Vivid Festival Take II - The Three Bees

While revisiting Sydney's Vivid Festival on Thursday night I happened to chance on a dress rehearsal of 'Fire and Water' a free public performance that is a stunning recreation of the famous historical incident when a fire devastated the 19th century convict ship the Three Bees.

It is being performed in the very spot it happened in

Campbells Cove opposite the Sydney Opera House, next to the southern side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Three Bees arrived in Sydney Harbour on 6 May 1814 with a cargo of male convicts, it was one of the so called 'fever ships' that had a high mortality rate for the convicts transported upon them.

The Three Bees, commanded by a Captain John Wallis, arrived at Campbells Cove and after the 210 surviving convicts were disembarked and a fire was discovered on the ship. It was later thought that the fire was caused by candle snuff being dropped when an officer and boy that had entered the ships hold.

The Three Bees was cut loose from its moorings and pushed away from other ships in the cove because at that time the colony was apparently a little paranoid about being attacked by the French. As a consequence of this the Three Bees, other ships in the cove and in installations around it there were a lot of highly explosive munitions.

A recreation of the Three Bees rises out of the water accompanied by eerily beautiful and dramatic music.

The ship is approached by is boarded by characters in the play (recreation)

A singing performance from the bow of the Three Bees.

Not long after the fire took hold the Three Bees first gun exploded on board and a swivel ball smashed into the parlour of the house of a Captain Piper, luckily missing everything but a writing table but further explosions sent cannon balls blazing across the harbour.

It was reported that panic ensued and the Govenor and other colonists were quickly evacuating the settlement for fear that the whole town would explode and burn.

The ship drifted out to Bennelong Point and shortly afterwards its whole magazine exploded and it sank.

The Three Bees sinks till its appearance at the next performance.

Campbells Cove with the Sydney Opera House sails being lit in the background.

PERFORMANCES - 12–14 June 2009 at Campbells Cove, The Rocks 6.15pm, 7.15pm and 8.15pm

Created by a team of Australia's leading outdoor theatre makers features a rich musical score performed live by CODA, floating inflatables and various other installations from other artists.

View the making of the ship for Fire Water.

All photographs © Wayne Ryan 2009

Google Wave - A new way to communicate?

Wave is a web based service and platform designed to merge email, instant messaging, wiki's, and social networking so they can be collaborative and real time. With things like automatic spelling and grammar checking, translation between 40 languages it's designed as the "next generation" of email. Waves are shared collaborations that can be added to or removed at any point during a wave's existence. Instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves contain a complete thread of all forms of messages and are stored on a central server. Google Wave is a project by Google, you can watch a video on it here from the Google I/O conference in May. Mashable link about Google Wave

Quick Weekend Photography Project

Vivid Sydney runs from 26 May to 14 June, Sydney is host to this international music and light festival that showcases stories through light and sound with the use of innovative new ideas. The festival has transformed the city into a living canvas of light at the Sydney Opera House, The Rocks, Circular Quay and Sydney's city centre. Following this event there’s the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Design 09.

There are various light installations around 'The Rocks' including one (not shown) in which you have to peddle a bicycle that drives a dynamo that supplies light to some blue LED's that are strung around a tree.

An interesting effect on this wall above, it got a lot of attention from passers by and of the (at least three) wedding parties, while I was there, taking wedding photo's around The Rocks precinct.

The girls from one of the wedding parties lining up against the wall for photo's :-)

Here's and interesting projection onto the roof of a road tunnel under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Sydney Opera house is lit up with projected art on the sails of the building. The artwork is by Brian Eno, the program called 'Luminous' is the lighting of the Sydney Opera House sails. These change every few minutes and are quite spectacular.

I found that this light show set-up in the rotunda on Observatory Hill had failed as the computers running the show had crashed. And yes! you guessed it, the operating system being projected onto the ceiling so the techies could fix this, shown above, was Microsoft Windows. They should have had it running on an Apple Mac, at least then it would 'just work'.

The view from Observatory Hill looking North towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Luna Park on the distant shore of Sydney Harbour.

TEDx Sydney

TED is a nonprofit devoted to 'Ideas Worth Spreading'. It began in 1984 as an annual conference devoted to Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED). The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in just 18 minutes.

TEDx furthers the spirit of Ideas Worth Spreading by bringing people together to share a TED-like experience through a program of local, self organised events. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. TEDx Sydney is one in the spirit of ideas worth spreading.

Tedx are being held all around the world and in australia in there is TEDxBrisbane - Facebook - 10/20/09 - TEDxMelbourne - Facebook - 6/13/09 - TEDxSydney - Eventbrite - 05/28/09

TEDxSydney hits Sydney on May 28, 2009 at Australian Technology Park

How David Hobby created a his 'coming into a shaft of light' look

I just purchased the book 'The Hot Shoe Diaries' by Joe McNally and after browsing it for a little time somewhere there was a mention of stobists blog, a blog about learning how to use off camera flash. McNally apparently reads it too. So I checked my links in the right hand side of the wfrblog under 'BLOGS I READ' and saw a new entry 'Variations on a Two-Light Theme, Pt.2'. Reading David Hobby's entry I was interested in trying to re-create his lighting. Especially when I looked at another example by photographer Peter Yang (here).

So here is my self portrait version . . .

If you read how David Hobby created a his 'coming into a shaft of light' look, what I did was mount my SB900 flash off camera on a manfrotto light stand about two feet, and above, my face. Held up a piece of black card with my left hand acting as a gobo (a card that blocks light) I also had my D300 on a tripod with my (eBay) Phottix Cleon Wireless Remote Control and Nikon 105mm f/2.8 lens on auto focus. I really want to master off camera strobes, they give you such great lighting possibilities.

Redbubble

A little birdie put me onto RedBubble. Thanks Carol.

RedBubble is an Australian website where you can share your creative output and allows aspiring artists and photographers to display their work for sale. A bit like cafe press, zazzle, yessy or deviant art.

It’s free and there’s no ads, storage limits, upload limits, bandwidth limits or file size limits and you retain copyright and ownership of your work. There is a lively RedBubble Community to connect with people through discussions, blogs, short stories, groups and competitions. You can also build a customisable website to display and sell your work.

To sell your work online, you just upload your digital images or artwork, and RedBubble will turn it into a products, like framed prints, posters, canvas prints, t-shirts, greeting cards and calendars and deliver them to your customer and take care of any customer service problems.

You control the pricing of your work and decide how much you’d like to be paid. RedBubble deduct their base price for the product and postage and handling fees and you get paid the balance. RedBubble doesn’t charge a commission they only charge you a base price. You set whatever margin you like. Anyone who visits the site can buy your images made into the products you elect to be allowed and purchases them online through PayPal.

While not intending to make a lot of money it will be nice if people can get a card or print from some of my images easily and at very reasonable prices :-)