Shapes and form

I have been spending a little time tidying up the photos that were taken on my recent trip to Coober Pedy and places in-between and today was working on some taken in and around Broken Hill. Broken Hill is in New South Wales and rushed into life when a boundary rider discovered that a broken hill was made up of the ore that contains silver. That broken hill has been mined into oblivion but it gave its name to the town that grew because of the minerals it contained.

Having seen a video made by a friend of a rather special garden that had been created in the desert that is where our travels took us. Within this "Living Desert" area is a hill on which stand some huge carved rocks. There is quite a story behind the symposium of the carvings but I was more interested in the way these rocky shapes fitted into the landscape than in why and how they came to be here!

When I take my photos I am not merely taking a record of what I see, I try to create an image that I feel is balanced and tells some sort of "story".
Composition is not always with the memory of the photographic "rules" and yet my main subject does seem to fall in that golden rule of thirds.

f/18 1/80 ISO 800   24mm

When these photos were taken it was starting to rain - in fact a few of my shot have a rain drop blurring the picture - so determined was I to get what I wanted I was prepared to defy the elements. Just as well really because the next day we could not return to the sculptures because the road was closed - the rain had made the track impassible.

f/7.1  1/125  ISO 800  35mm

This second shot is not of a sculpture but of some of the rocks that had been delivered when the symposium was taking place. They may have been arranged or they may have been dropped from a tip truck and landed in the fashion - but I found the stones very ornamental and the light and shadow (even though there was no sun and therefore no shadows) very artistic. I loved the colour of the rocks and the way they contrasted so acutely with the landscape beyond.
My next sculpture also fits into the golden rule. The shot of the random rocks were more centred but still make a balance picture - maybe it is the leaning rock on the left side that has an anchoring effect.

f/10  1/125  ISO 800  26mm

This photo has the weight on the right side. I tend to use the "lean" of the main subject to direct me where to position it in the picture. If I had this sculpture positioned on the left of the picture it would look as if it was trying to get out of the frame.
Wanting to experiment a little I crouched down for the next shot.

f/10   1/125   ISO 800  48mm

The desert does not look like a desert at all and I wanted to use some of this unusual growth and colour and throw the shapes into the background without removing them. The plants that are around the sculptures are natives of this area but they have been deliberately planted here to showcase the native plants of the Broken Hill area. You will notice with the above picture that although the focus is on the plants that thought has been given to the placement of the sculptures behind. The shot would look rather bland if those stone pillars were centred.
Another thing you will notice is that the ISO is very high for these photographs. It is only with Photoshop tweaking that they are as bright as they are! It was really dark when we were up on this hill and I needed to compensate for that dullness so that I was able to get a wide depth of field for some of my shots. Without the high ISO none of that desert in the background would have been visible in the first three shots because with a low ISO my aperture would have been so open that only part of the sculpture would have been in focus.
I hope you find my ramblings of interest.
AJ