I wrote the above article about Flickr activity in the Adelaide Hills. Flickr is a sharing website and chat community. I used a photo I took of a visit by the SA Central Flickr group to Warrawong to illustrate the article. It also features two pictures by Rod Brunker, who I featured in the article.
Here's a copy of the article that's easier to read than the picture of the page above.
Adelaide Hills, a paradise for photographers
by Harvey Schiller
Rod Brunker of Meadows has been a keen photographer for most of his life.
In the early 80s he was shooting with a Pentax MG, on film, there was no alternative then. He then sold all his equipment but in 2006 when he bought a digital SLR camera, a Canon EOS 350D, his love of the hobby took off.
Around this time he joined Flickr, an online community where you can share your photos and where people can comment on them. This involvement gave him an arena where he could display his work and further his own development in the art.
“I’ve learnt so much from Flickr,” Rod said
“Studying other peoples’ photos, viewing their techniques and discussing their successes and failures gives me a real insight into the medium. Almost everyone is so keen to help others out and you get to meet, over the internet, people you never would never meet otherwise. One of my Flickr friends is a very talented photographer living in South Africa. I also have contacts from Russia, Germany and England - it’s a global community.”
Apart from displaying your own photos you can join groups within Flickr. These groups are quite diverse and can consist of a collection of photos from women photographers, photos from a particular city or country and even groups that specialise in photos of a particular colour.
“On Flickr there were groups for Adelaide and South Australia, but there was nowhere to showcase the wonderful place we live in,” Rod said.
So Rod created a group to showcase views of the Adelaide Hills and for Adelaide Hills photographers.
“I hope that Adelaide Hills photographers can use the group to connect and share ideas and that the group will encourage people to capture more images of the Adelaide Hills. It might even encourage more people to visit the Adelaide Hills, breathe its fresh air, eat its fresh produce, and take it all in.”
Rod is clearly in love with the area.
“The wildlife, the farms, the flora, the country people – it all inspires me,” Rod said.
“We are so lucky that we can enjoy country living with the convenience of a capital city less than an hour away. Almost all the food my family consumes is produced less than 40km from our front door and we can talk to the people who grow it.
“Good food, wine, people, rainfall, scenery - this is paradise.”
Rod is impressed with what he sees when he visits the online Adelaide Hills Flickr group.
“The members are certainly talented photographers,” he said.
“It’s a diverse group and all of the contributions add something to the Adelaide Hills story.”
Rod’s interest has had an unexpected benefit. His son is now a keen photographer too.
“I had a quite old Pentax point and shoot camera, and one day my son asked if he could take some photos with it,” Rod said.
“I gave him some instructions and left him to it, thinking that being a 9-year-old he would keep busy for, oh about 10 minutes. But, he loved it, took many shots and some very good ones. He kept taking shots and convinced me to get him a higher quality camera, a Fuji s9600.
“So now it’s great, we go off on walks together, him with Fuji, me with the Canon. The only downside is sometimes he takes better shots than me - but don’t tell him that.”
The Adelaide Hills Flickr site is at http://flickr.com/groups/adelaidehills/
Here are the pictures of Rod's that I used in the article.
Click for enlargifiction.
