path through the glow—neither hurried nor still, but suspended in that fragile hour between day and night. The sea holds its reflection like a memory, shimmering and incomplete, while the horizon blurs into something almost dreamlike.

It is a scene that repeats itself endlessly, and yet never quite the same—each sunset a quiet performance, each passing vessel a fleeting note in a composition of light, water, and time.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Lake Tyrrell Sunset for Skywatch Friday

 

At Lake Tyrrell the sunset arrives with quiet restraint. The sky holds no clouds, only a vast, uninterrupted field of fading light. Gold softens into amber, then into a delicate wash of rose that stretches endlessly across the horizon.

The salt lake mirrors everything with perfect simplicity. Sky and earth dissolve into one another until the boundary between them almost disappears. Nothing intrudes—no drifting clouds, no restless wind—only the stillness of colour slowly deepening as the sun slips away.

In that spare and open moment, the landscape feels pared back to its essence: light, water, and silence.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

WuLai Creek, Taipei for Water H2O Thursday

 

Wulai Creek lies just beyond the bustle of Taipei, close enough that one can slip away for a moment of quiet without a long journey or a demanding hike. The water moves with a gentle insistence, its surface brushed with a faint green tint that seems borrowed from the surrounding hills.

Here, photography becomes an easy pleasure. A camera is lifted, the shutter held just long enough to soften the restless current. The exposure is brief—only a whisper of time—yet sufficient to coax the water into silky motion while preserving its lively flow.

It is a place where effort is minimal and reward immediate: the creek gliding past, light touching the water, and the simple satisfaction of capturing movement without ever straying far from the city.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Seagull spotted at Balnarring Beach for Saturday Critter

 

Owing to my half-hearted pursuit of rarer wings, I find myself returning—again and again—to the incidental sovereigns of the shoreline: the gulls. They require no pilgrimage, no whispered coordinates, no patient staking out of reed beds at dawn. They are simply there—abundant, unapologetic, prevailing.

Along the coast, gulls stitch the horizon together. They stand like punctuation marks on pylons, patrol the tideline with bureaucratic diligence, and lift in sudden white gusts when the wind shifts its mind. While I may have failed to chase the elusive heron or the shy tern, the gulls present themselves with democratic generosity—every outing a parliament of pale feathers and sharp eyes.

They dominate the littoral theatre. Where there is tide, there are gulls. Where there is trawler wake, there are gulls. Where there is salt on air and chips in hand, there are certainly gulls. Their prevalence is not mere presence but occupation—an ecological tenancy secured by adaptability and audacity.

So my coastal portfolio, sparse in exotic rarity, fills instead with these commonplace mariners. Incidental, perhaps—but never absent.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Saturday Critter

Goornong Sunrise for Sky watch Friday

 

In earlier years I drove long arterial roads into the rural margins of Victoria, the boot packed with files and instruments, the morning still undecided between frost and light. The work took me through paddocks silvered with dew and towns that woke slowly, bakeries first, then fuel stations, then the school crossings. I learned the discipline of dawn: how it breaks differently over stubble than over pasture, how mist lifts from creek flats in long, patient veils.

On the run north from Bendigo toward the Murray, the highway passes through Goornong—a small settlement set amid broadacre farming country. Its name is commonly traced to an Aboriginal word, often said to refer to mallee fowl, a reminder that this was once a landscape of woodland and grass before wheat and sheep laid their geometry across it. The district gathered itself in the late nineteenth century, when selectors and railway lines stitched the interior to markets; the railway’s arrival in the 1870s helped turn a scattering of holdings into a town with a school, a hall, and the steady rhythms of agricultural life.

By the time I was passing through for clinics, Goornong kept its quiet competence. Silos stood like sentinels against a wide sky. Fences ran straight as ruled lines. In summer the fields browned to parchment; in winter they breathed green again. And always, on the eastbound stretches, the sun would lift without apology—low, fierce, and perfectly aligned with the windscreen. It poured into the car in molten bands, turning the bitumen into a river of light and forcing me to squint behind the visor.

Those drives became a kind of liturgy. The glare was inconvenient, yes, but it was also exacting and honest—an unfiltered sunrise over country that has endured cycles of cultivation and drought, rail and road, departure and return. In that brief corridor between Bendigo and Echuca, the day announced itself without ornament, and I carried its brightness with me into the clinic rooms.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM

Linking Skywatch Friday

Balnarring Beach Cape Schanck for Water H2O Thursday

 

Joel and I drove down toward the southern edge of the Mornington Peninsula, chasing the promise of a generous tide. Along this stretch of coast near Balnarring Beach, the sea can be theatrical at dusk—when wind, moon, and current conspire, waves climb the timber pylons and strike them high, flinging light into spray as the sun dissolves beyond Cape Schanck.

We had come for that spectacle: high water at sunset, the pylons braced against a rising, copper-lit sea. But the ocean keeps its own counsel. The tide was only halfway in—ambitious, but not yet triumphant. Instead of thunder at the posts, there was a measured breathing: long, slanting lines of swell shouldering up the shore, then slipping back with a whisper.

This coast answers to the wide fetch of Bass Strait. Its tides are typically semi-diurnal—two rises and two falls each day—yet the amplitude here is modest compared with the great estuaries further north. Wind often proves the decisive hand. A southerly can heap the water higher against the beach; a still evening leaves the sea contemplative, content to polish the sand rather than assault the timber.

So we recalibrated. I framed the half-filled shoreline, where wet sand mirrored the afterglow and the pylons stood patient, waiting their hour. The receding water braided silver channels around their bases, and the horizon held a low, molten seam of light. Not the drama we had scripted, perhaps—but a quieter tide, attentive and exacting, offering its own kind of grace.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday