Stone tombs
Looking out
Over an endless ocean:
They still remember

Took this panorama looking out across Waverley Cemetery and the ocean during the Bondi to Bronte beach walk we did last week. It’s a very peaceful spot and one of my favourites along the entire walk; the view is spectacular and I often like to stop there for a few minutes to think and enjoy the peace and quiet.

I know a lot of people find cemeteries quite eerie places but I’ve always found them interesting, particularly as subjects for photography and my writing. As a child we lived next to the cemetery at St. Jude’s Church while my parents worked there as vergers and I remember thinking about all the tombs and how sometimes they almost seemed like trees, listening silently to the world go by. I’m often reminded of that when walking past Waverley Cemetery as well, with all the old tombs looking out across the ocean, and that’s what inspired the haiku.

You can click on the photo to make it larger to see it in more detail as well.

Photo and haiku © CJ Levinson 2012

Walking across
Ancient shores,
Thinking of a time when
This land was free

Went for a walk with the wonderful @AlexandraRobin3 on Sunday and took this shot looking across Bronte Beach around midday, just before the beach started to fill up for the day. It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun taking photos, although we got badly sunburnt unfortunately – think it’s worth it though when you get shots like this.

Bronte’s one of my favourite beaches in Sydney; I like Coogee and Bondi too but Bronte has a different, more relaxed feel and it’s a great place to spend the day. If you ever visit Sydney, I highly recommend doing the Bondi to Bronte beach walk. It takes in most of Sydney’s most famous beaches and has beautiful views.

The finished photo is actually a panorama consisting of four separate photos which I combined in Photoshop Elements to give the elongated effect. I took it with my Canon 7D but most cameras (even phones) can do it if you like the effect – you just need to remember to keep your photos level and let them overlap enough so that you can join them together in something like AutoStitch (free) later.

The haiku was inspired by a feeling I had later in the day, when I was sitting with Alex and looking out at the ocean, thinking about what it must have looked like 250 years ago to the original Aboriginal landowners, before the intervention of Europeans. There’s a lot I’m proud of about modern Australia but I often feel sad about the amount we have lost as well and particularly how we have treated the first Australians… I couldn’t help but think of that while I sat there, watching the waves crashing against the sand, and so I guess that found its way into the haiku as well.

You can click on the photo to make it larger as well if you’d like to see it in more detail.

Photo and haiku © CJ Levinson 2012

Looking across at the Coach and Horses Hotel in Randwick. The Coach and Horses is about five minutes from where I live and I often pass it on my way back home from a walk. It dates back to around 1859 and is still located on its original plot of land, making it one of the oldest still-functioning pubs in Sydney. It was also one of the first local buildings to be connected by telephone at the turn of the century.

It’s a very distinctive building but I’d never actually taken a photo of it before, so I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I think shooting it at night really helps to capture the mood of the building and I like the blurred movements of the cars as well… they help to make the scene feel more alive.

A few people have asked previously why I didn’t edit out the power lines in the photo. Well, the simple answer is, I don’t like editing my photos extensively unless I have to. I have nothing against editing but I dislike changing the feel of a scene completely and in my opinion, I would have if I had removed the lines here. It also would have taken a lot of time that I don’t really have at the moment, which was a consideration as well.

Overall I see my role as a photographer, particularly with landscapes and architecture, less about capturing reality per se as trying to best convey a scene the way I saw it in my mind and there are many ways of doing that (from in-camera to post-processing and HDR) but I don’t see the point in changing something so much that the original scene becomes less recognisable – like changing the colour of a wall, for instance, or removing a feature that relates to the main subject. To me, editing the lines out here would have removed too much of the reality and story from the photo and made it less interesting. I know not everyone agrees but that’s my philosophy and I’m happy with the photo the way it is.

