Reflexxions is a non-word – or it was! The influence is my daughter Alexx. By adding the extra x, she created a unique name, so here’s to you Alexx, someone who is challenging the world of processed, un-nourishing food, and with 30,000+ Facebook Followers is doing something about it, making a difference! AlexxStuart.com You can also join her journey on Facebook.
My younger daughter is making a difference too. As community leader at the Climate Council she is playing her part in creating new understanding of the challenges and solutions available to combat climate change, a task made harder by misinformation and denial, and a media environment where debate and learning has all but ceased.
When countries go to vote for new national leadership, traditionally voters tend to vote governments out, seldom actively embracing a bold new direction. In recent decades around the world there have been noted exceptions.
Elsewhere here are two accounts from April and May describing different COVID-19 impacts on night life: one a small business in a country town, the other a journey through the Sydney CBD, devoid of people and meaning.
News reached me today of the passing on May 24th of the remarkable John Loengard – part of the golden age of photographers who created and crafted images for Life magazine.
We are all now in the global village of Coronavirus sudden change. Different countries have tried different paths. Australia and New Zealand have been, so far, amongst the most successful in limiting the virus’s spread, but at huge economic cost.
It’s a Saturday night in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. This kind of cool morning normally provides the chance to slowly read the Saturday paper at one of the dozens of excellent Bowral cafés and restaurants. But this isn’t a normal autumn Saturday.
In November I attended a local Southern Highlands community gathering hosted by Climate Action Now – Wingecarribee (CANWin) at Memorial Hall in Bowral. It was standing room only.
I think it may have begun while I was looking up at the ceiling in St. Peters in Rome in 2012. Unique. A remarkable artistic collaboration. Scale and History, all in one place. Remarkable!
Too often in this country, the logic of the rightness of collaborative efforts gets over-ridden. Australia seldom quite gets its whole act together. It punches above its weight, but falls at the last fence more often than is seemly!
History shows us that it’s often seemingly unrelated or minor incidents that lead to the greatest turn of events or changes in our society. Sometimes it’s humans, sometimes it’s nature.
Some 192 years ago, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce exposed a chemically-coated pewter plate to the light outside his window for about eight hours. By using some remarkable chemistry he fixed what his camera saw. It followed decades of attempts to create the first photograph.
This is the story about the making of pictures. As such the story is one of words. The heroes of the story are the pictures now on the walls of Kogarah Library until 22nd May 2016. This is the story of how they got there, through one person’s eyes – mine!
Advertising for the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius uses the words ‘The Unspoilt Island’ with pictures of limpid aqua waters lapping onto glistening beaches, and palms wafting in the gentle breezes of trading winds. For many visitors, Mauritius fulfils that promise perfectly.
As part of the 2016 Head On Photo Festival, members of St. George Leagues Club Photographic Society have worked on individual projects within an overall umbrella title – Imagined Emotional Landscapes. This is a first for the Society and is an Associated Exhibition in the 2016 Head On Photo Festival. Head On is Australia’s leading annual photography festival. When?
2016 is the Centenary Year for the Boeing Aircraft Company. It’s now headquartered in Chicago. But for decades it was a product of Seattle and for many Seattle is Boeing town, not just Microsoft. From their remarkable first pressurised Stratoliner 307 of the 1930’s to their creation of the 787 Dreamliner, Boeing, the company with the unique name, was special.
Was it the rain last week? Perhaps those clouds that flitted past yesterday afternoon without the cleansing and refreshing benefit of a change to go with it? Or perhaps it’s those onshore winds that are driving the moisture off a swollen ocean into this city? No matter! Today Sydney is back to sultry, overcast and H U M I D.
The recent collapse of Dick Smith Holdings Ltd is a repeat of a story of failed retailers in consumer electronics around the world. But as with so many corporate failures, the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to ask basic questions, or read the prospectus or annual report in August 2015.
The first UN Climate Talks took place in Berlin in 1995 (COP1). The far-reaching Kyoto meeting occurred in 1997. That’s already 18 years ago. As I write, we are in the midst of the Paris (COP21) meetings. But for the first time, a united USA and China commitment to a declared target has set the tone of hope and positive action.
Music. Ah, music! Another wonderful art form and very different from the photography I write about in these columns from time to time. Or is it different?
In the last thirty-six hours, news services, blogs, social media and websites around the globe have posted an Associated Press picture of a little 3-year old Syrian child, later identified as Aylan Kurdi, washed up on the shores of a Turkish beach. It was an anonymous tribute in the Obituary pages of today’s The Sydney Morning Herald that shocked me
Wednesday September 1st, 2015 – Sydney Last night I attended the Sydney launch of an important new book by former Australian of The Year, Tim Flannery. The book is called Atmosphere of Hope. You can buy it online or in your local bookstore. As a photographer who always carries a camera, I recorded some moments of Flannery’s speech at Petersham
This article follows the announcement on 11th August 2015 by the Australian Government that the climate action target they will take to Paris in December will still leave Australia as the nation with the highest CO2 equivalent output per head of population in the developed world. Such a target is woefully inadequate and not what any reasonably informed person or
After enjoyable and informative visits to St. Martin-In-The-Fields, St. Mary le Strand and St. Clement Danes, it was time to head off. After all – St. Paul’s Cathedral had been my goal. In 1975, forty years ago, I attended a wedding in the crypt below. It was a wonderful couple – a then-popular actress and her dashing actor husband. Her
Walking where one’s eyes takes one can lead to wonderful discovery. Two days on my recent visit to England, led me to scratch the surface of some London history. That history charts a direct path to the London of today. I encountered the important architectural work of James Gibbs, the abode of Dr. Samuel Johnson and the legacy of Christopher
If you think about France for a few seconds, what comes to mind? Wine, Fine Food, baguettes, croissants, Paris? Or TGV or Airbus in contemporary terms. Three weeks in a country, happily, enables you to dig deeper than a quick business trip. There are special traits that will either endear you to a country or possibly irritate you. Just when
I have spent a lifetime living out of a suitcase. After fifty years I am still not a good packer – too many things, just in case! A bit like my home office. It’s been two weeks and four locations so far. I know I have at least 4kg more clothing than I’ll need. And I really should have stuck
June can be a wonderful season in Paris. It can also be bitterly cold. This year it’s also been bright, sunny and wonderfully warm too. That’s the way it’s always been. A bit like Melbourne really! Several seasons all in one day. Making my first extended visit to this inspiring City in more than twenty years, -a City so steeped in
June 2nd 2015 (To view pictures larger, double click and be a bit patient! Takes a short while to grab the 1200 pixel version.) Today’s post came initially with no pictures. (Editor’s note in November 2015: Some months later I have remembered that this post went up with no pictures, which I am now correcting.) My MacBookPro decided to die on
When Elon Musk stood up and made his dramatic, yet incredibly modestly stated, announcement of the Tesla PowerWall for home installations on April 30th just one month ago, a major tremor went through the boardrooms of the Coal, Gas and Nuclear industry. A number of commentators have noted that Musk announced nothing technically new. What he did was he packaged
Travel is always about learning from other cultures and discovery of the new. But you have to leave yourself open to the experience and be prepared to let it wash over and impact you, no matter which sense it is: Sound, Sight, Taste, Colour, Smell, Hot/Cold, Rough/Smooth – all are part of the Journey of Discovery. Henry Miller, the playwright
Today, on her way from Buckingham Palace to the State Opening of Parliament in London, and the delivery of the famous Queen’s Speech, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth had to drive past an empty flower bed, as she rounded the statue of her famous forbear Queen Victoria and headed down The Mall. The garden workers were on strike defending working conditions
It takes seven hours to fly to London from the world’s most rapidly changing urban landscape, Dubai. The contrast is truly startling.
As I watched the Dubai sun set into its murky haze, never quite reaching the horizon due to dust suspended in the Middle Eastern air, our hotel had lit a fire in this hexagonal hollow globe, allowing the light of the flames to reflect into the darkening pool on the shore line.
Picture: City of Dubai skyline from Jumeirah Beach, East of the City After a one-hour delay, both technical and social, our Qantas flight had to unload the bags of a passenger who “decided he didn’t want to fly with us today”, our gleaming A380 lifts us off from the world’s busiest International airport, Dubai. We say farewell to a wonderful
Four decades travelling for business does not prepare one for the experience of a place like Dubai. A population of some 2.2 Million, only 15% of whom are local and 85% are expatriate guest workers makes for an eclectic mix. It’s a population that has doubled in ten years! It’s a city-state based on trade, which, in some cases, continues
It’s a strange feeling. I have spent 44 years travelling for work. I’ve clocked up more than 5 million miles. In all that time I must have flown over or through various ports in the Middle East 100 times or more. But I have never once set foot there. Today’s journey is to Dubai. For a 4-day stay. Today’s journey,
The day started with a to-do list. Yes, like most days. The list that ends much changed from the good intentions of the dawn. Tomorrow a 35-day trip to the UK and France begins; to be with friends and family, to experience some wonderful sights, sounds and smells from a Europe I left thirty-nine years ago. As a keen Facebooker