Photo and haiku © CJ Levinson 2012

A list of names,
All that survives
Of a sad past:
History repeats

I took this photo a couple of days ago while going for a quick walk, just before dusk. I often find myself wandering past the local war memorial on my afternoon walks… it’s the main feature of a small, peaceful park in the middle of Randwick and I often stop there for a few minutes to reflect and gather my thoughts.

The memorial is made of sandstone and was originally unveiled in 1925 by Lord Forster, the then Governor General of Australia, to honour the soldiers of the First World War; the cenotaph contains a scroll with the names of over four thousand local residents who served in the war. Over the years plaques have been added to remember the soldiers of the Second World War, Borneo and Vietnam as well.

With more of our soldiers wounded in Afghanistan recently and with the current events in Syria as well, I guess I was feeling rather contemplative when I took the photo… something about the dusk light seemed to reflect the way I was feeling and I think it shows in the mood of the photo, and the haiku as well.

Photo and haiku © CJ Levinson 2012

I haven’t posted much about my writing recently but I have a little good news to share about my novel for those following my progress: I finally finished the novel’s outline last week and as I couldn’t sleep last night as it was so hot in Sydney, at about 5:30 am I sat down and officially started on the first full draft of my novel. So it’s finally getting there.

To be honest I was so tired that I only managed a few lines but after more than two years planning it and all the backstory, it feels great to have finally started on it properly and I’m very excited with how it’s turning out. Can’t wait to get stuck into it later tonight.

As you can see in the photo I’ve given it the working title of Hallowden; at this stage I think it will probably be the final title as well, although that might change with time. Hallowden is the name of an ancient city where the majority of the novel is set and while I considered some other titles as well, in the end I thought it was the most suitable title as the city defines much of the novel. It also adds a bit of mystery to it that I like as well.

So what’s the novel about? Well, without giving too much away, the novel is about a man who returns to his home in Hallowden after fighting in a distant war, only to find that during his absence the ancient city has been taken over by extremists and is being torn apart by civil war. In the midst of the civil war, his lover has disappeared, feared killed in a brutal terrorist attack, and he must descend into Hallowden’s underworld to find the truth of what’s happened to her, to Hallowden, and to find her if she’s still alive.

The novel is set on an alternate Earth where magic and science are the same and it’s essentially a modern fable about religious extremism and the cost of war. It’s a bit of an adventure and a bittersweet love story as well… I guess I’m just trying to write the kind of novel I’d like to read and hopefully it will turn out well.

I hope to have this first draft (basically a rough draft without any dialogue or exposition) finished in about a month, then will start on the second (main) draft which will probably take about three or four months to write. There’ll probably be some revisions after that as well but with luck, hopefully I’ll have the whole thing finished in about six months.

Now that I’ve started I’ll be posting an update on my progress about once a fortnight and I’m also currently writing a short story set in the same world which I will post sometime in the next few weeks. If I have time I might also write a few other stories to help explore the novel’s backstory as well but I’ll see how I go first.

As far as my other writing goes, I’ve also almost finished a new poem which I’ve been working on for some time now and hope to post shortly. It’s a bit different to my normal poetry and I’m quite happy with it so far.

I’ve also been thinking about putting together an ebook collection of some of my previous works as a few people have suggested it to me now. The main reason I haven’t before is that I don’t think I own the copyrights to some of my published stories, so I’ll have to sort through my other stories and see if they’re of a high enough standard. The full novella version of The Life Artist might be an option… we’ll see.

I’m also still working on restoring my great-great grandfather Isaac’s memoir. I have a version of it scanned but the quality isn’t very good, so I need to type it by hand, which is a little time-consuming at the moment. I’m not sure when it will be finished but if anyone wants to read it in the meantime, I can send them the scanned copy. Just let me know.

In any case that’s where I’m up to with my writing at the moment. The novel’s coming along well and it feels great to finally be working on the first draft. I’ll have a bit more to reveal about the story once the draft’s finished as well.

Thank you to everyone who’s left comments or sent me emails recently as well. I haven’t had time to reply yet but I’ll be answering them properly tonight. ~ CJ.